Is the First Nokia Android Smartphone Actually the Sharp Aquos P1?

Finnish company Nokia recently announced that it will be making a comeback to the smartphone market with its own branded handsets. With this it would break away from the five year partnership with Microsoft and use of the Windows Phone OS, embracing the more widely distributed Android platform.

Despite having no fixed release date, we should be nearing an official announcement for the first Nokia Android mobile and now leaked renders have surfaced (via new.vk.com but since removed) – but they look a little bit familiar, don’t they?

That’s because rather than releasing a brand new handset (and if the images can be believed) Nokia could actually be using recycled hardware from a different product – the Sharp Aquos P1, a mobile handset from the Japanese tech company which was recently released in Taiwan.

Why would Nokia try to pass this handset off as its own? Well, here’s the deal.

After Nokia’s breakup with Microsoft it entered a licensing agreement with the Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn, co-incidentally the same company that makes Sharp’s mobile phones including the Aquos P1 which features an iPhone-esque appearance.

Since Foxconn has permission to use the Nokia name, it’s thought that it has simply slapped a more recognisable brand name and logo onto the handset in order to get more market interest when launched in western parts of the world.

So if this is the case, literally, what’s on the inside of Nokia’s next release?

If specifications carry over from the Sharp model then we should expect a premium feel Android handset featuring 5.3-inch S-PureLED touchscreen display with a 1080 x 1920 Full-HD resolution, two dual-core processors clocked at 2.2GHz, a generous 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage, expandable to 200GB

The rear camera is not too shabby either, offering 22.6-megapixel quality with LED flash and an accompanying front-facing camera at 5-megapixels. Support is included for 4G and the handset features a fingerprint scanner and 3,000mAh non-removable battery.

Not bad, not bad at all, and the current Sharp version of the P1 is just hitting shelves in the Taiwan. We await confirmation from Nokia on a release elsewhere and the all-important price.

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