Nokia WinPho handset resurfaces in factory flick The Nokia 'Sea Ray' has surfaced again today, showing the Windows Phone 7 device running the upcoming Mango update in a grainy video from the production line. The Nokia N9 was dubiously leaked by CEO Stephen Elop last month, who was filmed theatrically telling audience members to turn their cameras off. Here the handset …
Generic iPhones, and indeed fairly mediocre cameras, haven't done Apple any damage - and arguably the innovation in the Android market is doing as much harm as good.
I'm a long way from convinced by the new Windows phones but retaining control over the specs isn't necessarily a bad idea.
Well.. yes, the N9 is the already announced MeeGo device. But that certainly looks like an N9 to me!
Perhaps the reason that the N9 *wasn't* cancelled (because MeeGo is a dead-end) was to provide a hardware platform that could be used in Nokia's Win 7 device.
But.. this could just be a developer device. Remember the pics of the N950 which everyone assumed was going to be the consumer MeeGo handset? That turned out to be a developer-only jobbo.
(We still an Elop icon)
Uhm...
Am I the only one who caught the news that Win7 is only for the phones and not for a tablet OS?
Am I the only one who remembers the series of N devices which could be considered the precursor to today's tablets?
Did Nokia drop the Intel partnership? Or did it silently fade in to the background?
I'm not going to make any wild speculations, but I don't think Meego was totally ditched. Maybe its not the front runner, but definitely not dead.
But what do I know? I'm not some Russian web site claiming to be an expert on all things Nokia.
Using the N9 hardware platform for WP7?
Highly unlikely, as the N9 is based on the TI OMAP3 SoC and Microsoft don't support OMAP for WP7, instead they only support Qualcomm SoCs, and inexperience of this SoC may be one reason why Nokia are having to outsource manufacture of their WP7 device to Compal in order to expedite production.
The only thing the N9 and WP7 share is the case design (with the addition of a camera button on the WP7 device). Somehow Nokia have squeezed in the touch sensitive buttons which aren't present on the N9 - presumably by using a vertically shorter screen or extending the length of the device to make space for the buttons.
^ There's your Elop icon, right there. :)
This isn't the N9. They look very similar, but if you look at the camera/flash you can see it's different. The Sea Ray is the code name for the WP7 phone, the N9 is the Meego phone, though granted it is possible that the N9 will not be released in some territories, so the WP7 version may be released in those areas as the N9. Possibly. Maybe.
Nokia financials are due on 21 July, this "leak" is intended to pre-empt those figures.
Also, Chinese? Do Nokia have factories in China (I thought many were in Korea for their high-end devices)?
Or is this more evidence that the first Nokia Windows Phone will actually be outsourced to Compal (as first reported by DigiTimes a few weeks ago).
http://digitimes.com/news/a20110624PD220.html
http://www.intomobile.com/2011/06/26/first-nokia-windows-phones-built-compal-order-hit-q4-2011-deadline/
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