Last December, HMD Global’s plan to launch a low-end Android phone, Nokia 1, was leaked by a Russian journalist, Eldar Murtazin. Images posted by Baidu, a Chinese micro-blogging site, on 6th January 2018, have allegedly given the consumers a glimpse of what this latest budget phone by Nokia is going to look like.
The images reveal that the phone has a single camera set-up with LED flash and a polycarbonate body with a metal frame. The phone looks similar to Nokia 2, but the difference between the phones lies in the fact that the Nokia 1 is speculated to be a low-budget phone, running on Android Oreo (Go Edition), while the Nokia 2 will run on the standard version of Android Oreo.
Android Oreo Go Edition is an ambitious project undertaken by Google, serving the specific needs of a low-end Android device. It has a streamlined operating system and optimized default apps and PlayStore. The preinstalled Google apps in this Android version have also been optimized to take up lesser storage space and have been renamed Google Go, Google Assistant Go, YouTube Go, Google Maps Go, Gmail Go, Gboard, Google Play, and Files Go.
It is speculated that Nokia 1 will be driven by a Snapdragon 212 chipset and be priced at approximately $95. Among other features, the phone will have 1 GB RAM and 8 GB storage and a 720p IPS screen. It will support 3G, 4G, WiFi, and WiFi hotspots. Nokia 1 may be launched sometime in early March this year.