However, there was a time that the Windows Phone partner was actively working on an Android Lumia smartphone, according to The New York Times.
According to the report, the long-desired combination of Nokia's hardware with Google's operating system was being handled by a team within the company that had Android running on a Lumia handset.
Worst of all for those who have had this "if only" fantasy, it wouldn't have been all that hard for the company to start using Google's interface and apps on Nokia's phone.
Porting Android to the Nokia Lumia was not a "Herculean" task, according to the paper's sources.
Nokia's Android escape pod
Nokia's test run of Android on a Lumia smartphone happened before negotiations began with Microsoft, reports the Times, citing two anonymous sources.
It was seen as a "plan B," as Nokia's original partnership with Microsoft allowed the Finnish company to exit at the end of 2014.
While Microsoft was said to be aware of the Nokia Android project, it wasn't part of the discussions between the two companies, noted another confidential source.
Now Nokia can't make the switch from Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 platform still in its infancy to Google's much more popular Android operating system.
That's good for Microsoft because Nokia accounts for 80% of Windows Phone sales, far surpassing other WP8 handset makers like HTC and Samsung.
Nokia fans who prefer Android, however, are left wondering how the company's stellar hardware would have performed in conjunction with the world's No. 1 mobile operating system.
Dell may have been onto something with the 5-inch Streak
When the Dell Streak smartphone arrived in 2010, it was looked on as the red-headed stepchild of the Android world. After all, who wants a 5-inch Android phone? Well, quite a lot of people as it turned out.
While the Streak may have been ahead of its time in foreseeing a future where smartphone users would clamour for extra display real estate, Dell has no desire re-enter the game, yelling "told you so!"
He continued: "Every time a new mobile company gets born, they need servers and infrastructure and storage. Companies need to protect and secure their data on these mobile devices."
Bruising battle
Mr Dell's comments make clear the company has other plans to profit from the ever-growing reliance on mobile devices, without taking the monetary risk of launching standalone devices.
A stockholder vote this week approved the deal meaning, once ratified, Mr Dell will come out with 75 per cent ownership of the computing giant. The private-equity firm Silver Lake will also have a minority stake.
KitKat bars may be on your mind all October long, as Android 4.4 KitKat along with the Nexus 5 phone are rumored to be announced on Oct. 14, a little more than two weeks ahead of Halloween.
Google has yet to confirm the Android 4.4 features list or release date outside of "October."
However, anonymous tipsters are trying to fill in the blanks, indicating that the firmware update is destined for both newer and older phones, according to Ausdroid.
The site's sources are also saying that there's a new notifications widget on the way along with fresh animations, APIs, and gallery visualization tweaks.
This report, if true, would be excellently timed pre-Halloween buzz for KitKat-maker and new Google promotional partner Nestle.
Nexus 5 on Oct. 14 too?
The Oct. 14 announcement would also be good news for owners of the last phone that Google designed, the LTE-less Nexus 4.
That's because the LG Nexus 5 is supposed to be a 7-band LTE device that supports the higher data speeds its otherwise stellar predecessor lacked.
This bit of information comes from recent a FCC filing for a phone with the codename D820. Photos in the documents match the supposedly leaked mysterious Nexus phone seen during the unveiling of the KitKat statue on Google's lawn.
The filing also points to a smartphone with a roughly 5-inch display (measured to be 4.96 inches in the FCC report) and a Qualcomm Snapdragon System-on-a-Chip.
While the FCC documents point to hard evidence of a incoming smartphone that looks and sounds a lot like the Nexus 5, the KitKat and phone's release date, as sweet as it is, should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's hip to have a square (credit: mobileleaks.nl)
If you're over all the iPhone 5S/iPhone 5C hoopla and looking for a non-iOS handset to sink your teeth into, look no further.
In a pair of new images, we have what purports to be a prototype of the HTC One Max, the larger follow-up to the HTC One. Clearly visible on the back is the same square, thought to be a fingerprint scanner, that's appeared in previous leaks.
Thanks to Chinese-language social site Weibo (via mobileleaks.nl, translation needed), the possible One Max is situated between two regular Ones, looking large enough to gobble up its predecessor.
The Max here is referred to as a prototype by the source, though it matches with photos we've seen before. We'd be amazed if HTC altered the Max's look too far from the popular One, though it could reposition (or nix) the fingerprint reader.
An up and running HTC One Max? (credit: mobileleaks.nl)
HTC One Max specs
If HTC fashions a fingerprint scanner to the rumored phablet, it would join the iPhone 5S as the latest phone to feature the print-reading tech.
