Tag: Nokia

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.

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.

Mobile World Congress last week was a fantastic event for Nokia.  Not only did they announce five new phones, but according to Twitter Marketing UK, they were the most talked about brand on the first full night of the event.  Everyone assumed that Samsung would take this honor, especially given they launched their new flagship phones, the Galaxy S9 and S9+, the night prior.  But Nokia stole the limelight for a few reasons.

First, Nokia is a brand that people know and love.  Sure, you can same the same thing about Samsung today but chances are, most of you reading this post, started life with a Nokia device or have had one at some point in your mobile life.  That is not necessarily the case with Samsung.

By any measure, Mobile World Congress was a good show for Nokia.  The company announced several new phones including the revamped Nokia 6, the Nokia 7 Plus and the Nokia 8 Sirocco.  But it appears that the HMD Global owned brand is far from done for 2018.  According to an exclusive at Nokia Power User, the company plans to launch two more devices this year:  The Nokia 8 Pro and Nokia 9.

First is the Nokia 8 Pro.  It will be powered by the Snapdragon 845, have a rotating zoom lens, and will feature a double-glass (front and back) design.  It will also be an 18:9 ratio device with a 5.5″ display.  Looking at the design concepts, this device harkens back to Nokia devices when they were making Windows Phone based phones.

Nokia has announced several new phones today at Mobile World Congress including the company’s first Android Go edition phone, the Nokia 1.  Much like the Alcatel 1X announced earlier today, the Nokia 1 is a budget friendly phone with a MediaTek MT6737M SoC, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.  It has a 4.5″ display with a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP selfie camera.

Nokia has indicated that the phone will be priced at a very budget friendly $85 in the markets it is made available in but, at this time, it is unclear which markets that will be just yet.  It is almost certainly emerging markets but it could make its way to established markets too.

After being in beta for just a few weeks, HMD Global has released the Android Oreo 8.1 update for the Nokia 8.  The news of the release came from the company’s Chief Product Officer, Juho Sarvikas, on Twitter:

We are rolling out #AndroidOreo 8.1 on #Nokia8 ! Get the sweetest Android to date #Nokia8 #Nokiamobile pic.twitter.com/3pRlNuPIpe

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) February 13, 2018

The news of the release was a bit of a surprise given that the open beta for the 8.1 build only started in late January.