Many people know Nokia as many different things. Some remember the futuristic, highly capable early smartphones of the mid-2000s, while some remember the colorful Lumia handsets that they made for Microsoft. Still others think of invincible brick phones from the 1990s and early 2000s that could survive a two or three story drop. Nokia has also made laptops and tablets. Which one of those an old Android-based Nokia device of some sort from the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean era would have been is anybody’s guess, but the device is certainly an oddball. It showed up on Geekbench recently, where it showed off a fair amount of power thanks to some fairly uncommon specs. A Snapdragon 800-based Nokia 5320 running Android 4.4 KitKat with 2GB of RAM was also shown off, but never ended up being released. Further details like screen size, battery and such were unavailable, since the devices only went through Geekbench.
To address the oddball; for starters, the thing runs on an x86-based AMD processor. Specifically, the same AMD A8 quad-core processor that powers mid-range laptops from around 2011, most of which can still be found for around $300 to $500 online. The chip is already a low-voltage processor, but had to be dumbed down a bit to not overheat a mobile device, or drain the battery in a matter of minutes. The processor only uses two of its cores, and only runs at 500 MHz. Paired with 2GB of RAM and some sizeable L1 and L2 cache sizes, however, it still manages to pull down a respectable 1,669 multi-core score on Geekbench, with the single-core score sitting pretty at 972. This puts it about on par with the Xperia Z and Nexus 4, and that x86 processor could have given it the ability to run desktop Windows apps, with a bit of hackery, or by waiting for CrossOver to release.
The device at hand could well have been an Android-based Nokia laptop of some sort, built for battery power, or may very well have been a phone. The still-relevant AMD A8 processor used could have been inside a phone or tablet with no issues, with the way it was hobbled. Battery life could have gone either way, since x86 processors can be very power-hungry or very power-efficient, depending on how well they’re optimized. As for the Nokia 5320 variant, Nokia’s Windows Phone models from back in that era were colorful, fun to hold, built to last, and had some seriously good battery life, leaving many an Android owner envious. One can only wonder how well it would have run, what the battery life would have been like, and how well it would have sold. While those questions will never be answered, we did get the Nokia Z tablet , with some phones reportedly on the way.