Nokia + Windows Phone 7 seemed like a good idea...
Last December we posted that Nokia badly needed a new operating system, witing that "(t)he reality is that, unless they can get something out soon, Nokia is most likely better off jumping on the Android bandwagon or even maybe even better, supporting the Windows Phone 7 platform, before it is relegated to selling feature phones." Apparently, they did have a very good bun in the over after all.
Nokia with Windows, or Android or Nokia made sense back than. Now we are wondering why. GSMArena has had it first look at the Nokia N9, running the MeeGo Operating System v1.2 (Harmattan).
The N9 has a power a volume rocker button, but has for any hardware buttons to manipulate the operating system. There is no need to press the power key to revive the phone from sleep mode, a simple double-tap of the screen will revive the phone. There is also no back button. A swype of the from edge to edge will bring you back to app launcher or task manager.
We are getting ahead of ourselves. The OS centralizes everything in three homescreens. The first screen keeps track of all notifications: calls, SMS, email social network updates and other system notifications. The second screen is your app drawer or app launcher where you will see all installed apps. The last screen is the multitasking cards pane which will show you running apps on grips. The lockscreen had four customizable shortcuts, in line with new trends to make the lockscreen more functional.
Enough of this. You should really view the videos on the GSM Arena first look.
With this operating system in the works did Nokia really Windows Phone 7. We felt they did, but were expecting that by the now Nokia WP7 phones would be on the market. The MeeGo ecosystem will be richer than the WP7 ecosytem by end of year. MeeGo based phones will be able to run Android apps.
With a MeeGo 1.2 based phone coming out first, does Nokia really need WP7?