HMD Global-owned Nokia could be working on shuffling its device naming conventions a bit, based on the latest report. While the Nokia 8 was the company’s flagship device of 2017 followed by the Nokia 8 Sirocco in early 2018, it now seems that the Nokia 8.1 will take a step down to the sub-flagship segment, based on reports that it will be running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 SoC.
The Nokia 8.1 was recently listed as one of the devices supported by Google ARCore in its latest APK, suggesting that the device could be launched soon. Apart from the Nokia 8.1, a handful of other devices including the new OnePlus 6T are also said to be supported on the ARCore platform, which was initially limited only to the Google Pixel range of devices. The new Nokia smartphone will likely be launched on Android 9 Pie, and will be an Android One certified device like the rest of HMD Global’s Nokia range.
With a notch and a metal-glass body, the Nokia 8.1 could closely resemble the Nokia 7.1 Plus, also called the Nokia X7 in China. Given that the Nokia 7.1 Plus also sports the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chipset, the improvements on the Nokia 8.1 could be feature-based rather than specification-based. The Nokia 8 was launched a year ago, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and 6GB of RAM.
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However, HMD Global could introduce the Nokia 9 PureView soon, which will be the company’s flagship smartphone for this year. The device could come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC under the hood, along with an incredible five-camera setup at the rear. Given that this will obviously be positioned a bit higher in the chain, the Nokia 8.1 could be repositioned as a step below, and will be priced in the sub-Rs 30,000 space if and when it is launched in India.
