After several rumors and leaked photos, along with Nokia’s treasure hunt map, we now have a new lead on the long rumored Nokia X smartphone, codename Normandy. Chinese tech website Coolxap, which has a pretty decent track record at spilling out confidential information, has leaked an image that exhibits Windows Phone-esque tiles on the Nokia X, which runs a forked version of Google’s mobile operating system Android.
Borrowing Windows Phone 8’s tiles concept, the user interface adds its own unique touch. But one thing is for sure – this isn’t Android as we know it. With tiles around and no hint of any Google services on the homescreen, Normandy might not be the Android phone you are used to seeing after all.
The device, which has low-end specifications – a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and 4 GB internal storage – is expected to be announced at Mobile World Congress next week. Yesterday we also learned that this handset, which doesn’t sport any Google services, has its own app store, called “Asha on Linux”, and successfully ported most of the Top 100 apps of Google PlayStore.
