For starters, the long-rumoured Nokia Lumia 900 is finally a reality, and it’s every bit as awesome as I had imagined. The new Nokia flagship smartphone features a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display (800 x 480), a 1.4GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. No word on whether there will be other storage options, and 16GB just seems so 2008.

At 11.4mm, the Lumia 900 is definitely not a skinny phone. But it packs a 1,830mAh battery, which, coupled with the power-efficiency of an AMOLED screen, should mean a very impressive battery life.

The phone is compatible with LTE networks, and Nokia boasts that it will allow download speeds of up to 50Mbps on US carrier AT&T’s networks. This should tie in nicely with the gradual rollout of LTE networks over Singapore.

The 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lenses on the back is likely the same as the one found on the Lumia 800, and there’s finally a front-facing camera that Nokia says has a wide-angle lens.

There’s no word on pricing or availability other than it going to be released in the US in the next couple of months. But seeing that Singapore was one of the first countries in Asia to get the Lumia 800, I would bet we’ll see the Lumia 900 soon after it launches.

The Lumia 900 isn’t the first Windows Phone to come with an LTE radio. That honour belongs to the HTC Titan II, the second iteration of the fantastic HTC Titan launched just 4 months ago in September 2011.

What completely stole the show is the Titan II’s incredible 16-megapixel camera with a backside illuminated sensor. It’s official, folks: 8-megapixel phone cameras are so 2011!

But of course, megapixel-count is not everything, and it’s possible that the only benefit is higher-res photos. At 16-megapixels, the quality of the lens is also going to be a key factor in image quality, but unlike Nokia trumpeting its Carl Zeiss lenses, HTC doesn’t seem to be using anything fancy.

Still, HTC has packed in some serious camera features, including an f/2.6 wide-angle lens, red-eye reduction, image stabilisation, and a dedicated image processor.

Other than the insanely bumped-up camera, the Titan II is not that much different from the Titan, save a few cosmetic changes. It runs on a 1.5GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, and is marginally lighter than the Lumia 900.

There’s a front-facing camera, naturally. And of course, that massive 4.7-inch Super LCD screen (800 x 480) is an absolute delight for watching videos, playing games and looking at spreadsheets. The battery is also bumped up from the first Titan, but at 1,730mAh, I don’t think battery life will be as good as the Lumia 900.

And seeing that HTC didn’t bring the first Titan to Singapore, I wouldn’t be too hopeful about the Titan II as well.

It’s going to be an interesting fight between these two phones. Nokia’s long-awaited hero phone doesn’t disappoint, but HTC’s newest offering should make those waiting for the Lumia 900 to pause and reconsider their options.

Will 2012 be the year Microsoft’s Windows mobile platform takes off?

Think of Singapore’s latest efforts to turn everyone’s phone into a mobile wallet to pay for taxi rides, burgers and groceries, and the phrase deja vu may not be far from your mind.

As the city-state’s infocomm regulator and its industry partners embark on an ambitious S$40 million project, unveiled today, to let mobile phone users here tap and pay with their phones at some 20,000 payment points by next year, they could perhaps remember a lesson or two from the past.

If they succeed, users will be able to trot out their smartphones to pay for a burger at McDonald’s instead of using an ez-link card by mid-2012. A year later, in 2013, commuters may also be able to tap their phones at train station gantries to pay for their rides – if the transport authorities and companies get their act together.

But Singapore has seen numerous such trials over the years, even as places like Japan and Hong Kong have raced ahead with more advanced payment options.

Early in the last decade, publicly-funded projects here had users adding a specialised cover to a Nokia phone to pay for a cuppa wirelessly. Then trials a few years ago, in 2007, let users tap specialised phones – concept devices that are butt ugly – to pay for anything from a burger at McDonald’s to a train ride.

I tested that technology when I was a reporter at The Straits Times, and the gadgetry works, I can tell you. But one thing I remember from that experience was the strange looks that the SMRT auntie at the train station gave me when I said I wanted to top up the stored value on my phone, and how the cashier at McDonald’s wondered if I was trying to be a punk to tap my phone on the reader at his counter.

As valid as it was then, consumer acceptance is one important factor to get right today. Why, asked a friend today when I told him about this new payment option, would he need a phone to pay for things if he already had his credit card and ez-link card with him always?

For a mobile wallet to take off, users have to be convinced that their mobile devices are, first of all, secure, and easy to use as well. To answer my friend, a phone lets one see how much stored value he has left, which a passive card cannot. If you lose your phone, you can call up your bank to cancel it, just as you would if you lost your credit card today.

