Some fifteen years ago, the Nokia brand was having an excellent run in the mobile phone market and the brand’s market dominance was thought to be insurmountable. However, the coming of Android OS and the subsequent migration to smartphones sounded the death knee for the Finnish phone maker.

Nokia made a resurgence under HMD Global Oy with several smartphones and a focus on software security. The brand has a large catalogue of smartphones under its name ranging from budget to mid-range and flagship models. The Nokia 9 PureView easily stands out as the most outstanding smartphone HMD Global has manufactured yet.

The flagship model released last year comes with a penta-camera setup with a Time-of-flight (TOF) sensor at the rear. The setup didn’t turn out to be a success and Nokia had to sever ties with Light the company that developed the camera technology, but what you apparently don’t know is that Nokia had initially toyed with the idea of a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner.

A netizen in China who was out searching for classic Nokia smartphones on Xianyu accidentally stumbled on the Nokia 9 engineering machine. In case you don’t know, Xianyu is a popular customer-to-customer buy-and-sell platform for secondhand goods in China, connected with the ever-popular Taobao. The device carries a price tag of 10,000 yuan (~1,512) but we can’t figure out why. For one, the device still bears a penta-camera setup as well as a sixth ToF sensor but in this case, there is a physical fingerprint scanner at the back.

Another cool aspect is that the frame of the engineering machine is inlaid with a gold border. Apart from these two features, the design and configurations are basically the same as the final Nokia 9 Pureview.

UP NEXT: Xiaomi XiaoAI Speaker Art Battery Edition launched for 399 yuan ($59)

The post Nokia 9 engineering machine leaks showing a fingerprint scanner at the rear appeared first on Gizmochina.