Nokia unveils the 105, a $20 cell phone with 35 days of battery life

At this week’s Mobile World Congress, Nokia debuted a cell phone it hopes will make huge progress in making cell phone technology accessible to more people.

The Nokia 105, which will cost customers €15 (about $20 CAD), is being advertised as a phone that could be accessible to more people, due to its low cost and lengthy battery life. According to Nokia, the phone has up to 12.5 hours of talk time and 35 days of standby time, which also makes it an ideal emergency phone.

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Because it’s built to be as cost effective as possible, it doesn’t come with much in the way of bells and whistles. Users can make calls, send SMS text messages, play the pre-loaded games, listen to FM radio and use the Nokia Life service in countries where it’s available, an education service that can help teach life skills like how to study or handle finance and can assist those who want to learn English.

With its primary audience being those who can’t afford a typical cell phone, Nokia is planning to release the 105 in about twenty African countries as well as India, Vietnam, Russia, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates.

While function is the key feature of the Nokia 105, with features like a dust and splash-resistant outside and a built-in flashlight, the design and form elements of the higher end Nokia phones like the 900 were built into this budget device.

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“As we kind of refine our skills in certain material technologies and certain ways of constructing products, we can build those learnings into relatively low cost products,” Stefan Pannenbecker, vice president of industrial design for Nokia, told PC Mag. “It's simple things like understanding the resins and the plastics that we use, to understand how we can translate the quality of those resins into other grade plastics, [and] which types of pigments we can use and must use to get the best colors. This is very detailed work but it's really absolutely crucial."

Nokia is aiming to release the phone in select countries by mid-2013.

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