Nokia announces its X1-00 budget phone

FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia has announced that its budget phone for the masses, the X1-00, will be available next month in selected markets.

No smartphone killer, the X1-00 is almost the opposite and is completely designed to be cheap and reliable. It uses a Series 30 operating system, and that's about it really, apart from the fact that it's bright orange. The phone is music focused, housing a large loudspeaker on the rear and three dedicated buttons for music control. Nokia believes that people might use the phone as their main music player at home.

It comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD slot. Nokia claims that the loudspeaker is rated at 106phon, a measurement which we're sure no one can relate to, but apparently that means it can "rattle your window frames".

The X1-00 apparently has a standby battery life of up to 61 days. Its price is estimated to be around a staggering €34. All of this might seem rubbish or irrelevant when the news is almost always about what the latest smartphone is and who can beat the Iphone, but Nokia's X1-00 is more about reaching the masses in poorer countries rather than targeting the Western mobile markets.

The idea is that this phone might be used as a family's shared device for both phone functions and entertainment. For this reason Nokia has added features such as a dedicated light, handy when the power supply is unreliable or there is none at all. Up to five separate phone books can be stored on the phone to make sharing the phone between users easier. µ