The good news is that, these days, people are more accepting when it comes to using the phone for payment and transactions. Reporters were told today that 330,000 people have downloaded the DBS mobile banking app onto their phones, which lets them check their balances, transfer funds and carry out other transactions on the go.

It helps too that the technology has improved. Near-field communications (NFC), the wireless technology that lets your phone interact with a cash register, a poster or just about anything with a wireless chip inside, was a work in progress in the past, but not now.

Another plus: credit cards and stored value cards like the ez-link card used for transit in Singapore now come with this contactless NFC feature, and thousands of merchants here already use compatible terminals that support this form of tap-and-go payment, which can be used for future NFC-compatible phones as well.

In the past, retailers’ unhappiness with adding an additional contactless terminal – next to their NETS and other terminals – was one factor preventing more merchants, and thus consumers, from taking up such mobile payment options. That barrier is less of factor now.

Then there is the ambitious plan unveiled today by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) – the last bit of the puzzle, it hopes. This national payment infrastructure will let banks, merchants, telcos and other interested companies connect to the technology easily, instead of having them negotiate individual agreements.

A consortium of seven companies – DBS Bank, Citibank, payment operator EZ-Link, technology vendor Gemalto and the three telcos here – were awarded the contract to run this new project today, which means this is not a project like past projects, where the telcos each ran their own trials separately with their own payment partners. The latest endeavour is more organised and less of a Wild Wild West effort.

So, what’s in the way then? The most obvious is the lack of handsets supporting the tap-and-go technology.

In Apple-mad Singapore, neither the current iPhone 4 nor the upcoming iPhone 4S launching this week here comes with NFC out of the box. Samsung, another popular phone maker in Singapore, has also chosen to ship some of its high-end phones here without NFC built in, presumably because there does not seem to be enough demand for it.

This means most users here would have to resort to snapping on add-on jackets with the wireless chip embedded inside – a deal breaker especially for phone-proud Singapore users, unless this jacket is so pretty and attractive and costs little or nothing. Even so, this add-on may not give them all the functions, for example, like checking their stored value balance.

The other thing that Singapore absolutely has to get right is for the transit operators to be fully involved. If users are to start acquiring a habit of paying with their phones, they probably should start by paying for their trips every day. This is pretty much the same way ez-link cards have extended their usage from train stations to eateries near these stations and later to other outlets beyond, like printing shops and cafes, for example.

What the transport authorities and the companies they regulate have to get right is to avoid charging a hefty fee for phone makers and other technology partners to certify their devices to be ready for payment.

SingTel’s vice president for consumer products, Chan Yim Leng, said as much at today’s event, when she urged transport players not to impose overly expensive fees for certification, which will turn away handset makers if they find it not worth the cost to sell phone models with wireless chips inside.

She estimates that the wireless payment technology will take off here when the transit operators come onboard in 2013, hopefully when more phones with the supporting chip inside are on sale here.

But it’s telling that nobody at today’s event has a concrete answer to the number of devices that will ship in Singapore and support this tap and pay service, say, by next year.

In Japan, one of the few places where osaifu keitai, or wallet phones, have taken off, the technology has been helped by the country’s unique, closed market. There, a telco like NTT DoCoMo could tell handset makers to develop phones that support mobile wallet chips and software, so that services can be developed quickly and effectively.

In Tokyo, I could turn up at a karaoke chain outlet like Big Echo, tap my phone at a reader and my favourite songs would automatically come on screen. In Singapore, unfortunately, the rollout of the technology is at the mercy of worldwide trends, which companies in this small market find hard to shape.

There are some good signs, to be fair. A rejuvenated Nokia, a long-time proponent of NFC, might help get more compatible phones like the well-made N9 into the pockets of users here. Similarly, Blackberry is another phone maker keen to have NFC in its phones.

These chips, after all, can do a lot more than just payment. If you see a cinema poster, reporters were told today, you can tap your phone on it and be presented with a website of show times and payment options. You can later turn up at the cinema, tap your phone on a terminal to receive your tickets virtually. When your friend shows up, you may even put your phones together for you to send one virtual ticket to his phone.

Cool? Yes. In the future, for sure. The question is how long more users really have to wait, because the technology’s promises have been making their rounds for a while now. Even in tech-savvy Singapore, and despite improvements of late, proponents of these newfangled mobile wallets still have a lot of convincing to do in the coming months.

After wowing crowds at the CommunicAsia show in June, Nokia’s “all screen” smartphone is coming to a shop near you as probably the only one to run the Meego operating system.

The 16GB version of the N9 costs S$799, while the 64GB model will go for S$899 at all three telcos here – SingTel, StarHub and M1 – with “attractive” operator subsidies, according to Nokia Singapore today. It comes in black, cyan and magenta.

