First, the good news. The entry level Nokia 3.1, as promised by Nokia when it was announced last month, is available in the United States. It sells for $159 and is available from Amazon. Now the bad news: It’s sold out.
Obviously the fact that the phone has sold out is great news for Nokia but for those who were wanting to get their hands on the budget friendly 5.2″ phone powered by Android One, you are going to have to wait a while.
Nokia today made a somewhat of a surprise announcement with the new Nokia 5.1, 3.1 and 2.1 phones coming to their lineup later this summer. Running Android One on the 5.1 and 3.1 while running on the 2.1 will be Android Go, HMD Global has more-or-less given incremental upgrades to the .0 versions of these current phones in their lineup.
By far the biggest upgrade came to the Nokia 5.1. Sporting a 5.5″ Full HD display, it has an 18:9 aspect ratio and is powered by the MediaTek Helio P18 octa-core SoC. It comes with either 2GB of RAM with 16GB of storage or 3GB of RAM with 32GB of storage. IN either case, the storage can be expanded an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot. Camera wise, you have a 16MP main shooter with auto-focus while the selfie camera is an 8MP shooter. All of this, along with the phone running Android One (Oreo) will cost a comfortable $218 when it is released.
Today has been a busy day for Nokia at Mobile World Congress. Not only did they announce their first entry into the Android Go program, the Nokia 1, but they also announced three other devices that are a part of the Android One program. Along with the Nokia 6 (2018) and Nokia 7 Plus, the company announced the new Nokia 8 Sirocco and it is clearly aiming for flagship status.
Sporting a 5.5″ QHD pOLED display with rounded edges, the Nokia 8 Sirocco provides a premium experience and performance. It is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC and is coupled with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It will come with Android Oreo out of the box and, because it is part of the Android One program, it will come with a pure Android experience.
Mobile World Congress, or MWC, kicks off next week in Barcelona, Spain and even though there won’t be as many phone announcements, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be an exciting show. For their part, Google is going to be going strong at the event with a lot of announcements and products on display.
The company updated their blog earlier today outlining their plans for MWC which includes the first set of Android Oreo Go Edition phones. By now you are likely familiar with the Android Go apps that are available like Gmail Go, YouTube Go, Maps Go and other. These lightweight apps are aimed to work on low cost, low memory devices. We will get our first glimpse of them next week.
The Android Oreo update for the Android One version of the Moto X4 is now rolling out. This is the version of the mid-level phone that launched on Project Fi earlier this year. Google, at the time of the launch, stated that they would have the Oreo update out on the phone by the end of the year. With 8 days to spare, they fulfilled that promise.
The Oreo update comes with firmware build OPW27.1 and it comes with everything that comes in Android 8. The new build also brings the December Android Security Update to the device. The update is just over 1GB in size so it will need to be downloaded via WiFi and you’ll need to have 80% battery to install it or be plugged into AC.
As for the non-Android One variant of the X4 getting the Android Oreo update, it doesn’t appear to be happening yet.
Today, HTC has announced the new HTC U11 Life, their mid-range Android phone that is also part of the Android One program (outside of the US). The phone is a well appointed device for its $349 price tag and you can order it now on the HTC site.
The U11 Life is a 5.2″ Super LCD display device that renders 1920 x 1080 to give you a very comfortable ~424ppi. That display is also protected by Gorilla Glass 3. It comes with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage with up to a 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot. All of this is powered by the Snapdragon 630 octa-core SoC. Quick Charge 3.0 is supported via the USB-C charging port and the battery is a 2600mAh model.
Today Google has made good on a commitment they Tweeted about a few months back: There is now a non-Google Project Fi compatible phone. The new Android One Moto X4 is available for pre-order starting today and takes full advantage of Project Fi’s ability to switch networks on-the-fly just like the Google Pixel and previous Nexus 6, 6P and 5X.
The Moto X4 comes with what Google is calling a pure Android experience and ships with Android Nougat. An update to Oreo will happen before the end of 2017 and Google has indicated that the Moto X4 will be among the first phones to get the Android P update in 2018.
It looks like we could see the budget friendly Android One phone here in the United States by mid year. A report in The Information suggests that Google is planning on launching the phone at a $200-300 price range that will give branding recognition to Android in addition to giving uses a true Google Android experience. Further, like the Nexus and Pixel phones,they would get updates and security patches for two years meaning they would more-or-less be the most up to date.
For those who may not know what Android One is, it was a low budget phone that was launched in India back in 2014. The idea was to give a Google Android experience at a $100 price range. It didn’t do well as it didn’t get the marketing support it needed and the phones were under powered and under featured compared to similar phones in India at the time.