Is Nokia launching another smartphone this year?

Nokia has been in the news lately. They have released a couple of new smartphones, they are now firmly in bed with Microsoft and they are, publicly at least claiming to be on the road back from consumer handset oblivion.

So it’s no surprise that reports are starting to emerge of a new device called the Nokia Lumia 1001 that has recently been seen on Nokia’s Remote Device Access- an online service that allows phone developers to check if the code they created works on a particular device without needing to have the actual phone in their hot little hands.

Why this is important is that just last year, this very same service leaked the Nokia Lumia 900 and now a couple of weeks ago, it has revealed the so-called Nokia Lumia 910, which apparently will come with a 12-megapixel camera.

Even though the reports have been circulating all over the web, including on the site, The Droid Guy, for its part, Nokia has denied the existence of the phone.

But you would expect them to say that, now wouldn’t you? Moreover Nokia has gone on the record to say that Windows Phones like its Lumia 900 will not be getting any Windows 8 upgrades and so with the 1001 model number likewise hinting that the device is an upgrade, since Nokia likes to use the’ bigger is better’ convention in naming their phones, it cannot have an OS lower than Windows 8.

In fact, with all the brouhaha the company created with its switch to the Windows 8 OS, there is no way this phone can have anything but a higher version of the Windows OS. So the question remains, what, if anything is the Lumia 1001? Will this be the one with the 41 megapixel camera?

Will this be the mythical iPhone slayer that all tech writers dream about? Will it come in different colours? Or is this just another red herring in the vast ocean that is the world of smartphones?

I guess for now at least, we’ll just have to wait.