Nokia X – you’ll have to forgive me and a large portion of the tech press for their fascination over this decidedly low end device being released but – Nokia Android device. So, what’s happening?
Well, the title image for this post was tweeted out by the main source of Nokia X news – @evleaks – yesterday. In and of itself it’s not much but a general rule is that once advertising style press renders start cropping up, an actual launch is not only imminent but a foregone conclusion and it seems that even Nokia is ramping up their teasers.
GSMArena has found this one via the Nokia China Weibo social media account. There are three images, the first showing two monkeys, with the post containing the caption ‘Tree riding a monkey, a monkey on the ground, a total number of monkeys? See # tree #’ :
The second picture shows the trees roots which descend in a DNA Helix with a section in the shape of an X – Nokia X: Get it? – highlighted in green. The post is captioned with ‘Grow up, down roots. See # tree #’ :
Finally they released a picture with a treasure map with the caption ‘What is hidden under the big tree in the end? February 24 15:30 pm and went to a small promise Quest now! Collection of good → _ → http://conversations.nokia.com/ , that time there or be square! See # tree #’
Now, do you like the nice X logo made of Arrows? Well, on the link from the Weibo post to the Nokia Conversations page, there’s a post for the upcoming Mobile World Congress press event, with that same logo :
This logo is an extension of the exercise that Nokia social media accounts worldwide engaged in last Thursday when they all turned green for a day :
When asked about this, Nokia’s PR simply said ‘watch this space’. So, perhaps we’ll see something more on Monday?
But is that all? Well, for teasing the release yes, but for the Nokia X – which seems to now have a model number :A110 – there’s still more leaks arriving, this time from the 5MP camera. GSMArena has received a photo which is purported to have been taken by the Nokia X and the EXIF data from the file seems to corroborate this. The photo appears to be pretty standard for a 5MP camera, i.e not fantastic but decent enough :
The latest rumours for the Nokia X is that it will sell in ‘developing markets’ for around the $114-$130 mark. The hardware, while not top of the line is still a good match for those developing markets and have cropped up in variety of places, including a Vietnamese retailers website :
- 4″ 854×480 display
- Dual-Core 1GHz Snapdragon SoC
- 512MB RAM
- 4GB storage w microSD
- 5 MP camera
- 1500MAh battery
- Android 4.4 KitKat
The phone will be available in 6 colours, which judging from leaked pictures will be Black, White, Red, Yellow, Green and Blue.
Well, it appears that’s about it for now, the event will apparently be streamed through the Nokia Conversations website. So, what time should you tune in? Well, refer to this handy table:
| Location | Local time | Time zone | UTC offset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barcelona (Spain – Barcelona) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 8:30:00 AM | CET | UTC+1 hour |
| Canberra (Australia – Australian Capital Territory) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 6:30:00 PM | AEDT | UTC+11 hours |
| Brisbane (Australia – Queensland) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 5:30:00 PM | AEST | UTC+10 hours |
| Adelaide (Australia – South Australia) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 6:00:00 PM | ACDT | UTC+10:30 hours |
| Darwin (Australia – Northern Territory) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 5:00:00 PM | ACST | UTC+9:30 hours |
| Hobart (Australia – Tasmania) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 6:30:00 PM | AEDT | UTC+11 hours |
| Perth (Australia – Western Australia) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 3:30:00 PM | AWST | UTC+8 hours |
| Corresponding UTC (GMT) | Monday, 24 February 2014 at 07:30:00 |
How much would you pay for a Nokia phone officially running Android?
This is purely because windows phone can’t run on low end devices and they want to keep producing low end phones which Nokia specialised in. So android became the only option with some features out of the box.
Would love to see this phone. Hope its a success and they release a high end Android handset. If they do a 1020 style Android, take my money now!
Can anyone explain why anyone in one of these developing markets would buy that nokia phone (complete with the ‘orrible faux metro skin) rather than one with probably better specs, made just down the road, for the same price?
It smacks as if nokia have raided the bargain bin – almost in an effort to prove to themselves that nobody wants android really.
I love the idea of a Nokia phone running Android, but with a forked version of Android and without the Play store and related Play Services I don’t see it providing the Android experience we all want.
I’m hoping that someone works out a way to root the phone and then we able to install a custom ROM onto it.. then I’ll buy one as backup/muck around phone! 🙂