Till today I can still picture my grandfather cracking open a walnut with his Nokia 3410. I also owe the Finnish brand credit for the absurd battery life its classic candy-bar phones delivered, often lasting for weeks on a single charge. And then there was Snake, the game that kept me, and probably you, busy through countless family visits. Still, Nokia has managed to surprise me in a way I never expected.
HMD Global has released four new Nokia-branded feature phones, the 200 4G, 210 4G, 215 4G 2nd Edition, and 235 4G 2nd Edition, and despite their classic dumbphone looks, all four ship with a… dedicated AI assistant button built into the keypad.
None of the four phones have a price or release date attached yet. The listings, however, do line up with what the company promised in March. HMD said it’d spend 2026 bringing smartphone features to its feature phones, starting with AI assistance and video calling before adding a built-in digital wallet.
Every one of the four phones carries the same trick: a dedicated button, positioned where a shortcut key used to be, now marked with an AI logo. According to HMD’s own product pages, one press wakes a voice assistant that can flip on the flashlight, open the camera, dial a saved contact, set an alarm, or answer a spoken question, translating basic phrases into any of 18 languages HMD lists, from French to Ukrainian to Thai. Quite a strange fit on a phone with a 2.4 or 2.8-inch QVGA screen and 64 MB of RAM, and that contrast is what makes it worth a second look.
HMD’s spec pages say the assistant runs free for the first 180 days, after which using it requires a paid subscription set up through a companion smartphone app. That’s an odd ask for a device aimed at people who might not own a smartphone at all.
All four models also get a front-facing camera and HMD’s Express chat app, which handles video calls, voice messages, and private group chats between Nokia feature phone owners and anyone on a smartphone.
Camera specs vary across the lineup. The 200 4G skips a rear camera and flashlight altogether, the 210 4G adds a VGA rear camera with flash, the 215 4G 2nd Edition sticks to a front VGA camera only, and the 235 4G 2nd Edition tops the range with a 2-megapixel rear camera and its own flash.
The four phones also carry HMD’s Cloud Phone Service, a set of browser shortcuts for news, weather, sports scores, games, and video, built to work without eating into the phone’s 128 MB of onboard storage. Paired with the AI button, it comes across as HMD trying to give a keypad phone some of a smartphone’s convenience without asking it to run smartphone software.
Screen size is where the split happens most, alongside a handful of small upgrades. The 200 4G and 210 4G keep a 2.4-inch QVGA display, while the 215 4G 2nd Edition and 235 4G 2nd Edition move up to a 2.8-inch IPS panel, still QVGA resolution but bigger and, per HMD, brighter to view. All four run HMD’s S30+ software and the same 1,450 mAh removable battery, rated for nine to 10 hours of talk time and up to 13 days of standby depending on the model.
Colors vary by model:
- 200 4G: Black, blue, and yellow
- 210 4G: Dark blue and silver
- 215 4G 2nd Edition: Black
- 235 4G 2nd Edition: Black and blue
Two of the four carrying the “2nd Edition” label suggests HMD is refreshing existing feature phones with the AI button bolted on, rather than launching four ground-up designs, which tracks with how incremental the rest of the spec sheet looks.
The phones aren’t made by Nokia the telecom company. HMD Global has licensed the Nokia name for phones since Microsoft bought Nokia’s original handset business back in 2014, and the two companies now have nothing to do with each other’s roadmaps.
Nokia Oyj, the original Finnish firm, spent 2026 in headlines of its own, with its stock up more than 140%. But hey, Nokia’s golden days are long gone. That rally comes from demand for the optical networking gear that powers AI infrastructure and data centers, not from feature phones or AI assistant buttons.
I like that HMD didn’t just slap a bigger screen on the feature phones and call it 2026. Building a voice assistant into a phone that still runs on a keypad and a two-week battery is a different bet than the one every smartphone maker is chasing.
What keeps me from calling the launch a win is that 180-day countdown. Feature phones exist because not everyone wants, or can afford, a subscription-driven smartphone life, and tying the assistant’s long-term use to a companion app undercuts a chunk of that audience. I’d want to see the actual subscription price before deciding whether the AI button is a selling point or a footnote.
For now, I’m just glad Nokia is still weird enough to show up.
Related: 3 gadgets that can replace your smartphone by 2030—from dumbphones to smart glasses
