Feature phones still have a place in the market, however small. In countries like the US, there's still some small demand for a phone that's a little more basic without all the bells and whistles of something like a Galaxy S10, and in emerging markets there's a need for devices that are less expensive and don't consume quite as much data.
Nokia has pretty much always dabbled in these feature phones, and it looks like their newest take on the idea will involve Android, too.
Supposedly Nokia is working on a feature phone, as seen above, that sticks to a pretty old form factor, but it's running a version of Android with a pretty simple skin on top to make things easier to use. There are quite a few Android and Google-ish things, like some apps, theming, and a Google Assistant microphone icon.
Of course, Nokia isn't the only one wanting to make this happen. Google's own Chrome code has had hints of feature phone compatibility for some time now, which will theoretically allow for apps and browsers to work without a touchscreen. There are a couple of other big feature phone platforms on the market, with the biggest being KaiOS, and it's clear Google wants a piece of that pie.
But where this gets tough is in the pricing and performance categories. Feature phones aren't powerful devices, and we've seen even Android Go struggle to work well, even with supposed heavy optimization and enhancements to make it run on underpowered hardware. I don't think Google is particularly well known for incredibly optimized software, but that's exactly what this situation calls for. Should be pretty interesting.
source: 9to5Google
