The company is working on a cheap Android phone, 10k units already shipped

Sep 19, 2013 10:11 GMT  ·  By

Nokia is committed to Windows Phone, there’s no doubt about it, especially now that Microsoft has announced plans to purchase the company’s handset division.

However, it appears that the Finnish mobile phone maker did have a “plan B” set in motion before agreeing to the deal, and that it involved the development of an Android smartphone.

Nothing has been officially confirmed on the device as of now, but rumor has it that the company hasn’t abandoned the project just yet.

The mobile phone, supposedly codenamed Mountain View, is said to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 8225Q processor, and to be developed and tested by Nokia’s Beijing-based R&D team.

According to ctechcn, Foxconn, the OEM contracted for the building of the device, has already shipped over 10,000 units to Nokia.

Furthermore, the news site claims that Nokia won’t cancel the project until the Microsoft purchase is approved by the company’s shareholders at a general meeting set for November.

As UnwiredView notes, Mountain View has been designed as an entry-level Android device. Most probably, it was planned as an alternative to the Nokia Asha lineup.

No specific info on Nokia’s actual plans for the Android platform has emerged until now, especially since the company has denied quite a few times before to be considering the launch of devices powered by it.

As far as the speculation goes, an Android-based Nokia handset could be released by 2014, though this seems highly unlikely.

What seems more plausible instead is Nokia’s attempt to test some of its camera technologies with Google’s platform. Should it be successful, we might see Android-based non-Nokia handsets arriving on shelves with PureView cameras packed inside.

These are only suppositions for the time being, and you should take them with a grain of salt. Hopefully, more on this will emerge following said November meeting, so stay tuned to learn the news.