Nokia

The Nokia name may get to live on with at least a couple of high-end phones reportedly set to debut in late 2016 or early 2017.

HMD Global, which purchased the Nokia brand from Microsoft this past May, is said to be developing two Android smartphones with a metal design and the “famous Nokia feel,” Nokia fan blog NokiaPowerUser said on Saturday, citing “trusted sources.”

Both phones would be equipped with the upcoming Nougat flavor of Android, said NPU, which also focuses on Windows Phones. A fingerprint scanner and a highly sensitive camera sensor will also be part of the package, NPU said. Based on Nokia’s work with Graphene material, the imaging sensor may be the most sensitive one ever found on a Nokia phone, according to the sources.

Microsoft’s 2013 move to acquire Nokia’s Windows Phone handset business never panned out in a market dominated by Apple and Android. By dumping Windows Phone and hopping on the Android bandwagon, HMD is looking to convince consumers to give the Nokia brand another shot.

Marketed as “sturdy and robust,” the two phones would be resistant to both water and dust, NPU said. The smaller of the two phones would sport a 5.2-inch screen, while the larger will offer a display of 5.5 inches. The resolution hasn’t been confirmed, NokiaPowerUser said, but it will likely adopt a QHD (2,560×1,440-pixel) display.

The phones may also offer an improved version of Nokia’s Z-Launcher interface, which tries to learn how you use your smartphone and adapt itself accordingly.

The two phones and possibly one or two other Nokia Android phones are due for release around the end of 2016, the sources said. But based on testing and development, the time frame may change to the first quarter of 2017, the sources added.

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Nokia

commentary Yesterday Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer joined former employee-cum-Nokia CEO Stephan Elop to announce a newly formed partnership between two of the world’s largest companies, in which Nokia would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform. Smart move? Absolutely.

I don’t approach this opinion as a business analyst. We know that Nokia’s shares plummeted on the announcement of the decision and that redundancies at Nokia are an inevitability in the short term; the future is still shaky and unknown. This is me celebrating for purely selfish reasons.

From a consumer perspective this is a big win. There is a reason Nokia has managed to maintain its position as the number one smartphone manufacturer despite its outclassed Symbian OS. In the last three years we’ve seen some truly beautiful phones come out of the Finnish firm: from the brushed metal of the E-series to the unique aluminium unibody of last year’s N8. And let’s not forget Nokia’s excellent mid-range 6000 series. While most mobile makers turn to cheap plastic finishes for its under AU$500 phones, Nokia maintains sleek metal bodies with handsets like the 6700.

Then we have Windows Phone 7, and though there are a number of obvious and well documented shortcomings, this is a great system in its infancy. Without overlooking its lack of common features, like copy and paste and internet sharing, Microsoft definitely succeeded in creating an attractive system that is fast and very easy to use — everything Nokia’s Symbian OS is not.

As part of this new partnership Nokia will contribute to the evolution of Windows Phone, offering the company’s years of expertise to fill in the gaps and to hopefully mature the Windows Phone quicker than if Microsoft was left to finish the system itself. We also can’t forget that Nokia owns some very important assets. There’s Nokia Music in amongst the rest of the Ovi suite and more importantly Nokia Maps. This certainly isn’t a simple matter of copying and pasting elements of Symbian to Windows Phone (pun intended), but I’m looking forward to seeing what this new smartphone love-in can produce.

Finally, this partnership means that we, the smartphone lovers of the world, benefit from the continued innovations from two great companies. There was a risk of the mobile world being dominated within a tug of war between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Nokia and Microsoft together, alongside Research In Motion which continues to stand alone, guarantees that we will see new and competitive concepts from more than a few great minds.

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