The video below apparently came from the Far East. It purports to show a Nokia N9-styled device operating Windows Phone 7. Matt over at The Next Web describes the phone as having ‘a near identical design to the Meego-powered Nokia N9’.
Now then, here’s what you need to do. Definitely watch the video. Keep the sound down low, there’s nothing interesting there. I’d like you to spend a bit of time admiring the device. Whether it’s official or not, this is a super exercise. I want you to have a close look and see if anything happens to your mindset.
For me, my mindset shifted slightly on Nokia. If they can provide an N9 (or, for that matter, an N8) running Windows Phone 7, with a brilliant, BRILLIANT camera experience, along with the usual Nokia gubbins (decent call quality, battery, machinery) then I’m interested. Very interested.
So whether it’s real or imagined, it’s rather exciting to explore the possibility of Nokia releasing a simply brilliant top-of-the-line device into the market.
Windows Phone 7 is good. It’s rather elegant. Evolve the experience to include Nokia’s historic device strengths and the offering becomes compelling.
My worry is that Nokia will actually ship a mid-level ‘meh’ device that plays well with the bottom end of the market but cannot be spoken of in the same breath as iPhone 5 or one of the HTC Android handsets. The media will bury Nokia. (Incidentally, this is an issue that Rafe Blandford and I almost came to blows over — in a constructive manner — on a recent 361 Degrees podcast. Do check it out!)
Here’s the embed video:
As they say, bottom of the ninth, three behind, bases loaded, who do you send into the plate? Compal. This could be … interesting.
Oh yes, most definitely!
I continue to preach “do not count MSFT out”. The enterprise has a love affair with MSFT, and if they can deliver a great experience, it should do very well in the states. Now, put this OS on a Nokia phone, where the rest of the world has a love affair with their undeniably fantastic hardware and you have a mighty combination.
People love AAPL because it simply works. It has the cool factor. Outside of that OS, as for Android and the others, and that is what it is these days, “the others”, folks don’t much care what the OS is, so long as it looks and acts cool and it works. So now, in walks Nokia with an ultra-cool phone like this, that actually works well, doesn’t crash, is intuitive and easy to use, fantastic hardware combined with a stable OS from MSFT…
I continue to like this combination…
More and more people are telling me this too Giff, which can only be good
news for the marketplace and competition.