14 DAY TRIAL // Judging by the flow of leaks surrounding the alleged Nokia Normandy powered by Android platform, the smartphone is a certainty and we should expect the Finnish company to make an announcement any time now.
Although we still have to wait at least until Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, which is set to kick off next month in Barcelona, Spain, lots of information regarding the smartphone continues to leak online.
The first live screenshots showing the “forked” Android UI that Nokia Normandy is supposed to run popped up online last week and now new images of the said user interface have been leaked. A set of three pictures showing Nokia Normandy’s Android UI have just been published by @evleaks.
One of them has the popular Skype application running, which somewhat confirms that Nokia has already approached some major developers in order to bring their application on its upcoming application store.
For those unfamiliar with the subject, Nokia Normandy is not supposed to offer access to Google Play Store by default, which is not quite alright for most Android users.
This is why the Finnish company plans to launch its own applications store, but in order to have at least a small chunk of the most important Android applications compatible with the Normandy, Nokia has to approach developers quite early.
Even though Nokia Normandy is said to run the Android operating system, not all applications in the Google Play will be fully compatible with the smartphone.
The good news is that a major developer that wished to remain anonymous has confirmed that his application was 80% compatible with Nokia Normandy’s “forked” version of Android.
Obviously, some may be fully supported, but overall, developers won’t have to work too hard on bringing their Android apps to Nokia’s app store.
Aside from its unique Android UI, the Normandy will also come packed with HERE apps and services and Bing search engine by default. There won’t be any Google service included by default, but users will be able to set up their Gmail accounts nevertheless.