Nokia was once a pioneer in the mobile phone industry, and it seems that the company up to releasing new smartphones and tablets under its name in an attempt to reclaim its former glory. Three or four new devices are apparently going to be announced by the end of the year.

This revelation comes straight from Nokia China's president Mike Wang, who spoke to Chinese site The Paper, as spotted by Android Authority.

The new devices won't be manufactured by Nokia itself though, but by a new company dubbed HMD.

However, the big question remains about the specification of the new smartphones. There are no official reports, but earlier rumors suggested that we could see both 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch phones.

Both will apparently have QHD displays, metal shells, 22.6MP cameras and high-end Snapdragon 820 processors, water and dust resistance, and Android 7.0 Nougat, which would put them on a level as flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S7.  It is logical to expect Nokia to introduce its own implementation of Android as well as exclusive programs. 

The Nokia smartphones which are likely to be launched in Q4 2016 are in prototyping phase now, as suggested by rumours. There can be another launch scheduled for Q1 2017 at the MWC depending upon the past launch feedbacks.

We do not expect HMD and Foxconn to introduce custom SoCs for Nokia devices anytime soon both due to technological and financial reasons. Even though Foxconn has been adding semiconductor design capabilities into its war chest for some time now, it is unlikely that the company can produce anything comparable to Mediatek's low-cost SoCs, and as a result software will play a critical role for the new Nokia smartphones and tablets. A good news is that Nokia plans to control certain aspects of design, performance and feature-set of the devices, which could mean exclusive technologies and capabilities.

Stay tuned for more updates regarding the upcoming Nokia Android phones.