Fact check: Is Nokia giving free smartphones to students & workers amid the pandemic?

Origin

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the spreading of fabricated news and misleading information has taken over mainstream social media platforms. Be it WhatsApp or Facebook, fabricated information always seems to find its way to the public. While some are wise enough to understand that the news sounding too good to be true is actually of that nature, others innocently fall prey to the fabricated information and believe it. One such piece of information has now come to light. 

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Nokia giving away free phones?

Off-lately, a number of posts, specifically on Facebook have been witnessed to spread the news of Nokia offering free smartphones to students and workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The viral message claims that Nokia 'is ready to' give away 20K smartphones for students and workers and users only need a comment a single alphabet like 'T' or 'N' in order to get their smartphones. Check out the entire message doing the rounds on the internet below - 

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NOKIA JULY FRESH GIVEAWAY FOR STUDENTS AND WORKERS

NOKIA company is ready to give away 20,000 brand new phones to people in this pandemic period, to attend online classes.

FREE NOKIA PHONE FOR STUDENTS & WORKERS

TO NOKIA PHONE
Comment a lot of "N" to have a big chance to win!! and to be noticed by us in the comment section

No Scammer Please Let's Help!! ❤️❤️

Then Come inbox! via "SEND MESSAGE" button bellow With the Screenshot of your comment!

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Though the posts seen above claim that Nokia 'is ready to' give away a certain amount of phones to students and workers, no such official announcement has come from the Finland-based company. At the latest, Nokia had held a competition on its official website which led to a selected few winning devices from their Nokia 7.2 series of smartphones. Please note that Nokia was not 'giving away' phones but rather making users participate in a competition which enabled them to be a potential winner of the device. But, this competition lasted only from October 17 to November 07, 2019. 

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Image courtesy - official Nokia website

After this, no official announcement of any give away of smartphones was announced by Nokia. Any official announcements about competitions and giveaways by Nokia often get updated on their official website, but, no such notification can be seen on Nokia's website either. Thus the posts doing the rounds on the internet claiming that Nokia is giving away free smartphones to workers and students is actually False.