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Remember when Nokia was the mobile phone powerhouse? Under a new owner, HMD Global, the brand is trying to make a comeback to the top with Android smartphones.
It’s a smart move. While most of the attention is going to Nokia’s 8110 4G, a modern, low-powered slider phone you may remember from The Matrix, which runs KaiOS, there’s so many users who want to take a nostalgic visit to 1999 feature phones.
Many more people want a smartphone with vanilla Android. Android users tend to hate vendor specific interfaces; glued in add-on programs, which just devour battery life; and annoying customized standard programs. These people may well want a Nokia 8 Sirocco, and the Nokia 7 Plus, Nokia 6, or entry-level Nokia 1.
Fancy? No. While the Nokia 8 Siorocco, Nokia’s swanky flagship phone, looks good, what has the people who want high-end luxury smartphones salivating are the new Samsung Galaxy S9 models. But these no-frills Android operating systems — Android One and Android Go for the Nokia 1 — work great for someone who wants a clean Android experience and monthly security updates.
Google calls Android One the “purest form of Android”. What do they mean by that? It’s plain-Jane Android with all the Google programs. That’s what you used to get in Google’s Nexus phones, but those smartphones were built with Google’s help. With Android One, any vendor can make phones using this no-frills version of Android.
Well, I say “no frills”, but Android One comes with built-in Google Play Protect to help secure your phone and it’s optimized for use with Google Assistant. That, and all the Google Apps, really makes it attractive.
The real advantage is for two years, you’ll get all Android major updates and monthly security updates. With this one simple move, Google and Nokia have removed the pain point that afflicts most Android phones: The lack of timely updates and patches.
This is a huge deal if you care about security and software updates. If all you want is the next biggest and thinnest phone, look elsewhere. There’s always another pretty phone. But, if you’re serious about getting work done with your phone, you must check out the new Nokia phones.
Can this work? Can Nokia rise up from the grave? ABI Research analyst David McQueen thinks so. “By resurrecting its distribution partners and building a solid partnership with Google, most notably through Android One with the promise of a ‘pure, secure and up to date’ experience, the company is slowly rising from the ashes as a brand to once again be taken seriously in the mobile phone marketplace,” McQueen said.
I think Nokia can rise again. And I never thought I’d be saying that. What do you think?
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