WSJ: Nokia's first Android phone (Normandy / Nokia X) will be announced at MWC 2014

Sources “familiar with the matter” are telling the Wall Street Journal that Nokia plans to officially announced its very first Android-based smartphone later this month. More exactly, the Finnish company, which is about to be swallowed up by Microsoft (well, at least its phone division is), should show the Android handset at MWC 2014 in Barcelona.

Initially codenamed Normandy, the upcoming Android device could end up being called Nokia X. As previously reported, the Normandy / X should run a forked version of Android. According to the WSJ, the device won’t provide access to Google Play, and neither to other popular Google services. Instead, it’ll offer “a Nokia application store with Android apps”, plus services like Here Maps, Nokia Mix Radio and others. Feature-wise, we’re looking at an entry-level handset that supposedly has a 4-inch WVGA display, dual-core Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory, and MicroSD card support. The phone should have a dual SIM version, and multiple color options.

The WSJ somewhat misleadingly mentions that Windows Phone “does not work on low-cost phones”, and that’s why Microsoft allows Nokia to go on with this Android project: to boost sales, even if helped by a competitor platform on an affordable handset. However, the very popular Nokia Lumia 520 proves the publication wrong: Windows Phone does work on ultra-cheap devices. Of course, it’s true that the Lumia 520 can’t offer all the features that a high-end WP handset is offering.

Anyway. Nokia, Android, MWC. It may still be unbelievable for some, but it looks like it’s happening. It will be really interesting to see how many X / Normandy units Nokia manages to sell. But that depends on its price, market availability and more. We're guessing that we'll see soon how things go.