Nokia may have been out of the mobile smartphone space for a few years, but it’s looking like the brand is eyeing a re-entry.
Ever since Nokia sold off its branding to the HMD Group, rumors have been floating that Nokia-branded devices would be hitting the market, and new Geekbench listings may prove that.
Geekbench is a mobile benchmarking tool, similar to 3DMark on PC. It listed two older, rumored Nokia devices and gave detailed internal specifications. Code-named Nokia 5320 and RM-1490, both run an older version of Android 4.4.4, commonly referred to as KitKat. The 5320 will have a quad-core processor clocked at 2.27GHz with 2GB of RAM. During benchmarks, it scored 494 in single-core use, and 1,531 in multicore use.
Interestingly, the RM-1490 doesn’t seem to be using a traditional mobile processor. It’s instead running an AMD A8-5545, running at 500MHz with 2GB of RAM. The AMD processor is actually an underclocked version of a laptop processor from 2011 and only uses two of its four cores. During benchmark, it was able to pull off a 972 in single-core use and a very nice 1,669 in multicore use.
While these numbers look impressive, they pale in comparison to phones currently on the market. The HTC 10 for example pulls off 2,287 in single-core use and 5,275 in multicore use.
It’s a little uncertain as to why HMD Group went with internals that cannot keep pace with the current crop of hardware. It’s possible that it’s trying to hit the middle of the market instead of the flagship end. It’s more likely that these phones are older prototypes, and that Nokia has greater plans in the works.
Nokia’s Mike Wang confirmed that devices would be unveiled during the fourth quarter of this year.
