We first got wind of the Nokia McLaren in mid-2014 when a rumor pegged the device as a Windows Phone 8.1 flagship that was headed for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Unfortunately, the device ended up getting cancelled shortly before it was expected to be announced. The rumor mill has provided us with a few peeks at it since then, though, and today another set of McLaren photos has surfaced.
The new Nokia McLaren images have been shared by a user in the forums of Chinese site Baidu. The photos are notable for a couple of reasons, first of which is that they show off a black and gray version of the McLaren, whereas the previously leaked McLaren photos showed a silver and white handset. On this darker model, the body appears to be a dark gray while the camera and polycarbonate antenna housing on the bottom of the phone are black.
The other notable tidbit of these photos is that the show the McLaren next to the phone that it was set to replace, the Lumia 1020. The McLaren is a bit taller than the 1020, which isn’t a surprise since the McLaren is rumored to have a 5-inch display while the 1020 has a 4.5-inch screen. The McLaren’s 5-inch display was rumored to include a “3D Touch” feature that’d let you navigate through the OS by hovering a finger above the screen. For example, you might hover a finger above a Live Tile, which would then “explode” into several smaller Live Tiles that would contain info related to the app.
The McLaren looks like a nice Windows Phone, combining a 5-inch display that’s likely pretty usable with one hand along with a metal body. Unfortunately, leaked images like these are the closest that most of us will ever get to actually handling the McLaren. Instead of the McLaren, Windows fans recently got the Lumia 950 and 950 XL after a year and a half flagship drought, and rumors suggest that Microsoft will give them a Surface phone in 2016.