New Nokia phone makes a virtue  of simplicity
November 13 2017: HMD Global,  inheritors of the famed  Nokia name in smarthones, chose the unlikely locale of a metro rail station in Gurgaon to unveil their latest handset -- Nokia 2.
Its USP  will appeal to  Indians: Long battery life  -- from a 4100  mAh cell. Older readers  who have used the classic Nokia handsets like the 3310 or the made-for-India 'Asha' will remember that  the phones easily worked for two days or more . The Nokia 2 is throwback to those less complicated days -- it promises two days on a full charge.
In other ways too this is a phone   whose mantra seems to be: KISS -- Keep It Sweet and Simple.
Built on a  Qualcomm Snapdragon platform and sporting  the Android  7.1.1 OS (upgrade-able to Android 8 very soon), the 5 inch  HD display phone sports  8 MP autofocus rear ( with flash) and 5 MP front cameras, 1 GB DDR3 RAM and  8 GB of storage expandable to 128 GB.All these are fairly standard if unexciting specs. 
But  some nifty design has gone into the phone which ensures that all components from chipset to display  have been optimised to suck in as little power as possible.  
Nokia  has resisted the temptation to load the phone with app-heavy user interfaces of its own -- and has  provided a lean-mean native Android, without  any  pre-installs or skins. However the Google   Assistant,   voice tool is there to make life  little simpler. Network-wise this is a 4G VoLTE  device with dual nano SIM slots.   The global price is €99. It should be available in India before year end for under Rs 7000.  VISHNU ANAND