Nokia will reveal its much rumoured Android smartphone at this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona at the end of February, according to a new report.
The so-called Nokia X, which is powered by Google’s Android OS rather than Windows Phone, began development before Microsoft struck a deal to purchase Nokia last September.
Despite that deal being signed and sealed, however, Nokia still plans to release its Android experiment. If The Wall Street Journal is to be believed, the Nokia X will be officially unveiled at MWC 2014 from February 24.
It’s believed that Nokia is targeting emerging markets with its modestly specced Android phone. The lack of restrictions surrounding the Android OS has enabled the company to create the kind of stripped-back smartphone they could never achieve with Microsoft’s strict Windows Phone hardware guidelines.
Rumour suggests that the Nokia X will be a low-end smartphone at an extremely affordable price. It will run on a modest 1.2GHz dual-core CPU backed by just 512MB of RAM and 4GB of (expandable) internal storage, and will sport a 3-megapixel camera.
A 4-inch 800 x 480 display is also rumoured, which is extremely conservative for an Android phone. Speaking of Android, the Nokia X will apparently run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is quite a bit behind the curve. The most recent version available is Android 4.4 KitKat.
Despite running on Google’s OS, the new Nokia phone reportedly won’t be able to access key Android features such as the Google Play Store, which its the platform’s main source of apps. Nor will it feature Google Maps, with Nokia’s own Here Maps taking its place.
It seems Nokia is using the bare bones of Android to create a highly customised UI, which we’ve seen before in the likes of the Amazon Kindle Fire range.
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