Nokia 7 and Nokia 9 in the certification process once again?
Christmas day was pretty busy for Chinese HMD office. Two of Nokia phones passed the TENAA certification process once again, or the official papers have been reissued. One is TA-1042 which could be model number belonging to alleged Nokia 9 (according to some previous leaks), and another one is TA-1041 which is already used for Nokia 7. Nokia 7 is smartphone specifically designed for Chinese market and it is lower spec version of the Nokia 8. It has some hardware features specific also for the 8 like OZO audio and Bothie camera mode, but it is much cheaper and thus more available for the Chinese customers. In an interview Alberto Matrone, VP of HMD Global for Eastern Europe, said that Nokia 7 is phone specifically made for Chinese market and that there aren’t any plans of pushing this device globally. That makes sense since Nokia 8 just started arriving to the market and with Nokia 7 available, the sales of the first HMD’s flagship would be affected. Maybe the reason behind this is some small design or hardware specification changes that HMD did… Right now, only Nokia 6 was released both globally and for Chinese market.
The other phone is probably country variant of alleged Nokia 9 that originally passed the certification process back in September 2017. Maybe the same conclusion could be drawn here as for Nokia 7. HMD probably did some (hardware) changes prior to release of the device for Chinese or global market.
Anyway, 2018 will be interesting year both for Nokia fans and HMD since many new and improved Nokia phones are going to be unveiled. CES2018 is the first event where HMD will be present, but according to the Alberto Matrone just to do some formal meetings. We’ll see if HMD will show some additional interest for the expansion on US market.
