Nokia has no plans for a 4G LTE-only variant of its long-promised '5G value flagship'
While the high-end Nokia 9.1 PureView that was initially rumored to come out by the end of this year to erase the bad memory of its predecessor is now expected to see daylight no earlier than April 2020, the revived brand's long-promised "value 5G flagship" may well break cover a little sooner.
No reason to reconsider your options for the fast-approaching holiday shopping season, though, as the usually well-informed folks over at NokiaPowerUser believe the Nokia 8.2 will be unveiled at the 2020 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in late February. That's hardly shocking given how many Android smartphones (and non-Android dumb phones) exclusive Nokia brand licensee HMD Global has launched at the previous two Barcelona trade shows, but what might come as a surprise is that there's only one 8.2 variant in the pipeline.
That's right, at least according to the whispers picked up by NPU's insiders, there will be no 4G LTE-only version of this increasingly exciting "value flagship." Just a 5G-enabled model tipped to be priced around the $500 mark, which would substantially undercut the likes of the Galaxy A90 5G. Of course, the A90 "mid-ranger" is not available in many major Western markets, and although you can buy quite a few decent Nokia smartphones in the US today, something tells us the 8.2 won't join the 7.2, 7.1, or 9 PureView, all of which are exclusively sold unlocked stateside.
If the Nokia 8.2 is indeed set to cost no more than 500 bucks with 5G support, as well as an unreleased Snapdragon processor that should deliver decent power by mid-end standards, up to 256 gigs of internal storage space and 8 gigs of memory, a high-res 64MP primary camera, an "all-screen design" (with no holes or cutouts), and a 32MP pop-up selfie shooter, US-based bargain hunters addicted to speed may want to start looking for one-way plane tickets to their favorite Asian or European destination.
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