Nokia Android Smartphones, Tablets to Launch in Q4 2016: Report

Nokia has seen its share of ups and downs. The company was once among the biggest brands on the planet. However, it could not keep up the pace with the changing face of the smartphone industry, and lost its position to the likes of Apple and Samsung. It even came to a point where the company had to sell its phone business to Microsoft in 2014. Now, the company has reportedly confirmed that it will be making a comeback by launching Android-powered smartphones and tablets in the fourth quarter of 2016.

While Nokia plans to unveil these devices sometime towards the end of this year, the actual launch will only happen in early 2017, Wang told Chinese publication The Paper. As has been reported before, Nokia is only lending its brand name, and won’t be designing or manufacturing these devices. That job will be handled by Finnish company HMD, which has been formed with a collaboration between former Nokia and Microsoft employees. Foxconn, on the other hand, is said to be tasked with manufacturing the upcoming devices.

Under the deal between Microsoft and Nokia, the latter was restricted from launching devices under its brand name till the last quarter of 2016. It seems as if Nokia is extremely keen to re-enter its lost territory.

Further ex-Nokia and Rovio employee Pekka Rantala joined HMD as a chief marketing officer recently, which might suggest that the company is showing seriousness towards the comeback.

It would be interesting to see how Nokia's brand name fares with collaboration with Android and whether the company, which was once considered the benchmark for hardware on cellphones, is able to recapture its lost charm.

Nokia has been quite hush about its plans for the upcoming devices, but we have already come across a couple of them on the rumor mills. A recent report claimed that Nokia will make a comeback with two new smartphones running Android Nougat 7.0 out-of-the-box with premium metal design and also IP68 certification making it water resistant. More rumors and leaks supports this statement as specifications and features of the Nokia smartphones are revealed.

The two smartphones are expected to feature 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch QHD display respectively and will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset. The 5.5-inch variant is expected to sport a 22.6-megapixel rear camera, and pricing for the smartphones are expected to start from around Rs 30,000.

But the rumors don’t stop there. There have been leaks of alleged smartphones dubbed as the Nokia C1 and the Nokia P1. Reports claim that the P1 is in fact a rebranded Sharp Aquos P1, which offers features like 5.3-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 820 processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage.

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