The Nokia 8 design leaks, expected to launch July 31st

Huge bezels puts HMD's design behind the times, but hopefully the price makes up for it.

Evan Blass over at VentureBeat has shared an image of HMD's upcoming Nokia flagship, the Nokia 8. The device will be the first Nokia-branded Android flagship, taking a place at the head of the existing lineup of the Nokia 3, Nokia 5, and Nokia 6. The report says the phone should be announced on July 31st.

In the fast-moving smartphone world, HMD is definitely behind when it comes to design. The device looks a lot like the other budget-conscious Nokia HMD phones—and a lot like a phone design from last year. There are tall top and bottom bezels, capacitive hardware navigation buttons, and a front fingerprint reader. That's disappointing given the more modern slim-bezel designs we've seen from Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and (if it ever launches) Essential. I think the Nokia 8 will need a competitive price to pair with the old-school design, something that puts it in "budget flagship" territory with the similarly specced, similarly designed OnePlus 5.
The phone is expected to come with a Snapdragon 835, 4 or 6GB of RAM, Android 7.1.1, and a surprisingly small 5.3-inch QHD display. The back seems to feature HMD's usual anodized aluminum body (increasingly a rarity in a world of fragile glass and ceramic phones) and a dual camera setup complete with "Zeiss" branding, just like the old days. Besides the two cameras and LED flash, there's some other component in the camera module, probably a laser autofocus setup.

We tried the Nokia 6 at Mobile World Congress this year, and we were blown away by the build quality of such a cheap, $200-ish phone. More impressively, HMD said all the right things when it came to the software of the device, saying it wanted a "pure Google" experience and a "secure, up-to-date" device. The company promised "monthly security updates across the entire portfolio" and "fast updates." While it still has to back up that talk with action (shipping with Android 7.1 is a good start), it makes HMD's entire lineup worth paying attention to. If HMD keeps the price down, it could have a winner.