Nokia has speeded up its operations for its upcoming Android smartphone, the Nokia Normandy. The smartphone seems to have touched down on Indian shores and is being given to the developers in the country and the company has told the developers that the smartphone will be launched around the IPL this year as Nokia will plan its marketing operations regarding the device around that time.
In related to the news, @evleaks has posted a new picture on its twitter profile which confirms that the upcoming Android-powered Nokia smartphone, codenamed Normandy will be called Nokia X.
The smartphone will run on AOSP version of Android at the time of launch which is nothing but an open source version of the Android. It can be used by anyone and will come without any Google services. It will come with Nokia's own app store, which is being called Asha on Linux (AoL) internally in the company and that is the reason the same is being seeded to developers in the country. The word on the street is that Nokia has already got itself the top 100 applications from the Play Store and Apple's App store.
"The only thing developers have to ensure is there are no Google services callouts in the app. If the app does not call out any Google API, one can even sideload the same app APK that is available on the Play store," is what a prominent developer told the good folks back at BGR India. It is expected to break cover on February 24th at the company's press conference at MWC 2014. The smartphone is expected to be priced around Rs 6,500.
The smartphone is expected to come with a 4-inch WVGA display, a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor under the hood, a 512MB of RAM for multitasking, 4GB of internal storage which will be available for expansion via a microSD card, a 5-megapixel camera at the rear (confirmed) and 1,500 mAh battery will be giving it the juice. Nokia will be replacing Google's services with Microsoft's or its own services.
To be updated...