HMD Global’s Chief Product Officer, Juho Sarvikas, has taken to Twitter to show off some of the prototype designs which resulted in the company’s Nokia 8 Sirocco. Although that handset was technically launched at this year’s MWC 2018, it is nevertheless interesting to see the iterations it went through. The prototypes themselves appear to have been 3D printed, with more curves at the edges and a smaller over profile evolving from the first design to the final release. In fact, the design started as what looks like a plastic 3D printed slab with no defining features and the effect is that of layers being peeled away slowly. As cameras, fingerprint scanner, and other details are stacked, the entire design slims back over the process.
As is fairly obvious by now, the end result is a device which curves at the side edges on both front and back and gives way to a 5.5-inch QHD pOLED display. That’s set at a resolution of 2560 x 1440 rather than the new standard ratio of 18:9 or taller. The bezels surrounding that, as mentioned in Sarvikas’ tweet, measure in at a total of less than 2mm and the bezels along the top and bottom are impressively slim too. With regard to the other specs found inside the Nokia 8 Sirocco, the handset is no slouch despite being driven by an older Snapdragon 835 SoC. That’s backed up by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage packed alongside a 3,260mAh battery in an IP67-rated glass and steel frame. Gorilla Glass 5 is present over the top of the display while above that there’s a 5-megapixel sensor for selfies.
On the back, there’s a fingerprint scanner nestled beneath 12 and 13-megapixel sensors and all cameras utilize ZEISS optics. All of that hardware drives Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box and all of that comes at a cost of around $876. Along with the images, Sarvikas also ousted the reason why HMD Global decided to go with the code name “Avenger” for this particular Nokia device. However, that may not be as ominous or meaningful as some might expect. Instead, the company simply thought the name sounded “cool,” providing at least something of a hint into just how geeky the team behind the device really is.
