

Nokia's Windows Phone 7 concept revealed - tomh-
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/exclusive-nokias-windows-phone-7-concept-revealed/

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whalesalad
Not gonna lie those looks sick. I also really liked using the Windows Phone
interface, when I played around with it in a T-Mobile store the other day. I
prefer it to Android.

I was an iPhone 3G user for a while, then went to the darkside with a MyTouch
3G, then Nexus One, and yesterday I picked up a VZW iPhone 4. I can honestly
say that with due time for developers to get up to speed with Windows Phone...
it will offer a much nicer experience than Android. I still think that Apple
does it best though, and adore this new VZW iPhone.

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jonhohle
Huh?

Is this thread full of Nokia/Microsoft PR people? Seriously. How does this not
look like every other modern Android, WP7, iPhone rip off?

    
    
      - Black minimalist screen ✓
      - Horizontal speaker port ✓
      - Buttons on the bottom ✓
      - Cheap plastic case ✓
    

I don't think this phone could look more generic. Is this the state of the art
in phone design outside of Cupertino? Are people's expectations really this
low?

I really don't get the appeal of this device from a hardware perspective. The
software may be a different story, but the hardware looks is pretty boring.

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flyosity
I'm not sure how much hardware design has to do with a phone's success
anymore. After the iPhone came out, every manufacturer now makes phones that
are 90% screen. How close are we to hardware design where the bezel around the
screen is 1mm and the whole device is only a few millimeters thick? Won't
every phone basically look the same with the OS and user experience the only
differentiators? Isn't that pretty much happening already?

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stcredzero
Not anymore than watches all looked the same and accuracy, features, and water
resistance were the only differentiators.

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flyosity
I don't think that's a valid comparison. All watches tell time, but _how_ they
tell time varies greatly. I own an automatic Panerai watch
(<http://cl.ly/4YkQ>) and it looks completely different from watches that
Urwerk (<http://cl.ly/4XvZ>) or Richard Mille (<http://cl.ly/4XZR>) make.
Comparing how different those three watches look with the visual differences
between, say, an iPhone 4 and a Nexus S and it's night and day. The Nexus S
and iPhone 4 are about the same size, same thickness, same
dimensions/proportions in width/height, about the same size screen, and the
screen takes up about the same size % of the phone face.

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celticjames
This Nokia/Microsoft deal is really terrib... Hey, look at those shiny phones!

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electromagnetic
My thoughts exactly, but apparently I also have a defective gene inherited by
some alien splicing of the magpie genome into the human species, because damn
do I like shiny!

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lancefisher
They looks nice, but they do remind me of the logo diarrhea mentioned here:
<http://uxhero.com/ux-theory/logo-diarrhea/>

Put those logos on the back or make them very subdued.

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kiiski
Nokia has always had their logo on the front. It's part of their brand.

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mseebach
Hmm, looks a bit like the Nexus S.

Smart-phones are about the software, not the hardware (above a certain
threshold). And even then, WP7 can be the sliced bread of smart-phones, but if
they don't have an apps ecosystem, they're not going to take off. With iOS and
Android at roughly 20-30% each, and with WP7 at, what, 0-1%? -- who is going
to develop WP7 apps? We might not think about it now, but it took a _long_
time for the cool kids to start developing for Android, and even longer for
them to do it properly. I only see this slowing down for each new platform
added.

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barista
in case you didn't know the WP7 app store has eveolved faster than android and
has already passed 8000 apps. It's about the same speed at which iPhone market
evolved, except that the iPhone had a huge installed base by the time apps
were allowed.

It's foolish to underestimate the developer muscle of MSFT.

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rodh257
exactly, just as Android looked to tap into the market of developers who know
Java will, WP7 goes for C# developers - of which there are many. Microsoft
treat their developers well.

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stcredzero
Microsoft should be able to look at _what sucks_ about the Apple ecosystem and
capitalize on those factors by tuning them into their advantages and Apple's
weakness.

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tomh-
I have to say, they look pretty good!

