Rumor: Leaked yellow Nokia prototype is the ‘Phi’ Lumia 800 successor

Is this the Nokia 'Phi' Lumia 800 sequel?

File this under rumor but certainly plausible. The fan site Nokia Innovations is reporting that the alleged Nokia prototype phone that was leaked last night is in fact the Nokia ‘Phi’. Mind you that’s the code-name not product name, much like the Ace and SeaRay were used for the Lumia 900 and 800 respectively. What’s interesting about Nokia Innovation’s post is that it slghtly pre-dated those images by a few hours as that site was expecting their own images to come forward too.

The notion that Nokia would make a successor to the Lumia 800 is not far fetched at all. It’s a wildly popular design, one that we prefer even over the Lumia 900 due to the curved screen. Evidently Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was impressed with the Lumia 800 that he doesn’t want to let the design go, just have it evolve which to our ears makes sense.

So without further ado, here are some of the rumored specifications of the Lumia 800 successor aka the ‘Phi’...

• It has the same curved screen but bigger screen size (cannot confirm if it will be bigger than the Lumia 900s 4.3inch or the same) hence it will be thicker and far heavier than the Lumia 800. [Edit: We've heard it is closer to ~4.65 inches --Daniel]
• It has the same form factor, that is, polycarbonate unibody with irreplaceable battery (just like the Lumia800)
• No physical buttons on the front
• 4 physical buttons on the right side: up/down vol keys, power button and camera
• It will run on a Qualcomm Dual Core CPU (First Nokia Dual Core WP8 phone)
• It will have external SD card slot
• NFC chip on board.
• LTE enabled

Many people in our comments noted that the phone shown last night is a Lumia 800. But unless the person holding it has unusually small hands, the phone seems bigger than the minute Lumia 800 which only has a 3.7” screen. Indeed, this looks like something in-between the Lumia 800 and 900 with a 4” or bigger display.

It also helps explain the discrepancies with the speaker and slight changes in design. As to why the old flag versus the new one, that is certainly curious although perhaps it was used for 'open' testing and having the new flag may be a dead giveaway.

This device is rumored to be ready for shipment by the end of October, that may lend credence to the idea of why these images leaked in the first place. If coming out of China these images may have originated from one of Nokia’s partners for manufacturing much like the original SeaRay video that was leaked last summer.

Thoughts? Sound off in comments.

Source: Nokia Innovations;