Engadget had a post up today, that, you cannot say detailed, showed would be more relevant, what might be one of Nokia’s up coming Windows Phone handsets. It’s very difficult to tell if this is a case of creative editing, as there seem to be flashes of the original leaked Nokia rumoured phones mashed into the video. Just look at the stop frame shot I captured below. That’s definitely from the original leaked images that were supposed to be Nokia’s Windows Phone foray.
In fact if you hit this link, you can compare it to the leaked images from May, of what might have been a Nokia WP device. We’ve seen various promo’s, and videos, and Stephen Elop himself showing off prototypes, so is this the real deal? Well I think not, but others may differ, The actual differences in the first leak and this one, seem to go along with the idea that Nokia will provide a lower end handset for a larger market. Most people seem to interpret the idea of a low end handset as having less Windows Phone. More likely, Nokia will take their mass manufacturing expertise, and decrease their overhead, so that they can offer a device that takes advantage of the bulk nature of their business, and costs a lot less. Watch the video below, and tell me what you think, is this another optimistic folly by a film maker. If there is an ounce of truth to this, it may be a device destined for markets that do not have great access to the Windows Live services that are integrated into the OS. Perhaps the Tango update, will add more language and wider market support, looking to more divers markets that Nokia would like to place devices in. People seem to be reading, budget and low cost, as an abbreviated version of the OS?
The timing on all of this makes sense. Microsoft plans to release a single major update a year to Windows Phone. Mango is this year’s upgrade, and is technically Windows Phone 7.1, even though handsets running the updated build will be labelled Windows Phone 7.5 phones. Apollo, Windows Phone 8, is not expected until late 2012 (in time for the holiday season).
So, if Tango was to come after Mango and before Apollo, to keep with the ‘one big update per year’ plan, Tango would have to be smaller, and more specialized, exactly what we are hearing.
And Nokia has always said that it had a deal with Microsoft to make changes to the Windows Phone operating system that went above and beyond what other OEMs had, so Tango could be what the two companies are cooking up together. Nokia will, of course, release full-featured Windows Phone handsets.
Speculation for speculations sake, possibly, the Idea though that Microsoft would cripple the OS with omissions to create a cheaper bit of hardware is unthinkable. I think people are jumping the gun on Tango speculation, there is no way MS would go backwards with the OS. More likely is that OEM’s are going to produce phones that cost less and still run the OS.