As part of its iPhone 5S announcement, Apple revealed a new feature called Touch ID located inside the new iPhone's home button. Touch ID replaces a passcode in unlocking the 5S and makes it easier to conduct iTunes Store purchases.
What the Max's fingerprint reader is capable of, if it's real, is far from known, but we're likely to see some similar features.
As for the rest of the phone, most expect a Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz processor, 5.9-inch Full HD screen and 2GB of RAM. Look for UltaPixel camera tech, 16GB of internal storage and a 3300mAh battery. The rumored device could feature Android 4.3, too.
Jealous your friends are all preordering the iPhone 5C today while you're left twiddling your thumbs? Turn that frown upside down, because Apple has now confirmed an exact time you'll be able to buy that swanky new gold iPhone 5S.
Apple issued one of its traditional emails to customers early Friday to herald the arrival of the iPhone 5C, which can now be preordered from its online store starting at $99 with a two-year agreement in your choice of five colors (white, red, yellow, blue or green) and two storage capacities (16GB or 32GB).
But tucked away at the bottom of the email is the news eager iPhone 5S buyers have been waiting for: The flagship device goes on sale in the U.S. Apple Online Store beginning at 12:01 AM PST next Friday, Sept. 20.
For those who would rather roll into an Apple retail store instead, the doors will swing open at 8 AM local time the same day, although if history has taught us anything, it's likely to be a typical launch day madhouse.
It's a date
While Apple hasn't yet confirmed a launch day time for other parts of the world, the iPhone 5S will also roll out to Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
For our readers in Australia, the on-sale time for the U.S. online store corresponds to 5:01 PM Melbourne time, while across the pond in merry old London it's 8:01 AM local time.
In the United States, the iPhone 5S starts at $199 with a two-year agreement or $649 unlocked for 16GB, while a comparable unlocked model in the U.K. and Australia is priced at £549 and $869, respectively.
Last but not least, the iPhone 5S is available in your choice of silver, space gray or a new gold finish and will also be available from select Apple resellers including carrier partners in the 10 launch countries.
Smartwatches are the talk of the town at the moment with the recent arrival of the Samsung Galaxy Gear, Qualcomm Toq and Nissan's Nismo Watch, but E Ink reckons they've all got it wrong.
TechRadar spent some time talking to E Ink's Director of Product Management, Giovanni Mancini, who explained where the current crop are going wrong and where the future of wearable tech lies.
"Some of the smartwatches so far have been panned because they give the user something else worry about without offering any additional functionality," he told us.
"We believe smartwatches will only really take off when they deliver functionality which is unique to a capability."
Smartwatches need a screen and they need a battery to power said screen, and therefore there's already a significant amount of weight on the wrist before you start popping everything together.
The main smartwatches around at the moment are using LCD displays which are relatively weighty, not the most slender and require a larger battery pack - and this is something E Ink thinks it can solve.
"E Ink displays (which are black and white, not colour) enable a lightweight device which doesn't require significant battery or the weight of a LCD screen," Mancini explained.
"The way to think about wearable is not 'how do I duplicate the display of the smartphone on my wearable device.'
One size doesn't fit all
"The smartphone provides a platform which gives you a significant amount of compute power and a high level of connectivity. This means wearable devices need to be more along the lines of having sensors in them that will provide unique capability.
"You can then take advantage of the smartphone as a computer engine to provide information for later processing."
Mancini suggests that instead of having a smartwatch, you instead have a device aimed at a specific area, such as exercise, to provide you relevant information on that activity.
"That information then can be offloaded into your smartphone, either because you need it to do additional computing while you're exercising, or you want your phone to capture the information and make it available online," he said.
The Human Network
"Essentially what you then have is a series of devices which are then specialised. Think about it more of you becoming a human network as opposed to a smartwatch which is basically a smartphone with a smaller screen."
Perhaps smartwatches are purely just a halfway house in the wearable tech life cycle, and if we're honest we can't see too many people dropping big bucks on such a device after shelling out a similar amount for a smartphone.
At the end of the day it comes down to do you actually want information delivered to you from your mobile via another device, or can we all just live with the fact we'll need to fish our phone out of a pocket if we want an update?
Although Microsoft's Nokia purchase raised a few questions about future support from other players, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei has said it will continue to make Windows Phone-running devices.
The Huawei Ascend W1, released earlier this year, marked the first Windows Phone 8 device from the company, which traditionally makes phones that run Android.
Huawei has a big presence in China so this will be great news for the Windows platform, which will likely be using Nokia to deal more with matters in the west.
Who are we?
"We will continue to develop devices running Windows Phone, and launch more products," said Huawei executive Richard Ren. "We remain one of Microsoft's strategic partners."
