TECNO is a household name that is familiar with a good number of people in Africa and other emerging markets. While the brand has built a strong name for it with its smartphone business, its roots stem back to feature phones.

The company, through a press release, has announced its first smart feature phone running on KaiOS. The TECNO T901 is a normal-looking feature phone but with limited smartphone capabilities. Before we get to the software, the device itself features:

• A 2.4-inch QVGA display
• 512MB of internal storage with the option of expanding it with a mere 256MB MicroSD card
• A 1900mAh battery that TECNO says will last 25 days on standby
• Hybrid dual SIM slot
• A front and back camera with a flash
• 3G network connectivity and Wi-Fi capabilities

As you can see, from the list above, the phone is not your average feature phone. What makes it even more of a smart feature phone is the software that it runs on. KaiOS is a mobile software developed specifically to give feature phones smartphone features.

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Like Android and iOS, KaiOS does feature an app store and allows feature phones to run popular apps such as Facebook, Twitter and recently WhatsApp. Other apps that run on KaiOS include Google Maps, YouTube and even Google Assistant.

The TECNO T901 does not have a price tag yet but we can speculate it will be below Kes.5,000  or at least we hope so. As of now, we’re not even certain if the phone will make it to Kenya but if it doesn’t that will be a missed opportunity by the company.

Our hope is that this announcement by TECNO will trigger an influx of more manufacturers to launch more KaiOS devices, especially the likes of itel.