Nokia X / Normandy Android phone might not be as low-end as we thought

The Nokia X has been popping up all over the place lately, but it's mostly been exciting because it's Nokia having a go at Android rather than because of anything about the phone itself. In fact, its 1GHz dual-core processor and 512MB of RAM sound positively underwhelming.

But we've been pleasantly surprised by some new BrowserMark 2 benchmarks which actually, somehow, show the Nokia X as marginally outperforming the Nokia Lumia 1020, coming away with a score of 1885.88, while the Lumia 1020 scored 1776.

It's worth noting that higher Android benchmarks can be easier to achieve, so Nokia's impressive performance needs to be put into context.

Trailing behind

That still leaves it well below top end Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which scored 3041 and some way below even the mid-range Motorola Moto G, which scored 2562.

In fact in terms of Android rivals it comes out closer to older handsets like the HTC One X, with its score of 1889.25, but that's still better than its specs suggested it would manage.

Of course one benchmark isn't much to go on and this is just a browser benchmark anyway, so it's hardly comprehensive, but it gives us hope that the Nokia X won't be a total write-off.

That said, Nokia needs its first Android handset to be a big hitter as it looks to make waves in an already saturated market - will the new fancy UI be enough to mark it out?

• Recent leaks reveal specs and more for the Nokia X.