Back when the first Android smartphones rolled off the assembly line in 2009, they weren’t just competing against Apple. Feature-phone pioneer Nokia commanded a large chunk of the market, and it was hard at work on its own open-source touchscreen platform. We all know how that story ended. Android and Apple took over the market and Nokia floundered for years with half-baked handsets until Microsoft mercifully put Nokia’s smartphone segment out of its misery after acquiring the business last year.
But like a classic B movie, Nokia is back from the dead. Well, kind of. Earlier this year Microsoft sold the Nokia branding rights to Finland-based HMD Global, and the first fruits of that labor are due to appear in the first half of 2017. And like the Nokia N1—an iPad mini clone with handwriting-based search—they will run Android. It remains to be seen just how much Nokia is in these phones beyond the name on the rear, but it’s a good comeback story nonetheless.
