HMD Global Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas recently revealed one of his company’s plans for improving the user experience of Nokia smartphone owners with an updated camera application. The news comes from a tweet answering the question of whether the camera app will be updated and aside from a solid confirmation that it will, Sarvikas also hinted that the camera application’s UI for Android-powered Nokia smartphones could be changed in line with the old Lumia camera UI, which is considered by some to be the best imaging interface around.
Back when Nokia was owned by Microsoft and the company was releasing Windows-powered smartphones under the Lumia brand, it focused on delivering a superior camera experience to that offered by its rivals. Terms like “PureView” became synonymous with powerful camera sensors and the Lumia camera app earned a lot of fans over the years. After HMD Global took over the Nokia brand from Microsoft in recent times, the Finnish company also acquired hundreds of design patents, including one for the Lumia camera user interface. With that being said, the aforementioned UI might not be forgotten for too long after all, and given HMD CPO’s recent tweets, it appears that the Finnish smartphone maker is now working on bringing it back for the new generation of Android-powered Nokia smartphones. It’s not clear when the camera app on existing Nokia devices will be updated with a new system patch, or if the update will be distributed through the Google Play Store. It also remains to be seen whether the updated camera application will be released on the entire family of Android-powered Nokia devices, or if it will be reserved only for select models.
Not counting the older Nokia X devices running a heavily modified version of Google’s mobile OS, the Nokia brand made its first entry into the world of Android earlier this year with the unveiling of the Nokia 6 in January. Since then, HMD Global launched the Nokia 3, 5, 6, and 8, with the Nokia 7 being the most recent addition to the company’s smartphone lineup. These handsets present a nearly stock version of Android and a custom Lumia-based camera UI could become one of HMD-specific proprietary features separating Nokia smartphones from the rest of the pack.
Yep!
— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 30, 2017
I agree with your assesment 😎
— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) October 30, 2017