XDA Developers Have Managed To Add Google Services To The Nokia X

Nokia recently launched its X series of Android phones. These are targeted to customers in emerging markets and are priced appropriately. Many have wondered why Nokia would go ahead and launch Android phones around the time that Microsoft completes its acquisition of the phone manufacturer. It seems that this is Stephen Elop’s strategy for the Nokia X phones to act as a path for these users to upgrade to full featured Windows Phone devices.

The Nokia X series may run Android as its base OS but the UI layer is completely inspired from the Lumia series. Nokia thus wants its potential users to get very familiar and dependent on this UI so that it can offer these same customers better Windows Phone devices as an upgrade. Seems to be some real long term thinking and this may or may not pan out the right way. Either way, I don’t see Microsoft allowing the X series to continue once the acquisition is done and this just seems to be a short lived experiment, in my opinion.

Nokia X currently comes with Nokia and Microsoft centric apps like the Nokia Store, Here Maps, Skype etc. Since this is an unofficial fork of the Android Open Source Project, the phone does not ship with Google services which have becomes somewhat of an integral part to the Android ecosystem. Those who are planning to buy the Nokia X can still get the Google services to work on the phone.

XDA Developers, a forum which deals with mobile phones, has figured out out a way to get Google services onto the device. This means that Google Apps, Google Now and the Play Store can still be accessed using the Nokia X. There is a guide that is posted on the forums by a user named Kashamalaga who has managed to get all these services working on the X.

You can check it out here

Disclaimer: Modding your phone may result in bricking and loss of warranty, so be careful before you try this.

Source | Engadget

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