Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android is a stroke of genius

The buzz surrounding Nokia's keynote at this year's Mobile World Conference was unprecedented. The company's comeback has been the talk of the tech community for weeks and Nokia finally laid the tons of rumours to rest by announcing the global variant of the Nokia 6, Nokia 5, Nokia 3 and a re-incarnation of the legendary Nokia 3310 .

While the Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 might not come with internals that will blow you away or even some radical bezel-less design, they come with one feature that sets them apart from nearly all Android competitors out there - 100% stock Android.

Nokia's pure Android experience

In a market crowded with smartphones running such warped versions of Android that they fail to look like Android smartphones altogether, Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android is a stroke of genius.

Every manufacturer, from big weights like Samsung and LG, to upcoming OEM's like Xiaomi, Huawei and LeEco heavily customise Android according to their own tastes in a bid to differentiate themselves from the competition. These skins are generally not optimised well and have a lot of redundant applications.

After Nokia's MWC event, Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer, HMD Global told Gadgets 360 how design, build quality, timely updates and attention to detail would be the real differentiators for Nokia's new Android smartphones and not blind specifications alone.

Additionally, he elaborated on how the company's decision to stick with stock Android was a result of customer feedback which showed a demand for clean, easy to use, and snappy user interfaces. He said "The best way to do that is to do the purest form of Android out there. It makes it easier to roll out updates and commit to monthly security updates across the portfolio, so we can keep the consumer safe, and also deliver the latest features."

Apparently, Nokia did consider building their own launcher and dialler but ultimately scraped that plan as they ''did not want to do something different for the sake of doing something different''.

Specifications are not everything

OEM's these days also have a tendency to cram their smartphones with as powerful internals as they can in a bid to emerge victorious in the ludicrous specification war. What most companies fail to take into account is the importance of optimising the software and hardware to work seamlessly with each other.

This is where Nokia's strategy to concentrate on design and software rather than just blind specifications looks set to be a masterstroke. The best selling smartphone in the world - the iPhone has never had the best processor, the most high resolution display or an absurd amount of RAM. Where Apple does concentrate on is in terms of making sure the hardware and software work in tandem in order to make sure everything 'just works'.

In the Android World, Google has followed the same ideology with their Nexus and now Pixel line of devices. Regular and smooth Android updates, a seamless marriage of hardware and software and a UI without any clutter - those are the attributes which made the Nexus devices such a hit amongst Android purists and Nokia is set to imbibe the same qualities in their smartphones.

Google assistant at an all new price point

On top of having stock Android, the Nokia smartphones also come with Google's new AI based voice assistant on board. Google Assistant can be used to open apps, text someone, play/pause music, call your friends, post a tweet, make movie reservations and much more. Where it pulls ahead of both Siri and Cortana is the fact that Assistant is extremely smart. The more you use it, the more useful it will become.

While the Google Assistant will also ultimately appear on the LG G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8, the Nokia smartphones, particularly the Nokia 3 and 5, will bring the voice assistant to a budget price point, making it accessible to far more users.

Timely Android updates

Nokia's 'pure Android approach' is a brilliant and refreshing move at a time when Android is getting more fragmented than ever and OEM's are lagging miserably behind when it comes to updating their devices to the latest version of Android and delivering monthly security updates.

According to data sourced directly from Google (as of February 2017), the latest version of Android - 7.0 Nougat has reached just 1.2% of Android users a whopping six months after release. Even Lollipop, which is now almost 2 years old has just reached 32.9% of Android users.

Such an appalling adoption rate clearly shows the extent of Android's fragmentation problem and Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android will help the company distinguish itself from the rest of the competition by offering timely updates.

This is the same strategy Motorola adopted upon its return to the smartphone game a few years ago before Lenovo bought the company and eventually brought it in line with other OEM's in terms of delayed updates.

Nokia's new smartphone line-up

Nokia 6

The Nokia 6, which has already been launched in China is set to come with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 5.5' fullHD display and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 435 processor. It comes with a 16MP rear camera with PDAF and an 8MP front camera for selfies.

It will be available in four color variants namely Matte Black, Silver, Copper and Tempered Blue and will be launched at a price of 249 Euros, There is also an ARTE Black version of the smartphone with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage for 299 Euros.

Nokia's 'pure Android approach' is a brilliant and refreshing move at a time when Android is getting more fragmented than ever

Nokia 5

The Nokia 5 is the mid-range device and comes with a 5.2' 720p HD display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage expandable via a microSD card and the same Snapdragon 430 processor. On the imaging front, it comes with a 13MP primary camera with PDAF and an 8MP front shooter.

It will be priced at 189 Euros and come in four color options, namely Matte Black, Silver, Copper and Tempered Blue.

Nokia 3

Lastly, there is the low-end Nokia 3 with a MTK 6737 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 8MP front and rear cameras and a 5.0' 720p LCD display for 139 Euros.

It will also be available in four color options, namely Tempered Blue, Silver, Matte Black and Copper.