Nokia tested Lumia phones with Android: report

In one of the biggest tech deals of the year, Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business for $7.2 billion earlier this month. The aftermath of this deal means that Lumia and Windows Phone 8 brand are all set to become to one and it makes sense given it was the most well known and best-selling Windows Phone 8 device. According to an IDC report, Nokia accounted for 81.6 percent of all Windows Phone smartphone shipments during Q2 of 2013 and over 8.7 million Windows Phones were shipped in that quarter. Now a report in New York Times’ Bits Blog has said that Nokia actually flirted with Android devices. [caption id=“attachment_1111887” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Nokia Lumia 625 is seen in this file photo. Screengrab.[/caption] The report says, “A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company’s Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating… according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential.” Microsoft was aware of the project and it’s not clear if the project is still on, though the chances of something like this continuing after the Microsoft deal are slim. As far as Android and Nokia are concerned, many tech pundits have asked why Nokia didn’t go for the popular OS when it started losing the smartphone race.  However, according to Nokia’s former CEO Stephen Elop, they made the right decision. He  had recently commented on the whole Android-Nokia drama to the Guardian saying, “What we were worried about a couple of years ago was the very high risk that one hardware manufacturer could come to dominate Android. We had a suspicion of who it might be, because of the resources available, the vertical integration, and we were respectful of the fact that we were quite late in making that decision. Many others were in that space already.” But would a Nokia Lumia be a better buy with Android? Let us know in the comments section if you would have bought a Nokia phone running Android.