HTC and Samsung also design Windows Phone handsets of their own, but it's not certain that they'll both continue to do so into the distant future.
Microsoft's Nokia deal will give it more control over the synchronisation of hardware and software although there's understandably some concern that this could negatively affect support from other manufacturers.
Two models, three colours... Apple gave us an iPhone banquet
From fanatical fans to hardened haters, everyone wants to know what Tim Cook's been cooking. And this month, he's mostly been cooking... fingers!
Yes, this week's big news is the launch of not one, but two new iPhones: the iPhone 5C, which is essentially an iPhone 5 in a brightly coloured plastic body, and the iPhone 5S, which introduces a new processor, a new co-processor and a fingerprint sensor.
Two phone trick
First up, the iPhone 5C. It's "a cheaper iPhone, not a cheap iPhone", says our smartphone sensei Gareth Beavis, and that distinction is important: "With the iPhone 5C Apple's made a phone that feels so different to the iPhone 5S that buyers won't feel like they're buying a rubbish version of that device."
The 5c is certainly cheap and undeniably cheerful
Where the iPhone 5C is fun and funky, the iPhone 5S promises a more sober experience: while it doesn't look dissimilar to the iPhone 5, it boasts a dramatically improved camera, a faster processor and a new "motion co-processor", the Apple M7. As Beavis explains, "The M7 chip essentially takes the place of the FuelBand from Nike, allowing the iPhone 5S to monitor the gyroscope, accelerometer and compass without disturbing the main chip."
The iPhone 5S's fingerprint sensor has already led to excited newspaper headlines about stolen severed fingers and conspiracy theories about it sending your biometric data to the NSA (it doesn't: your print data is stored on the device, and it isn't uploaded to anything). Is it the future? David Nield reckons it just might be.
"With its tight iTunes integration, you'll be able to get new apps, movies and music without having to enter your Apple password each time. Further down the line we might see Apple embedding the technology in iCloud, on your Mac or even in high street retail stores to let you prove you are who you say you are. From there, it's obvious how the principle could extend to banking or mobile payments (think Passbook, for example)."
"The iPhone is a handset designed to give the best blend of power, sophistication and performance," Gareth says. "The iPhone 5S has taken that message and improved on it once more."
If you'd like to know exactly how it compares to the iPhone 5C, Dean Evans has the details right here - and if you can't afford or don't want either, don't forget that you'll be able to give your iPhone or iPad a whole new lease of life on the September 18 when iOS 7 finally ships. We have all the details, of course, and you'll find them here.
Fanning the flames
The 5s couldn't win everyone over
Sometimes there's nothing funner (Apple's word, not ours) than a flame war - and this week, TechRadar is in the unusual situation of having started a flame war with itself, presenting seven reasons why you're going to love the iPhone 5S and then seven reasons why you're going to hate it. As F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: "Boo! But also, yay!"*
Apple wasn't the only news this week, although as ever it did dominate the headlines. We also saw a bunch of new PCs and ultra-portables unveiled at the IDF conference, and Intel showed off its latest, greatest Atom processors, also known as Bay Trail. As Dan Grabham explains, "Bay Trail will obviously slot in underneath the Haswell-generation Core i3, i5 and i7."
Remember Yahoo? It might not have regained its crown as Queen of All Internets, but it's got a new logo and its user numbers are up 20% since July 2012. CEO Marissa Mayer is in it for the long haul: she reckons it'll take three or more years to get to "a positive place". It's always nice to end on a positive note, so let's give Yahoo a yahoo.
* Fitzgerald actually wrote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." We like our version better.
It's official, people: the iPhone 5C pre-orders have opened and we wait to see if those longing for an Apple smartphone are prepared to accept a polycarbonate chassis and slightly chunkier build for what is still a relatively pricey offering.
The iPhone 5C was only announced on Wednesday, but in true Apple fashion it's not messing around with getting the handset to market and the first lucky customers will have it in their eager mitts a week today.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past week, the iPhone 5C is basically a slightly overweight iPhone 5 with a plastic body, larger battery and a slightly lower price tag.
Of course you'll need to be in one of the nine countries which Apple is launching the iPhone 5C in first, so if you're currently not residing in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan or Singapore you'll have to wait some more.
Want a 5S?
Oddly, however, anyone looking to commit to the premium iPhone 5S early will be disappointed, as it's not being offered for pre-order.
We're not quite sure why Apple isn't allowing people to give them money ahead of time, but we're chasing an answer to this conundrum.
Just one question remains, which colour are you; green, pink, blue, yellow or boring old white?
