Now here’s something interesting. The good folk at Nokia (the original Finns, not the Microsoft operation) look to be returning to the mobile phone world, but this time via software rather than hardware. This could be a very clever move indeed.

The first fruits of the initiative is the new Z Launcher, which is an Android skin for your phone designed to make it easier for you to use your phone. Now launchers are hardly new of course, they’re on offer everywhere, and some of them – like our favorite Nova Launcher – are very good indeed. But what makes this Nokia one interesting, apart from the Finnish connection, is the fact that it could end up being the foundation for when Nokia eventually does return to hardware production some time in the future.

The idea behind the new software is for it to learn your habits and then deliver the right type of apps to your default home screen automatically. The launcher also has something we know we’ll love called Scribble, which lets you draw the first letter of any app you want, and have it instantly available for launch. Very nice indeed (if you have ever used Launchy on a PC, you’ll know why).

So do we want to install this? Heck yes. Nokia may have lost its way with Symbian back in the day, but we’re hoping that a new bruised but wiser company may manage to have the last laugh with a cool product which is really useful. Unfortunately it’s only available for a limited number of handsets during the alpha/beta testing, (e.g. Samsung Galaxy, Nexus etc) but hopefully it will be opened up soon. Nice.