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DanI-S
Nokia's industrial design seems like the only real contender to Apple's in
terms of being sleek, modern, but still distinctive and immediately
recognisable. It's hard to make a touchscreen phone anything more than a
screen, but they both manage to pour the identity of their brand into their
devices in a way that few others do.

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saturdaysaint
These look like exceptionally pretty renders - I have the feeling that the
final product will look nothing like that. The reason modern smartphones don't
have those sleek contours on the back is that a long-running (read: large)
battery is a prerequisite. All of the swooping contours in these shots are
basically trading hours of battery life for a dramatic look - I'd be surprised
if this survives basic testing.

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fingerprinter
I guess I don't see it. Here are my rough thoughts.

1\. Nokia was on the verge of non-existence. Honestly, Meego and Symbian were
not going to cut it. Nokia just didn't have the chops to do it and that was
obvious.

2\. MSFT was aching to get in the game w/ something/someone other than HTC and
this was a real opportunity.

3\. Nokia hand Android available to it or this partnership w/ MSFT. By
choosing MSFT they got cash infusion and also got to outsource dev to MSFT
(which I'm assuming from what I read is the arrangement).

So far, so good. Given those parameters it actually seems to make strategic
sense for Nokia to choose MSFT and this route. But wait..that isn't all.

5\. Who is going to write the apps for this? Had Nokia chosen Android, they
would have literally gained hundreds of thousands of apps instantaneously.
Does anyone know the number of people writing WP7 apps? It is not a huge
number and most of the apps are not good. Sure, it is early and this
announcement will likely boost the numbers but still...it isn't android
numbers and it certainly isn't iOS numbers.

Given #5 all of the sudden the decision looks quite questionable.

I guess, what I don't see, is who is Nokia really going to call a customer? If
Nokia wants to capture the smartphone market, this is just plain dumb. If
nokia wants corporate phones, it might be quite smart..being able to replace
RIM/Blackberry just about a launch (really, it would be that easy if they
focused). If they want to capture Corporate market AND capture ultra cheap
entry cell phones....now it sorta makes sense.

Ok...so what am I missing? Anyone know their real strategy?

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JonoW
Your views on WP7 apps are a bit off, there is a huge pool of C# devs who are
eager to get into a viable app-market. The WP7 tools are free and have been
downloaded 2 million times (according to MS). The app store is growing well,
and there are about 8000 apps, which is pretty good considering the plaform is
v1 and is only about 4 months old. I've found the quality of apps good, and
most of the major players have released apps (e.g. facebook, twitter, amazon
etc). The Xbox live games are particularly good (although a bit expensive)

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dshep
Am I the only one that wishes Nokia had bought Palm instead of HP?

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kenjackson
The HP rollout this week was pretty impressive though. Palm's designs are
already pretty good. HP gives them engineers and services to execute on it. I
think HP+Palm is actually a pretty strong fit.

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zyb09
Looks so weird to see the letters "NOKIA" on something running WM7, you almost
get the feeling that they just sold their soul (not that WM7 is any bad, just
not used to see that combination).

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bho
How did they have this already ready? Was this a previous phone design that
they just rendered with Windows Phone 7, or had they been working with
Microsoft already?

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endtime
From TFA:

>The best part about this whole discovery, however, might be that it confirms
Steve Ballmer's assertion that the engineers of both companies have "spent a
lot of time on this already."

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spa942
If they had spent enough time they would have demoed it at the press
conference, so they are probably mockups.

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rbanffy
I think they are 3D renderings

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smogzer
So they need to do a deal with the devil in order to loose the keyboards and
copy established designs. Nokia + MS = 2 x Marketing.

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kiiski
Some of us still prefer having a qwerty keyboard. At least I wont be buying
another phone without one.

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meemo
Looks nice, but if you take away the Nokia logo, it could be a phone from any
other maker that licenses WP7.

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jsz0
More appealing than anything else Nokia has done in the post-iPhone era.

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lotusleaf1987
Gr... I actually wanted something more like an N900 with a capacitive touch
screen and some Zeiss optics. I like it, but I wanted a landscape keyboard.

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Geee
They'll be rolling in every shape and form.

