HMD Global yesterday expanded its smartphone portfolio with three new budget-conscious models but aside from this hardware-centric announcement, recent reports citing the OEM’s Neil Broadley also reveal that the company is planning to eventually push its existing Nokia smartphone lineup to Android P following Google’s public release of the OS later this year. Of course, it’s too early to set any availability details in stone so no timeframes were provided just yet. Nevertheless, the recent report matches the OEM’s established strategy for keeping its devices updated, considering that all of its previous smartphone models originally launched with Nougat on-board have already made the jump to Android Oreo.
As expected, HMD Global’s latest smartphones, the Nokia 2.1, Nokia 3.1, and the Nokia 5.1, run Android Oreo, with the foremost model using the lightweight Go edition of the mobile OS. Having said that, once the OEM starts bringing Android P to its smartphone lineup, existing Android Go models are expected to retain this software characteristic and receive a newer Go version based on Android P. Android Go is designed specifically for less powerful hardware and devices that don’t benefit from a lot of storage, and the OS works hand-in-hand with Go Edition applications that are generally more lightweight than their full-fledged counterparts. As for Android P itself, not every new feature set to be included with the update is presently known, but Google previously demonstrated some of the additions planned for the next release, including various changes to the user interface, along with a new gesture-based navigation model, a new feature called App Timer which monitors app usage times and can double as a parental control solution, additional AI-oriented functionalities, and more.
As for availability, evidently there’s no way for the OEM to provide an exact launch timeframe right now given how Google has yet to officially confirm the launch date or full name of its next version of Android, hence the temporary “Android P” moniker. HMD Global’s ongoing smartphone portfolio consists of no less than fourteen Nokia models, all of which have been introduced over the past one and a half year, and with this fairly large number of devices under its belt, the company’s update plans will likely expand into the first part of 2019 as well.