Nokia S40 budget blowers bunged Zynga doodle, poker games

Draw Something on something more basic

Two of Zynga's top titles, Draw Something and Zynga Poker, are coming to Nokia's Asha range of budget blowers, showing that there's life in the old platform yet.

Draw Something, a mobile Pictionary game with added bits, was flavour of the month when Zynga acquired the game, and its developer, for $180m in March this year (shortly before its own share price tanked). The fashionistas' whimsy has moved on these days, but there's a whole lot of feature-phone users for whom Draw Something is something new.

Not that Nokia's S40 handsets are exactly primitive these days; the about-to-be-launched Asha 311 has a 1GHz processor, a capacitive screen, GPS and Wi-Fi – all for an unsubsidised £75 – and will happily download and run Angry Birds, Worms and the aforementioned Draw Something.

Nokia reckons there are more than 500 developers who've topped a million downloads from its own App Store, and three who've hit 100 million, while the company continues to improve its S40 devices.

Not in the UK though, or the US, where Microsoft is the only platform Nokia is prepared to discuss. The '311, aimed at the prepaid phone punter in developing markets, has not been launched in either territory, as we're not apparently interested in cheap smart(ish) phones bearing the Nokia brand, even if they do have Zynga's games on them. US and UK retailers will certainly be importing them as soon as they hit the market, so if you want to get your hands on one, you should soon be able to. ®