Say what you like about the old Nokia Lumia lineup (and there’s plenty to criticise, most of it Microsoft’s fault), the phones were distinctive. Something was lost the day Microsoft sold Nokia back to… well, Nokia and ditched the Windows Phone interface.
The current owner of Nokia’s brand, HMD, is reaching back to the days when the brightly-coloured Lumia range was immediately identifiable. It’s doing so with the launch of its HMD Touch AI, a Chinese-market phone that resembles a similar release in India last year.
Longing for Lumia?
According to a news report from China, HMD announced the Touch AI via its official WeChat channel. The phone is, for modern-day devices, extremely compact. It’s also super-affordable, coming in at R1,200. That’s about what we’d expect from a 3.2in touchscreen smartphone, even if there’s little else known about it so far.
The explicitly Lumia-inspired dual-SIM smartphone will have a 1,950mAh battery, 4G support, and USB-C charging. The other specs are unknown for now, but should be fair. The device is supposed to run ByteDance’s Doubao AI, so there’s bound to be somewhat decent hardware backing it.
While the Touch AI nods towards the old Lumia range, further rumours suggest HMD is keen to bring back more than just its physical properties. The tile-based Windows Phone operating system — or, rather, something very much like it — could also be coming back to market.
Specifically, HMD is said to have plans to “develop a second UI, which may feature a look similar to the Lumia Tile or Nokia X Interfaces and will be customizable based on user preferences.” More than a few old fans would be keen to see the operating system come back. The rest of us might have flashbacks to the abomination that was the launch of Windows 8. That’s fine. That’s fine. You can’t keep everyone happy all the time.
