Nokia 6 Is the Company’s First Android Smartphone; Coming to China in Early 2017

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 8 Jan 2017

Nokia 6

A few hours after teasing their first handset, HMD Global today unveiled their first Nokia-branded Android smartphone: the Nokia 6. The China-exclusive device features a 5.5-inch Full HD display that is protected by a curved 2.5D Gorilla Glass.

The phone is made out of a solid block of series 6000 aluminium, with HMD saying that it takes over 55 minutes to machine a single Nokia 6 from a block of aluminium. Post that, the phone goes through two different anodising process that takes over 10 hours to complete, with five different polishing levels thrown in. The Nokia 6 sports modest internals which includes a Snapdragon 430 chipset, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, microSD card slot, and stereo speakers. It also packs in a fingerprint sensor and a 3000mAh battery with quick charging thrown in. The 16MP shooter at the rear and the 8MP shooter at the front feature a f/2.0 aperture lens with “exclusive Camera UI” featuring automatic scene detection. On the software front, the Nokia 6 runs on Android 7.0 Nougat.

With the arrival of Nokia 6, consumers will see superior craftsmanship and design quality in action. It takes 55 minutes to machine a single Nokia 6 from a solid block of 6000 series aluminium. It then receives two separate anodising processes, taking over ten hours to complete, with each phone being polished no less than five times. The end result is an aluminium unibody with the highest level of visual and structural quality.

HMD says that it is launching the first Nokia branded phone under China as it is a “strategically important market” with over 552 million existing smartphone users.

The Nokia 6 will be available in China exclusively through JD.com in early 2017 for 1699 CNY. HMD promises that it will be releasing more Nokia branded smartphones in the first half of 2017. It is likely that we will see the company launch the international variant of the Nokia 6 and other Nokia-branded smartphones at MWC next month.