Category: HMD Global

To be honest, if you have been paying attention to the smartphone market over the past year, you know that HMD Global’s Nokia brand has been making a serious comeback.  Now we have a more substantial report that reflect what everyone suspected:  Nokia has had a killer year.

Counterpoint Research has published their report on the Smartphone market and they, like IDC earlier in the week, confirm that Huawei has passed Apple as the number two smartphone company in the world.  But the Counterpoint report goes into more details than the IDC report on the “other” brands, of which Nokia is lumped into.  That’s where you find that the brand has gained some 782% in market share since Q2 2017.

HMD Global, the company that owns Nokia, has begun slow rolling the Android Oreo 8.1 update out to the Nokia 5 and Nokia 6.  Starting in India and Indonesia, the update to 8.1 is expected to make its way to all global markets in the coming days.

For both devices, the update is just under 1GB in size and brings with it the March Android Security Update to both phones.  If you don’t recall what all comes in Oreo 8.1, you can get a debrief here.

Nokia deserves a lot of credit for their efforts to keep their devices on the most current version of Android.  The company has already indicated that their current line up of the phones will get the Android Oreo update and yesterday, even the budget friendly Nokia 2 was confirmed to be on the list.

HMD Global’s Juho Sarvikas, the company’s Chief Product Officer, took to Twitter to answer a Nokia 2 owners question of if the phone would be upgraded to Android Oreo.

Hi! It will receive Android Oreo. 1GB RAM devices will be supported on 8.1 release where many of the Android Go memory management improvements will be integrated. Nokia 2 performance will only get better over time!

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) December 28, 2017

While we don’t have any sort of time frame on when this update will actually roll out, the fact that a $99 phone is going to be updated to the latest build of Android is, well, almost unheard of.

Good news for readers who have the Nokia 8 flagship from from HMD Global.  The company’s Chief Products Officer, Juho Sarvikas, took to Twitter this morning to make the announcement.

O k, here we go
R eviewed your feedback
E verything is polished
O fficial update rolling out today! #AndroidOreo #Nokia8 #Oreo #Nokiamobilebetalabs pic.twitter.com/QpZeh9JTu0

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) November 24, 2017

The beauty of the Nokia 8’s Android Oreo update is that it is completely uncluttered with bloatware or skins. It is pure Android, just what the company had indicated they would be doing for all of their devices as Oreo is rolled out.

A few weeks back, HMD’s Juho Sarvikas tweeted that the entire Nokia lineup would be getting updated to Android Oreo in late 2017 through early 2018.  Now Mr. Sarvikas, the Chief Product Officer for the company, has tweeted a couple of images of the Nokia 8 being updated to Oreo.

We are on it @nokiamobile . @Android #Oreo maturing nicely on #Nokia8 , will release when perfect. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/wPxEGA4rJn

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) September 16, 2017

While it would be great to see this update out for everyone, it is quite encouraging to see Nokia being transparent about their update process and the fact they actually have a running beta for their flagship device.

HMD Global, the OEM who owns the Nokia brand, have finally announced their first flagship device, the Nokia 8.  Sporting impressive specs throughout, the Nokia 8 will be available in September, starting in Europe, for €599.  That translates to $704 at today’s exchange rate.  It is expected that the device will make it to the US at some point this year but for September, expect it to be in Europe and China first.  It will also likely be at a lower cost than $700 as device tend to be a bit less here than in Europe.

At that price point, the Nokia 8 is in the flagship category which begs the question of if the specs justify the price.  On the surface, it would appear that way.  The 5.3′ QHD device is powered by the Snadragon 835 octa-core processor and is coupled with the Adreno 540 GPU.   It has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded by an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  The phone is rated as splashproof with an IP54 certification and will run a near AOSP version of Android Nougat 7.1.1.