New Nokia WP mobiles to use ST-Ericsson NovaThor

In an official announcement, Nokia declared its intentions of partnering with ST-Ericsson, the joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson. Nokia will be using the manufacturer’s NovaThor platform to power its Windows Phone mobiles in the future. Till now, Windows Phone devices have been running solely on Qualcomm chips.

Currently, versions of the NovaThor platform work on ARM’s dual-core Cortex-A9 processors and include NEON CPU extensions, ARM Mali 400 graphic cores and LP-DDR2 RAM. Nokia might use there versions while designing its next line of WP smartphones.

The platform’s high end version U9500 supports dual cameras and offers HSPDA up to 21 Mbps. The midrange chip U8500, like its big brother U9500, supports video recording of up to 1080p and a 20MP camera capable of taking still pictures. These chips support a resolution of 1024 x 760p on a dual display and a resolution of 1280 x 768p on a singular display.

The lower end chip U5500 offers support for a 12MP camera with video resolution of 720p. It runs at 800 MHz and supports HSPA+ 3G networks. It can power a display with a resolution of 854 x 480p. 

The U5500 will make it possible for Nokia to make a number of features available on its entry level phones at reasonable rates. This is turn will enable it to capture a large chunk of the market, especially in the developing world.

WP mobiles are currently not equipped to work with dual-core processors. With this deal promising a number of new opportunities to both Nokia and Microsoft, we are sure to see a number of sophisticated Windows Phone handsets running on dual-core processors in the near future.