Now resuscitated by a different maker, Nokia is coming back to find its place under the sun in the smartphone market. According to a leak exposed by Evan Blass for VentureBeat, the Nokia 8 has all the bells and whistles to fight the iPhone and Samsung. We’ll soon find out if it’s a case of too little, too late, in what an industry analyst described as a “very, very competitive market.”
According to The Verge piece, the new model will be announced on July 31. Now in its third incarnation, Nokia is made as an Android smartphone by Finnish startup HMD Global Oy.
The device seems to be well endowed, Blass says: “According to various benchmarking apps, the 5.3-inch Nokia 8 is indeed well-spec’ed, sporting a Snapdragon 835 chipset, QHD resolution, either 4GB or 6GB of RAM, and a pair of main cameras offering 13-megapixel resolutions and Carl Zeiss optics.”
Technology analyst Rich Jaroslovsky, vice president of Smart News Inc., concurs. “Judging from the information we’ve seen so far, the new phone looks pretty primo,” he said. “The Zeiss optics and dual cameras, which are reminiscent of the iPhone 7+, make a pretty strong statement that they see this phone stacking up against premium Android devices like the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8.”
It’s worth noting that Nokia lost a lot of talent when it was purchased by Microsoft, including many members of the phone maker’s outstanding camera team.
It seems that only reasonable pricing will give the Nokia 8 a fair shot at establishing itself in the non-iPhone, non-Galaxy market. “The ‘Nokia’ name still has a lot of recognition and brand equity, but the big question is whether those assets carry over into the very, very competitive Android market,” Jaroslovsky said.