Nokia Kataya UI reborn on Nokia 2

In late June of 2019, a Nokia smartphone branded as Kataya leaked online through eBay. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about the device which until now, baffles even the most seasoned Nokia enthusiasts.

There is no explanation why this smartphone exists and why we never even heard of it until last year. The eBay listing, which is now nonexisting, came in at 1,499 USD and shared few details of the handset. But none of those details shed a light enough to put closure once and for all.

You can find our original post about the leaked Kataya here, and if you want to learn more about the device, we have an investigative report written by one of our readers, Dimitrios Vlachos, which we highly recommend. You can find it here.

Recreation of Nokia Kataya UI on Android OS

Nokia Kataya is indeed an interesting device. While the OS it was running on is still a great mystery to many of us, the UI at least gave us an idea of how it looks like from the inside.

Recently, our friends at LoveNokia tweeted a photo of the Nokia 2 running on Kataya UI. Of course, this isn’t a real Kataya, but rather just a recreation of the interface Kataya was running. Apparently, an app that will recreate the Kataya experience on Android is currently under development. LoveNokia also mentioned that there isn’t even a name for it yet.

It is still unclear how it is possible to run Kataya UI by just using an app, and influence the status bar. This could mean that the app will not be an Android launcher, but rather an app itself which mimics the Kataya ecosystem from the surface level without influencing the Android ecosystem itself. Hence, the “No SIM” status.

The app was created by Dimitrios Vlachos who did a nice cover of the Kataya phone not so long ago. Hope he will be able to create a nice launcher that will make entry Nokia phones easy to use.

Anyway, if you still remember the Nokia Z Launcher (a unique UI developed by Nokia for Android in 2014), I tried it again earlier on my phone and it seems to work fine with Android 10. You can still download the app here, and experience the Nokia UI that Nokia N1 tablet brought to life, but the app is not working well on high resolution screens.

Cheers SirFaceFone for the tip 😉