After accepting pre-orders for some of Nokia’s upcoming phones for several days, British electronics retailer Clove abruptly stopped the process earlier this week reportedly at the behest of HMD Global – the company in charge of designing and marketing Nokia-branded smartphones and feature phones. According to an email sent by Clove to Nokia Power User, the retailer says it took the unusual step because HMD and Nokia UK were both “concerned” that their products were advertised “too early” because of the pre-orders on Clove. However, the retailer has clarified that customers will once again be able to pre-order the devices by the end of this week.
According to Clove, demand for the Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and the Nokia 3310 has been extremely high, and although the retailer couldn’t give an exact ETA for any of the devices, they are expected to be available in the market sometime next month, so it shouldn’t really be long before members of the general public start getting their hands on these much-anticipated Nokia handsets. It is important to note that the upcoming Nokia cell phones are designed and marketed by HMD, while the manufacturing is outsourced to Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn. It remains to be seen how long will it take for these devices to launch globally, but recent reports suggest that the launch might happen soon.
After months of leaks, rumors, and speculation, HMD introduced the Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and the Nokia 6 smartphones alongside a revamped version of the iconic Nokia 3310 feature phone earlier this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, Spain. While the Nokia 6 features a 5.5-inch 1080p display, the Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 come with 5.3-inch and 5-inch 720p panels, respectively. The two larger devices are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC and the smallest of the lot comes with the MediaTek MTK6737 chip under the hood. There are quite a few other differences between the devices as well, but the one area where they’re all fairly similar is software. All of the upcoming Nokia smartphones will ship with Android 7.1.1 Nougat preinstalled, and HMD has also promised to roll out timely updates to the devices going forward.