Nokia, a brand that most on XDA have been touched by at some point over the years, is finally making a return to the smartphone market since its slow demise in 2011, following an agreement with Microsoft for Nokia devices to sport the Windows Phone OS exclusively.
This was a decision made with good intentions at the time, as Nokia was struggling to keep up with the leading market competitors.
Nokia worked with Microsoft until 2014 when they decided to end manufacturing, and they sold the mobile business to Microsoft, giving birth to the Lumia series which has since slowly died out itself; the line-up could be rebuilt by a Surface Phone in 2017, as it hasn't seen the renowned success other phones – on all price brackets, running different operating systems – have seen. But now, after 4 years of having the much-beloved brand name tarnished by the rather questionable Lumia series, the license that Microsoft holds has now expired and Nokia has taken this opportunity to give exclusive licensing rights to HMD Global, a Finnish company founded in May 2016 by senior ex-Nokia staff. Since its launch, HMD has only released more basic feature phones with the Nokia brand so the decision to take advantage and make use of the very successful Android OS is going to be a very big step for them. This will not be the first time that a Nokia device will run Google's mobile operating system, due to the rather-forgotten release of the Nokia N1 tablet back in 2015 running Android 5.0, but this will be the first time a Nokia branded phone has carried the OS.
Suggested Reading: Over 100,000 People Pre-Ordered the Nokia 6
While Nokia will no longer be manufacturing the devices, they will very much be involved with the production process as the licensing agreement will keep a member on the board of executives who will set performance requirements for the brand, and help maintain the brand's reputation to prevent any more damage to the name the devices are carrying. Alongside this, HMD have also made the decision to make the new Nokia 6 an exclusive release for China, in hopes of meeting the needs of the rapidly-growing number of smartphone users (which is expected to expand by around 50 million in 2017) and will be marketed by JD.com. Even though the brand is not as popular in the region as its competitors, it holds a market where premium design and product quality are highly valued and if Nokia is known for anything, it is the solid design and reliability of their products.
Many of us living in the West have a love for Nokia that pre-dates the smartphone era, back to a time when high screen resolutions and fancy cameras were nowhere to be seen, but the same cannot be said about developing countries who adopted the mobile technology much later. Because of this, in countries such as India, there is little nostalgia for the brand as the first experience with a Nokia device the population had was alongside both Apple and Android devices that had already excelled in the mobile market by this time — and while Lumia devices were solid performers for their price, they never stood out against its faster, more premium competitors. Despite the decreased attention and popularity Nokia may receive away from the West, they are determined and driven to connect people together from all parts of the world with an ideal to transform future technology to reshape the human experience. With a focus that has always been on pushing boundaries to create new ways of connecting people it is Nokia's vision to invent and develop to create human technology that helps people thrive.
Now onto the device itself
Nokia is making its way back into the mobile market with the launch of the Nokia 6, reaching over 250,000 pre-registrations within the first 24 hours of becoming available, it seems that the love for the brand is still as strong as ever. The Nokia 6 isn't going to provide much competition for the current market leaders such as Samsung's Galaxy series, but will provide an affordable piece of tech without the loss of product quality, which is likely to fit well with the expected increase of mobile users, as newcomers to the smartphone epoch may be a little hasty and less willing to expend a large sum for a device that will, in essence, provide the same functionality as a high-end device such as Apple's iPhone.
This does not mean that we are going to see a release that will drop short of current devices — in fact, it looks like the Nokia 6 will be giving the Xiaomi Redmi 3S, released June 2016, a good run for its money with Nokia also expecting to launch with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset, an Octa Core 1.4 GHz Cortex A53 processor and an Adreno 505 GPU. It will also match the 3,000 mAh battery however, the Nokia 6 will be boasting a 16 megapixel rear facing camera rather than the 13 megapixels Xiaomi has to offer. The Nokia device will also be providing 64GB of storage and 4GB RAM over the 2GB from the Redmi 3S and give us a ½" more in the size of the display running a 5.5" full HD Gorilla Glass screen. The release price announced by retailer JD.com is CNY 1699 (about $250), looking to accommodate new users to smartphones, and will be available on January 19.
As new devices from competitors reach the shelves, however, the Nokia 6 might begin looking less appealing — Nokia just got onboard a populated market with cut-throat competition, as the affordable segment has seen some of the biggest developments in recent smartphone history. Today, affordable smartphones are fiercely marketed and have gotten good enough to seriously attract the mainstream, even eating away at "affordable flagships" just a tier or two above them in the price hierarchy. Only time will tell to see if this new release and rekindled approach to licensing and phone production will help stamp Nokia back on the map in the mobile industry, prompting for only more of the products we have come to know and love from the beginning of the mobile phone age.
Do you think Nokia and its Nokia 6 have what it takes to make the brand relevant again? Discuss below!
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