Nokia’s been awfully fond of slapping its high-end hardware into polycarbonate bodies, but that trend may soon come to an end if a new report from The Verge holds true. According to unnamed sources within Nokia, one of the Finnish phone company’s new top-tier Windows Phones (codenamed “Catwalk”) will be clad in lightweight aluminum instead of the usual colorful plastics.
Of course, the key words there are “one of” — The Verge’s Tom Warren points out that two Windows Phones are being prepped for a launch sometime in 2013. At this point there’s still little in the way of hardware specifics, though the so-called Catwalk isn’t expected to be a great leap over the existing 920.
That Nokia would consider a shift in design isn’t a huge shock — aluminum bodies could help Nokia keep the weight of future smartphones down — but it does fly in the face of some of the company’s earlier crowing. Shortly before Nokia’s most recent Lumia launches, it posted a neat little piece on the effort that went into crafting the devices on its Conversations blog where it noted that the polycarbonate gave its phones “a human touch.” What’s more, Nokia has noted more than once that those eye-popping colors that have become a hallmark of its Lumia Windows Phones were only really possible by using plastics instead of metal, so it remains to see how (if at all) Nokia’s colorful design language will be tweaked as a result.