Over the past few years as Android has flourished and turned into the market winning giant that it is today, many former Nokia users had been pining to finally get their hands on a top-tier Nokia phone powered by Android. I was one of them for sure, being a recovering Nokia fanboy myself, and the hope kind of died when Microsoft purchased the Nokia hardware division and made it Microsoft Mobile, effectively eliminating any chance of ever getting a real Nokia phone powered by Android. Surprisingly we still got the Nokia X, X2 and a few other notable entry-level phones from Nokia that are powered by Android, bringing hope back alive again that someday we could see a Lumia-level phone from Microsoft with a real version of Android. Again Microsoft crushed those hopes the other day stating that the Nokia XL 4G will be the last Android phone from their coffers.
Now, however, it looks like the rest of Nokia that wasn’t purchased by Microsoft is looking to hire some engineers to develop Android phones, meaning that we could see the old Nokia from the N95 days make a resurgence with an Android-powered phone on board. This is the same group of folks that are currently building the Nokia Z Launcher for Android, so we’re expecting some pretty great things from them if this all pans out. While it’ll be some time before this group can get Android hardware out, given Microsoft’s agreements to sell under the Nokia brand for a while, but the hope is still there for the future. Specifically Nokia is looking to hire camera specialists, phone engineers and designers for Android development, a clear sign that a full phone is coming down the pipeline at some point.
Is the hope alive for you? I don’t think I’ll personally ever give up on the idea of having an Android powered Nokia phone with a killer camera one day. It’s going to be interesting to see exact what Nokia comes up with too since Microsoft owns the rights to practically all of Nokia’s best mobile technologies and patents, meaning Nokia has a lot of work ahead of them before such a project even sees the light of day in any kind of prototype form.