Nokia working on Android phone, Normandy: reports

Nokia, which is working on its version of an Android phone, is expected to be available in a wide range of colours - green, red, black, green, yellow, and white, reveals a Tweeted leak.

The phone is expected to be released sometime in 2014.

The handset has been codenamed 'Normandy', and speculations are rife that the low-cost phone, would be a forked variant of Android.

In other words, it would run a stripped-down version of Android OS, not unlike Amazon's Kindle Fire, and would not align with Google's own version.

The device appears to be on the lines of the Lumia and is said to have support for applications like Skype. It is still not clear, though, whether the phone would be released before the finalisation of the Microsoft deal to acquire Nokia's handset business or whether Microsoft would take over the charge for the device after the acquisition (See: Microsoft to acquire Nokia's handset business for $7.1 bn).

Accordin g to NDTV report, Nokia Normandy would be targeted at the low-cost segment as an Asha-equivalent smartphone. It would however afford access to more traditional smartphone apps - a benefit that the reports suggested had been missing in Nokia's dated Series 40-based Asha phones.

According to commentators, however there was no clarity yet as to whether the Nokia Normandy Android phone was for real or just a rumour.

Former Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, had said in July that the company's choice of a Windows Phone over Android was right, which ought to rule out a Nokia Android phone.