Times are tough, so why not consider the uber cheap Nokia 2700? Image: Nokia.

With much of current mobile phone focus centred on highly desirable smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry line, you’d think other manufacturers would bow to the pressures of the economic downturn and hold back more ‘conventional’ products. Evidently Nokia has other plans.

Specifically, the world’s leading mobile phone maker has this week whipped the covers off a trio of new handsets which, while unlikely to attract the smartphone demographic, could well find purchase with pennywise tech buyers as they strive to tighten their belts without compromising too heavily on the things they want.

Nokia 6700.

First up are the Nokia 6700 classic and Nokia 6303 classic handsets, which arrive sporting refined ‘classic’ lines and a modest selection of appealing features in return for a contract-free 235 Euros and 135 Euros respectively.

Heading the bunch, the 6700 is described as providing, “a new benchmark for mid-range devices,” and comes complete with a 5.0 mega pixel camera, A-GPS with Nokia Maps, High-Speed Packet Access (10Mbps download/2Mbps upload) via 3G, and a full-metallic keypad.

“The beautifully premium design and expert functionality of the 6700 [which is the successor to Nokia’s popular 6300] makes us confident this will be one of out best-selling devices in 2009,” enthused Nokia UK managing director Mark Loughran.

Nokia 6303.

The somewhat cheaper 6303 classic offers up a 3.2 mega pixel camera, Nokia Maps, a 2.2-inch display screen, a MicroSD memory card slot, and a standard 3.5mm audio jack – but no HSPA connectivity or on-board GPS.

If times are so tight that the 6700 and 6303 fall outside of your pricing comfort zone, then perhaps the functional Nokia 2700 classic and its meagre 65 Euro price tag will help cover the basics thanks to a 2.0 mega pixel camera, up to 2GBs of memory expansion via an onboard slot, and a built-in music player.

All of Nokia’s new classic variants are expected to slip (probably unnoticed) down the retail chain in the second quarter of 2009.

Dialaphone UK has reviewed the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone which made its first appearance in the movie ‘Dark Knight’. The phone was basically launched to compete with the iPhone, it features a 3.2 inch touchscreen, 3.2 Megapixel camera, 3G, accelerometer and all the usual stuff you would expect from a high-end multimedia phone. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic may have been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait! Not only is it a very sleek looking little handset but it has a very impressive line-up of features, raising its status to the very upper levels of the midrange and challenging those above it with its more reasonable price. We’re going to see a lot of these little phones out and about and it bodes very well for 2009’s big Nokia release, the N97.

Via NewLaunches

Nokia, the world’s most ubiquitous cell phone company, is showing off the new 6208c phone in China, which sports a pen for easy input of Chinese characters.

The touch screen on the 6208c is optimized to write Chinese characters and messages in the most natural way, with a pen. The design of the stylus, attached to the back of the phone, is inspired by bamboo slips and works perfectly with the large color display which is reminiscent of an ink stone, another element from traditional Chinese art and culture.

It’s somewhat surprising to see a return to the stylus for input in this day of multi-touch interfaces, but maybe that’s best for creating Chinese characters on a touchscreen. Thankfully the pen actually looks like a pen, rather than a standard stylus, and is well integrated into the back of the phone. It’s much nicer looking that the traditional stylus sheath.

It’s also exciting to see elements of traditional culture influencing product design, though. Here’s hoping that trend continues to imbue gadgets and technology with a little more class.

Via Crunch

Before this week’s big Nokia announcement let us introduce you to the Nokia N97. Boasting HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, an FM transmitter so you can play your tunes through a radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 5-megapixel camera, the Nokia N79 is a rather nifty phone if ever we saw one.

What’s clever about the Nokia N79 though is that when you change its battery cover to one of the three provided covers in the box, it automatically changes the N79′s theme to match. OK, so it’s not a mind-blowing feature but it does show how software can be integrated with hardware to offer users something different.

A while ago we saw this concept taken a step further by Modu, an Israeli company developing modular handsets that use a core module which fits into several different cases, essentially turning one phone into many. The Nokia N79′s casing concept is far less ambitious but nevertheless takes Nokia’s cases in a new direction.

As for the N79 as a phone, we really like its design — the screen is large and sharp, and it rotates depending on which way you hold it up. But the N79′s keypad left us a little less impressed as it’s too flat for our liking and squashed together, making texting fiddly at times. Expect a full review soon.

Via CNet