Nokia Prototype Phone Powered by Meltemi Is a Blast from the Past

There are lots of unknown things about Nokia’s history from the time Stephen Elop was named CEO of the Finnish company. Nokia has been working on a few projects that have been later canceled by the new leadership, but there are still a lot of fans who still support these projects even if they are technically dead.

Well, as long as a project still has fans and a dedicated community, it’s not really dead. However, Nokia’s Meltemi project doesn’t seem to have as many supporters as MeeGo does. Still, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who are still trying to raise it from the dead even if it’s just for their singular pleasure.

For those out of the loop, Meltemi was a new UI that Nokia planned to push to some of its most advanced feature phones. This means that Meltemi was supposed to replace the S40 UI, which was part of Nokia’s feature phones for quite some time.

The Meltemi project led by Peter Skillman, who had previously worked on webOS, was canceled by Stephen Elop back in 2012 when he decided that Nokia should take the Windows Phone route.

The Meltemi phone could have been released back in 2012

Along with Meltemi, Nokia’s CEO at that time axed the MeeGo project as well. Both were replaced with Asha and Windows Phone. While many are still questioning Stephen Elop’s decision to go with Windows Phone instead of Android or MeeGo, Microsoft’s mobile platform won a lot of fans due to Nokia’s brand.

But we’re not talking about Windows Phone users now, but Nokia fans that are still attached to what the Finnish company managed to accomplish by the time Stephen Elop became its leader.

It appears that Nokia was very close to bringing a Meltemi-powered handset about two years ago, but the device was canceled when Stephen Elop decided to promote Asha instead.

Someone from a closed community of Nokia Collectors has been kind enough to send NokiaPowerUser a few pictures showing a prototype unit of the Meltemi phone that should have been released by the Finnish company in 2012.

This is just an entry-level handset with a touchscreen that looks more than decent for those times. Sadly, there are no details on the phone’s specs, but at least we can get a glimpse at what the first Meltemi handset could have looked like.

Do you think Meltemi would have done better than the current Asha handsets? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section.