Nokia has just announced two low-cost phones "capable of running Android applications". Is that the same as announcing an Android phone? Probably not any more.
Android has become a sort of standard, vanilla phone platform available to all phone vendors as an open source OS (without the proprietary Google phone specs), but something they can build differentiation on top of (as a UI skin) or along-side, with a second OS such as has been done by Jolla with Sailfish.
In fact Nokia has done what we thought it should have done all along. It's put its tile-based UI on top of Android instead of on top of a completely app-less and hapless operating system like Windows Phone (when it first came out).
The offerings are called the Nokia X and the Nokia X+ (memorable names for a change) and they come in at a distinctly low-cost price-point: $122 is currently being quoted. The Nokia X+ has a bit more memory. Cheap, but not as cheap as the Firefox OS phones might become once they swing into action. (see today's - Mozilla gets Kudos for Firefox OS momentum)
What's the betting that the Nokia X range starts to range up-market? Thoughts below.
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