Nokia McLaren was supposed to come with a twin brother

Dec 17, 2014 15:20 GMT  ·  By

We all know that Nokia McLaren was one of the most exciting products that never came to be out of the Redmond campus (together with the Surface mini, of course), but even though this project was canceled for good, new information still arrives on a regular basis.

This time, a Quality Specialist at Microsoft has revealed something that’s as interesting as it is puzzling for Microsoft and Windows Phone fans.

In a post on his LinkedIn profile, the Microsoft employee explains that he worked on several projects, and one of this responsibilities was to “make sure related project proto build can start on time, such as: McLaren, McLarenTD, McQueen, Superman, Libra, Athena…”

McLaren and McLarenTD

OK, so we already know that McLaren was canceled and never got to see daylight despite its really exciting feature lineup, but what’s with that second model?

As WMPU writes, McLarenTD could actually be a model aimed at the Chinese market, and TD could stand for TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE, which are the Chinese versions of 3G and 4G, respectively.

Of course, these are nothing more than suppositions, but there’s no doubt that McLaren was supposed to be available in several markets across the world, and China was one of them. Even though McLaren was never designed to be as affordable as Windows Phone models selling like hot cakes in China.

What’s with McQueen?

As you can see in the excerpt from the LinkedIn profile of Microsoft’s employee, Redmond actually worked on several projects besides McLaren, including one that was reportedly named McQueen.

Details on this particular phone model are missing completely, so the only thing we can do right now is speculate on the name.

Most likely, McQueen is the name of a project that has already been launched, so do not be too surprised if the Lumia 830 or the 735 is the one that this designation is referring to. At the same time, it could very well be another project that was never produced, but we really doubt that nobody ever got access to details about this thing in order to leak them online.

Either way, McLaren continues to be one of the most exciting products that never got a chance to impress. And still, there is hope that McLaren could at some point see daylight, as a number of sources close to the matter indicate that Microsoft is still pondering to release this phone in the coming months, with Windows Phone 10.  

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