Photo of a Nokia 230 like feature phone running Android leaked

Once you start using smartphone, your old feature phone looks like a toy to you. But, we shouldn’t underestimate that specific market since it is still huge, and many manufacturers are shipping a lot of feature phones even today. Nokia is a huge player in that particular market, and HMD can even gain some profit by selling simple, but capable phones. One of the best features of rather simple phones is a long battery life and eventually small form factor. Thing that is pushing feature phones back is definitely its software versatility. Nokia had its s40 OS which could power some apps like Whatsapp, and there was also the Nokia X phones with ASOP Android running it that bridged the feature phones with smartphones. Kai OS and Jolla with its Sailfish OS designed for feature phones came close to something that Nokia had with Asha lineup. Nokia Asha, and the rest of s40 phones were feature phones with a touch of a smartphone.

 

. 9to5Google just pushed a photo of an Android running feature phone whose T9 keyboard resembled a lot to the s30 running Nokia 230. The phone is well hidden with the protective mask to be fully recognised, but the screen reveals that it is running some kind of Android. You can easily recognise the camera, chrome and YouTube icons on the home page, and the material design that Google is utilising right now is seen also. It seems that Google doesn’t want to invest its money anymore in KaiOS, and would like to make Android run on feature phones

Nokia Mobile and Google are working closely, and we even saw some Nokia feature phones being displayed at Google’s CES2019 hall. This could easily turn out to be the real thing, whether we like it or not. I kind of find the feature phones a safe haven, a place to hide from e-mails, social networks, and instant messages, but on the other hand, I would like to have some features of a smartphone, like a possibility of using Whatsapp that I’m using daily. Hopefully, in the next weeks or months, we’ll get more info about this project and see if Google really wants to conquer the feature phone world too. The real question behind this story is would you like to see, or use feature phone that runs some kind of  Android?