There’s no denying the fact that we’ve all used and loved Nokia phones at one point of time or the other. But sadly, after joining forces with Microsoft in 2011, the Finnish company couldn’t stand tall against the competition offered by its Android counterparts and lost it’s legacy.
However, here’s the good news. The company has finally confirmed that it will be re-entering the smartphone business in 2017 with Android-powered smartphones.
Nokia, earlier this year, signed a licensing agreement with HMD Global — which gives the company, exclusive rights to launch smartphones and tablets under Nokia-branding for the upcoming 10 years. The smartphones will be manufactured by Foxconn — a Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturing company which also happens to be Apple’s one of the major producers of iPhones.
Ever since the company had confirmed that the launch of Android-powered smartphones is imminent, rumours pertaining to the upcoming lineup have been making headlines on the internet.
Firstly, there are rumours claiming that Nokia is working on two (or more) smartphones with one of them being a flagship variant (currently being referred as the Pixel or the P1) and the other catering to the needs of mid-range smartphone buyers (referred as the D1C).
Interestingly enough, the D1C has also been rumoured to be a tablet. There’s no solid evidence to corroborate either of the claims, though. In terms of hardware, the D1C is expected to be powered by a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset paired with Adreno 505 GPU for graphics.
It is speculated to pack 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage space (a 2GB, 16GB variant may also be made available). While not clear, the smartphone is rumoured to come in two size variants — some point at 5.0, 5.5-inch sizes and others at 5.2, 5.5-inch variants with Full HD resolution display.
The imaging department is rumoured to be taken care of by a 13-megapixel camera at the back and an 8-megapixel front facing camera. On the connectivity front, the smartphone will offer support for 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and GPS/A-GPS among others.
On the other hand, the flagship variant is rumoured to don an all-metal unibody design which puts it in the same league as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Apple iPhone 7.
The Nokia P1 (or the Pixel) is tipped to sport a 5.5-inch QHD display, although not confirmed, also means that we can expect support for Google’s DayDream VR tech. Since the P1 is expected to come with a flagship tag, it won’t be surprising to see a Snapdragon 835 chipset (which will likely be a norm for most of the flagship devices in 2017) powering the device. Standard connectivity features are expected. However, there’s no word on the absence of 3.5mm audio port (now that it’s a thing).
On the software side of things, both the smartphones are expected to run Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box. It’s unclear whether there will be any customizations, though.
As far as the launch date is concerned, given the fact that HMD Global is one of the exhibitors at MWC 2017, we can expect to see the company to showcase the first set of Nokia-labeled phones at the event.
For now, all of this has to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt, for none of the above-mentioned information is officially confirmed. We will keep you posted as soon as something solid surfaces online. Until then let us know what features you want to see on the upcoming Nokia phones in the comment section below.
