In 2013, there were rumors circulating on the web about the possible development of a top secret project by Nokia called ‘Goldfinger’. The flagship smartphone was touted to be equipped with a revolutionary 3D Touch-like navigation with the help of a projected capacitive display technology.
The project was referred to as ‘McLaren’ during the development phase but was unfortunately shelved in July 2014 just a few months before its official release. However, Nokia gave no proper reasoning to justify the cancellation. The specifications of the so-called Nokia McLaren recently surfaced on the web.
On the specifications front, the Nokia McLaren was reportedly featured with a 5.5-inch FHD display with Projected-Capacitive Touch Technology, although we can’t confirm its presence. Talking about the internals, the Nokia McLaren was equipped with a Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor with a clock speed of 2.3GHz, 2GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, which can be expanded up to 128GB. The display seems to be only normal LCD and not IPS as found in Lumia-branded smartphones.
While the Nokia McLaren was about to ship with a 20-megapixel PureView ZEISS sensor with IOS and dual-LED flash, the front-facing snapper includes a 2-megapixel fixed focus camera. The device also featured a dedicated camera button with HACC microphones.
Despite the revelation of the Nokia McLaren specifications, we don’t have a confirmed details of the battery integrated with the device. However, we understood that the battery can’t be replaced by the user. Meanwhile, the smartphone provided a single nanoSIM slot instead of microSIM slot.
Loaded with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 (8.10.14128.140), the Nokia McLaren features metal body with the antenna on the bottom. However, the device doesn’t offer wireless charging capability, although the technology was not popular at that time of the projected release.
We inspected a video review published by a popular tech portal and found that the display looked similar to the likes of Nokia 1320, which shipped with a 6-inch IPS display. If Nokia would have released the device as per the scheduled timeline without halting the project, it could have emerged as the first wireless charging device.