Now, Android can come on the cheapest phones

Almost all types of gadgets have grown considerably over the past two decades. But old button phones are a place where time has stopped almost completely. You may not see them so often, but they are still sold between two and six hundred.

Now, there can be relatively big changes in the path of these simplest phones. The 9to5Google.com website contains an image of what appears to be a Nokia phone with the unusual combination of buttons and Android.

No logo on the phone, but …

There is no logo visible on the phone, and therefore it is difficult to know whether it is a Nokia phone developed by Finnish HMD or not. But the answer button is the same as on other affordable Nokia phones, and relatively different from the one used by other manufacturers.

In recent years, some of the cheapest phones in Nokia use KaiOS, a menu system that, with a little good will, can be described as smart. There are some applications for this, and it is possible for developers to customize Android apps for KaiOS, but most solution-based phones lack a full-featured application store and become, in practice, applause phones that live and die with the menu that suits them out of the box.

Chrome for button phones

Screenshots of what Chrome should be for this type of phone should appear sooner, but until now, no official information suggests that such a solution should be considered.

Thus, it is also uncertain to what extent these phones become application-based. But the phone on the picture has what looks like an icon in the application bar at the bottom of the screen. Below, you can hide several standard apps or a tray, like on traditional Android phones, where you can add new content through Google Play.

Hearing Assistant?

The other icons on the home page are Chrome, Youtube and a camera app. A fourth icon is a bit harder to understand, with two arrows facing each other. If you want to leave other button phones with similar icons, there may be talk phone call history.

Google's microphone is visible higher up on the screen, and it is not certain that it will lead to Google Assistant or more traditional voice search, because the microphone has long worked on Norwegian phones without Assistant access.

Can reduce the life of the battery

If these phones access applications, there will be two hard-to-avoid areas. The first is that these phones are largely sold for two reasons today; battery life and price. To a certain extent, simplicity also, for those who wish it.

The battery life and simplicity will likely be affected by a more general application connection for these phones.

In any case, all applications to be run on these phones will have to adapt their menus relatively heavily. Here, we are not talking about touch control, but zones of buttons that you browse with the navigation button.

Must be adapted to simple phones

The hardware configuration of these applications must also be very light, since most of these phones have relatively weak processors. The RAM is not torn either.

Mobile phones with buttons rather than touch screens have so far been a line of performance and price under Android Go mobile phones, smartphones very easy to equip that start at around 800 crowns.

If the images show a solution in progress, it can be a kind of a comeback for Android, which for the first time there is about 13 years was presented on phones with buttons and without touch screen.