the Nokia Lumia launch event was great. we saw a good example how to get the press and blogosphere in one place and show a beautiful designed smartphone, which is the first Nokia running Windows Phone OS.

 

Nokia announced the Lumia 800 and 710 on 26th of october at Nokia World this year and promised to deliver fast. and they kept their promise for the Lumia 800, which will be in stores on 15th November in several countries like Germany. Lumia 710 will come in very early 2012 and won't make it under the christmas tree this year.

 

here are some tech specs:

 

 

so, if you think: wait this phone looks like the latest Meego device, Nokia N9? right. looks like Nokia took the great shaped polycarbonate (some would say plastic) and added a camera button on the right. changed the displaysize from 3.9" to 3.7" and added some mandatory windows phone soft buttons. and voila: Nokia Lumia 800. not quite... Nokia changed the inner hardware aswell. the 1.4Ghz Qualcomm CPU and GPU are working flawlessly. the overall experience with the Lumia 800 phone is good. with its great built quality and design it's showing the way how to attract the customers.

 

First thing i've noticed is that there were no WOW-effect, when the people in audience saw the Lumia phones at the launch event. design and specs were already known from N9 and Nokiaworld. this could be the reason why most of them were more interested in services and how Nokia could differentiate itself from the rest of Windows Phones. first, there is Nokia Maps, Nokia Pulse, Nokia Music and Nokia Drive. second, they have a really good camera, which is also builtin in the N9. third, the design. i really like the design and hope to see more devices, which are made of policarbonate. so much potential.

 

 

but back to the main subject: the launch event:

 

i think it was quite a success for Nokia. getting all the press (incl. bloggers ) and developers to the event is not easy. showing what you can do with this new OS, services and platform even harder. but i think they managed it well. i was quite impressed during some sessions, what you can already do today with Windows Phone, XBOX, Telekom cloud and other services and looking forward to see more stuff in future. but Nokia not only showed us a Lumia 800, they also showed a Lumia 710 and Monster Headsets, which are coming in same colors like the Lumia phones. Nokia has to deliver more and waiting for Microsoft to unleash NFC, USB mass storage and some other things which wil come in the next Windows Phone update.

 

could Nokia have a bright future with Microsoft? all parameters are set for go: XBOX Live integration, MS Office for WP, fastest growing apps market and 3rd eco system, integrated navigation services using Navteq and development tools, which are good enough to attract the developers to use this platform aswell. Microsoft and Nokia are betting a lot of money on that sucess. we will see.

 

i will use the Lumia 800 within the next days (thanks to Nokia and T-Mobile) and write down my hands-on experiences with this smartphone.

 

if you want to see more pics from this event, just go to flickr and enjoy :-)