$245 China-only device has 5.5-inch screen, aluminum unibody, and Snapdragon 430.

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Nokia is getting back into the smartphone business. A company called "HMD," which includes a number of old-guard Nokia employees, has emerged to resurrect the brand from the ashes of the Microsoft acquisition. Recently the company announced its new phone: the "Nokia 6." It runs "the latest version" of Android Nougat (so 7.1.1?), it's milled out of a single block of aluminum, and it has a 5.5-inch "HD" screen. The bad news is that is has a Snapdragon 430 SoC and is exclusive to China. But hey, this looks like a good first step and serves as a peek into the future of the new Nokia.

According to the press release, the Nokia 6 is launching in "early 2017" for 1,699 CNY ($245, £200). It has a Snapdragon 430 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 16MP rear camera, and an 8MP front camera. There is lots of talk about the aluminum unibody design, which HMD promises is part of the "Nokia phone hallmarks of quality, superior craftsmanship and relentless focus on the consumer experience."

The video on Nokia.com shows a Micro USB 2.0 port, which is disappointing in 2017. It also shows a fingerprint reader/home button combo and a bottom-firing speaker. There is definitely some heavy Android skinning present in the video, but it's unclear if this is for China only or something that we'll see on Nokia's entire lineup.

The tag line at Nokia.com calls the Nokia 6 "The first Nokia smartphone powered by Android." HMD might want to brush up on a little Nokia history, though, since this is more like the third Nokia Android phone. The first Nokia Android phones were the "X" line released in February 2014. The technically-still-independent company took an AOSP build and made the UI look a lot like Windows Phone, replacing the Google services with Microsoft ones and creating a "Nokia Store" for apps. A few months later, now under Microsoft rule, Nokia released another Android phone called the "Nokia X2." This took the same Microsoft-y AOSP concept and gave it some updated specs.

HMD's press release says the Nokia 6 "marks the first step for the Nokia brand into Android smartphones with more to come in H1 2017." Hopefully that means we'll see a US-bound flagship model, which we might hear about at Mobile World Congress, where HMD is an exhibitor.

As it'll be running Android, the most interesting thing to know about these phones won't be sure for quite a time and it is: how will they handle software support?
Will they bother to do proper software support, timely security updates, and for that matter, updates at all and not uselessly clutter the software with bloatware? If not, then it'll be yet another OEM trying to tie itself to a former glory to get attention and marketshare and not worth our time.
Also hopefully, the line-up won't become an absurd mess like about every OEM save Google and Oneplus.