Rumours have been going back and forth over HMD Global’s upcoming flagship smartphone. It could be either the Nokia 8 or the Nokia 9. However, according to German website WinFuture, HMD Global’s next-generation phone is the Nokia 8 with the model number TA-1004.

Rumours and leaks up until now have largely pointed that the Nokia 8 and Nokia 9 would be launched in the second-half of the year. It’s also being assumed that the phone with the model number TA-1004 would be launched as the Nokia 9. Now it appears that the Finnish company has finally decided to launch its first high-end phone, and it will be marketed as the Nokia 8.

The report claims that the Nokia 8 will be a premium phone that’s going to come with a Snapdragon 835 processor – the latest chipset from Qualcomm. Further, the device will come with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage.

WinFuture also reports that the Nokia 8 will come with dual-SIM cards in Europe, but the company is likely to offer the single SIM variant of the device as well.

Four colour schemes are currently planned for the Nokia 8 – Blue, Steel, Gold/Blue and Gold/Copper. A Scandinavian retailer has allegedly claimed that the phone will go on sale on July 31, and with a price tag of €589 ( or approx Rs 43,415). In other countries, however, the price will be slightly lower. For comparison, the iPhone 7 costs Rs 47,699, and the Galaxy S8 sells for Rs 57,900.

WinFuture remains unsure about the previously speculated specifications of the Nokia 8 as they do not match up with the information they have received lately. Earlier information indicated that the Nokia 8 might ship with a 5.7-inch Quad HD ( 2560 x 1440) display, and dual 13-megapixel cameras.

At this point, Nokia 8 remains a mysterious smartphone. However, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see a flagship phone from the company in the second-half of the year.

HMD Global has recently announced an “exclusive” partnership with German optics company Zeiss. The first three Nokia phones – Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 don’t have a Zeiss lenses, which leads us to believe that the company’s next smartphone, rumoured to be the Nokia 8, might feature a Zeiss lens.

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Source: Indianexpress

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HMD Global, which has licensed the Nokia brand from the Finnish telecoms giant, has signed an exclusive deal with Zeiss, the high-end lens and optical systems maker.

It’s the latest of a number of partnerships signed by HMD as it attempts to revive the brand that once dominated the mobile phone industry.

Zeiss lenses, coupled with its expertise in imaging, will feature in all Nokia smartphones in the future – though they are not in the N3, N5 and N6, Nokia’s first new Android phones, which go on sale next month.

Florian Seiche, HMD’s president, told me the company’s whole business model was based on strategic partnerships and the key thing about Zeiss was the two companies had shared values of quality and craftsmanship.

Mobile industry guru Ben Wood, of CCS Insight, thinks this is a smart move.

“The camera is now so central a feature of any smartphone – for many it’s their primary camera,” he told me. “It sends the message that HMD is really serious about quality.”

It might seem strange that Zeiss should choose to partner with what is for now a tiny niche player in the mobile industry.

But it’s a measure of how assiduous HMD has been in building on old relationships with the Finnish brand – Nokia was in a partnership with Zeiss until it sold its ailing smartphone division to Microsoft.

In the final years of that alliance, they produced some outstanding innovations, including the 41 megapixel Nokia 808 Pureview, which raised the bar for other manufacturers even if it failed to revive the mobile company’s fortunes.

But Mr Wood cautions that the world has moved on, with other companies copying Zeiss innovations such as optical image stabilisation.

“Current cameras have many of the features they pioneered with Nokia, and they’ve gone further,” he said.

“Look at the 960 frames per second super slow-mo on the Sony Xperia XZ Premium or the dual lens technology on the iPhone 7- that’s what they have to compete with.”

One phone that certainly does not boast that kind of feature is the Nokia 3310, the retro device HMD Global relaunched as a way of getting the brand talked about again.

It certainly succeeded, and reports suggest that sales have been very healthy – but now HMD Global wants to change the subject.

Forget cheap and cheerful throwaway phones, Nokia is where you will now turn for a premium smartphone experience with advanced imaging technology you can’t get anywhere else. That is the message from HMD Global – let’s see if anyone listens.

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Source: BBC

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In December, Nokia sued Apple claiming the company had breached 32 technology patents covering displays, user interfaces and video encoding.

The two companies have now signed a deal allowing Apple to use the technology, and Nokia will receive an up-front cash payment.

Apple will also stock Nokia’s health products in its retail stores.

The two companies have not revealed specific details of the financial agreement, but one analyst suggested it would be worth millions of dollars to Nokia.

“The agreement is per year, so it’s probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars range,” said Keith Mallinson, an industry analyst as Wiseharbor.

“That’s partly because it covers many patents, and Nokia has some very important ones, they were one of the pioneers of cellular standards.

“But looking at Apple’s business… one industry estimate is that they made $140bn (£107bn) revenue on iPhone sales in 2016.

“Even a small royalty against that – less than 1% – would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Nokia said it was “looking forward to supporting Apple”, while Apple’s Jeff Williams said the company was “pleased with this resolution of our dispute”.

Between 2009 and 2011, the two companies were locked in a series of legal battles over the patents for the technology they used in their mobile phones.

At the time, Nokia was still the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturer, but was being rapidly undermined by the rise of Apple’s iPhone.

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Source: BBC

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