As most gadget enthusiasts are aware of, the Nokia brand will continue to live on under the HMD Global umbrella, and next year the company will release new Android-powered Nokia smartphones, some of which will be presented next February at Mobile World Congress 2017. But interestingly enough, we now get a glimpse of Android 7.1 Nougat running on an old Nokia Lumia 520 (unofficially), before Nokia and Android will officially come together next year to promote a new generation of Nokia handsets. More precisely, a third party developer somehow got Android 7.1 Nougat running on a Nokia Lumia 520, and shared a video on YouTube showcasing the device’s capabilities under the new operating system.
Before we take a look at the video below it’s important to note that the Android 7.1 Nougat build for the Nokia Lumia 520 is not stable and should not be used as a daily driver. It’s more of a custom ROM in development, and more of a demonstration of how the old Lumia 520 can handle Google’s latest mobile OS. And surprisingly enough, the Lumia 520 seems to handle Android 7.1 Nougat better than expected, especially given the smartphone’s hardware specifications. As a reminder, the Nokia Lumia 520 was released in mid-2013 as a Microsoft Windows Phone 8 smartphone equipped with a 4.0-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 480×800. It features a Qualcomm MSM8227 Snapdragon S4 System-on-Chip (SoC) housing two CPU cores clocked at up to 1.0GHz each, an Adreno 305 graphics chip, and only 512MB of RAM along with 8GB of internal memory expandable by up to an additional 64GB via micro SD. Needless to say, these hardware characteristics are outdated by today’s standards, which makes the fact that Android 7.1 Nougat runs on the device as smoothly as it does that much more surprising. Especially considering that the handset can apparently handle the new multi-window feature in Android 7.1 Nougat without much difficulty.
Once again, it should be reminded that the custom ROM is not polished enough to be used daily, but nonetheless, running Android 7.1 Nougat on the Nokia Lumia 520 is a feat in itself, and the footage below could be considered an unofficial small preview of things to come in Nokia’s mobile world next year.