Rolling Thunder 2.0? – HMD expanding in North America by bringing Nokia 2V to Verizon and Nokia 3.1 Plus to Cricket Wireless
HMD Global, the maker of Nokia phones, today officially announced new carrier partnerships with US operators Verizon Wireless, Cricket and the Canadian operator Rogers.
The new Nokia 3.1 Plus in Blue will be available via Cricket from January 25th for $159.99. The Nokia 3.1 Plus comes with a 5.99-inch HD+ display with NEG2 Protective Glass. It is Powered by Snapdragon 439 coupled with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. It comes with a 13MP+5MP dual rear camera setup and with an 8MP front camera. The 3.1 Plus supports NFC and has a big 3500mAh battery, as well as the latest Android 9 Pie on-board.
Nokia 2.1 for Verizon is official and is officially called Nokia 2V. Considering the owners of Nokia 2 received a sad news today, maybe HMD should consider adding the .1 to Nokia 2V to prevent potential confusion. Anyways, we are dealing with the CDMA version of the Nokia 2.1 meant for US operator Verizon Wireless. Nokia 2.1 or 2V features a 5.5-inch HD screen, Snapdragon 425 with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage under the hood. There we can also find the big 4000mAh battery, which is one of the most attractive selling points of the device. The other selling point are front facing stereo speakers. The phone comes with an 8MP rear camera with autofocus and a 5MP front camera. The device also features NFC and will retail via Verizon starting January 31st with an undisclosed price tag as of now. Nokia 2V runs Android 8.1 Oreo Go edition. We reviewed the Nokia 2.1, and were quite satisfied with it considering its price point.
A device for Canadian operator Rogers will be announced “very soon”.
You can check the full press release here. More details about the device can be found on Nokia Mobile US pages.
For those wondering what “Rolling Thunder” in the title is, that story is quite interesting. When Nokia announced the switch to Windows Phone, the United States of America became one of the markets Nokia was focused on, in part because of Microsoft. The plan to bring back Nokia devices to the states was called Rolling Thunder (article at WC). To cut to the chase, Rolling Thunder turned out to be an expensive and unsuccessful operation. HMD’s “Rolling Thunder” is much more careful, and I hope they will have better results than what Nokia had. I hope that the upcoming flagship device(s) will see the US and Canada, too.
