Nokia has been developing its own budget smartphone running Android which we have all come to know as Normandy after the never-ending series of leaks in the last couple of months. That device may go live as soon as two weeks from now at Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona, Spain if what the Wall Street Journal is reporting is anything to go by.
According to WSJ, the Nokia Normandy will pack pretty much what the leaks have prepared us to expect of it: a forked version of Android with nothing Googley inside. The device will instead feature Nokia’s own apps like Mix Radio and HERE Maps as well as a suite of Microsoft apps and services. Nokia won’t license Google apps like Chrome, Maps and the like nor will the device have access to Google’s app store, the Play Store. Nokia is after all owned by Microsoft, an industry rival of Google so this is to be expected anyway. As for the specs, all that we’ve heard so far of specs that won;t excite the spec gods is all true according to the Journal since this is a device that Nokia and Microsoft will be using to lure the budget conscious buyers to its fold instead of going after them with tiles.
That phone if priced right (and most likely it will) then those cheap Samsung smartphones that have for long dominated at the low end market segment will have some new guy to be worried about in addition to the cheap no-name brand Android devices from the East that have already been causing nightmares. The new Android-powered Nokia device is expected to be an equivalent of the Ashas meaning it won’t likely be playing the same league as the Nokia Lumia 520 and the 525.
