A mysterious Android Nougat-powered Nokia phone has appeared on a benchmarking site. This is the second Nokia Android mobile (D1C) to make headlines, after the Finnish company officially announced its return to smartphone business in 2017.
The latest Nokia Android phone spotted on Geekbench is called Pixel. But unlike Google Pixel phone series, it's not a commercial name, it's a prototype code-name and also houses sub-par specifications.
Also read: Nokia Android phone update: Flagship device tipped to boast Carl Zeiss camera with metal-clad body
Nokia Pixel scored an unimpressive 404 and 644 points in single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. This is not surprising considering the fact that the device houses low-powered 1.1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 series quad-core processor with just 1GB RAM.
What's intriguing about Nokia Pixel is that it is shown running on Android 7.0.1 Nougat OS, which is odd, since Google never released v7.0.1 to any devices and is on the verge of rolling out v7.1 to the Nexus series phones.
As said before, Nokia Pixel is a prototype and it is not a final product. Going forward, the company is likely to conduct more tests with newer software and possibly tweak the hardware to optimise performance.
Usually, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) develop several testing units to evaluate the performance and based on the results, they pick the best prototype with best configuration, which they think will be able to compete with rival products.
Nevertheless, the appearance of Nokia on Geekbench indicates that the company is not just working on flagship models, but also focusing on the budget category, which seems to be a smart move, since entry-level phones are the major revenue driving force for all the emerging mobile-makers, including Xiaomi, Lenovo (& Motorola), LeEco and others in India and China, world's two biggest smartphone markets.
Word on the street is that Nokia Pixel will be released by the end of 2016, but that doesn't seem likely to happen, as the company has confirmed its participation in the MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2017 to be held in Barcelona from February 27 to March 02.
It will be unwise for Nokia to host a product launch event at the end of the year. The company will definitely be able to catch more attention by announcing the products at the globally-acclaimed MWC 2017.
Watch this space for more Nokia news.
