The Nokia/Android relationship hasn’t quite solidified over the years. It was long thought that the Finnish company would look to replace their aging Symbian-driven feature phone business with low-cost Androids, but the company never did that. Their failed attempt at leveraging the Linux-based Meego platform also prompted folks to guess that they’d soon be calling to Android.
But Nokia decided to side with Windows, and stood firmly by that decision. They went as far as saying OEMs using Android for a short-term growth plan was about as good as Finnish boys peeing in their pants to keep warm in the winter. It wasn’t long after that funny statement that the company announced they’d be swallowed up under Microsoft’s big umbrella.
Something interesting happened today, though — it was revealed that Nokia actually does have an Android device in the pipeline. What you see above is called the Nokia Normandy, a device that was under our noses for quite some time but slipped by the radar undetected. Twitter leakster @evleaks showed us a pretty clear shot of this thing back in November, but what we didn’t know is that this thing was built to run Android.
Before you get too excited, The Verge reports that this version of Android was forked and customized so heavily that we probably wouldn’t recognize it, not unlike the offerings you see on the likes of Amazon’s Kindle Fire line or the Barnes and Noble nook family of devices. The handset was in the works before the Microsoft deal was finalized, so its future is still a bit iffy.
There’s no indication what Microsoft will elect to do — will they let Nokia go ahead and release the device, or will they block the OEM from adding to a competitor’s already dominant ecosystem? We’d seriously doubt the former scenario, but crazier things have happened.
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