Singapore will be among a number of Asian countries to have the phone, according to CNet Asia. It is, however, not going to be sold in the United States.

Back in June, the N9′s single-piece polycarbonate design surprised many industry watchers with its clean lines (we thought it’d bring Nokia’s mojo back). Along with the design, the 3.9-inch AMOLED screen is scratch-resistant and offers some of the best contrast in small screens.

There’s also an 8-meg camera, along with near-field communications (NFC), should any service provider decide to work with Nokia to enable the phone to pay for burgers or even train tickets, for example.

That’s, of course, a little far-fetched considering that Nokia is going on Windows Phone in the coming months and the N9 is likely the only smartphone you’d see running Meego (there’s another slider version, but only developers have it).

When we tested the N9 in June, we were impressed with the smoothness of the Meego OS, which was put together through a partnership between Nokia and Intel last year. The bad news is Meego probably arrived a year too late.

Should you buy the N9 then? We’d say it is a reasonably priced phone with great design and a whole lot of gear thrown in. But if you are into downloading the latest apps, as many smartphone users are, then Meego is clearly a dead-end for users.

You’d be better off waiting a few months for Nokia to launch similar-looking phone running Windows Phone. Or, if you can’t wait, perhaps a Samsung Galaxy SII or HTC Sensation might fit the bill better.

Microsoft has sent its next iteration of the Windows Phone software to handset makers, as it wraps up the operating system’s features and software code ahead of a launch in Fall 2011.

The so-called Mango update, unveiled two months ago, promises a number of fixes and updates to the original Windows Phone, which looked great when launched late last year but had an uphill struggle taking on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS devices.

Android is expected to power nearly half the smartphones in the market by the end of next year, with a share of 49.2 per cent, according to research firm Gartner. Apple iOS devices will take up 18.9 per cent share, it predicted, while Mango-based devices will occupy 10.8 per cent of the market in 2012, up from just 5.6 per cent at the end of this year.

In a blog entry earlier in the day, Microsoft said it had sent the Mango software code to “manufacturing” and is in the process of optimising the software for telco and handset maker partners. It is also preparing to roll out updates to existing Windows Phone users – a boon to those who have selected the path less travelled among smartphone software.

What’s great about Mango? Generally, it should bring the OS on par with, or even make it better than, its rivals. The first thing it adds to the an already smooth Windows Phone experience is multi-tasking. Current phones simply log you off MSN Messenger when a call comes in, for example, but Mango should be able to keep processes running the background.

Another handy feature, which is an extension of the tile system that makes Windows Phone easy to pick up for smartphone newbies, is the Threads feature. This which enables users to see all their conversations on chat, IM and SMSes on one screen.

Instead of opening several apps, Windows Phone has always been about linking up relationships with a friend, say, the photos where he is tagged with. This deep integration – a bold, different approach to Android and iOS’s app-based approach – is what Microsoft hopes would win over many first-time smartphone users.

Already, the first devices look promising. Fujitsu Toshiba showed off one such model today, as did Nokia in a “leaked” video last month. Not all is rosy, for sure. Other handset makers such as HTC and Samsung, however, have found success with Android and seem to have put Windows Phone somewhat in the back burner. Whether they will now put Windows Phone ahead of their Android models is still a big question.

Another tougher question is how much market share Microsoft can crawl back. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, has bet big on building an ecosystem by going with Windows Phone and a quite spectacular device codenamed Sea Ray. He and Microsoft both need a big break with Mango in the upcoming holiday season, when folks will also be looking at an expected new iPhone 5 and several other updated Android models.

Nokia’s first Windows Phone device using the “Mango” version of the Microsoft software looks almost identical to the recently-launched N9, according to a seemingly leaked video of the Finnish phone maker’s CEO demonstrating the much-awaited gizmo to staff.

Codenamed Sea Ray, the new device is like a twin of the N9 that runs on Meego, which Stephen Elop showed off at Singapore on Tuesday, except that there are the three Windows Phone buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The video, which seems to be shot a day later, actually had Elop telling folks in the crowd to turn off recording devices so that the “super confidential” gizmo would not be leaked to any blogs.

In the end, we can’t be sure if it was deliberately leaked on the Hungarian website Technet.hu, but the details are interesting.

The browser looks like it is well capable of showing everything that a PC does, and the Xbox integration is much deeper, with your online character looking exactly as you’d have it on your game console at home.

In the demo, Nokia also showed the multi-tasking that is expected to be a main upgrade over the existing Windows phone OS. The company also appears to be set on loading Nokia maps and other re-installed apps that let users transfer their contacts from an old Nokia device to the new Windows device.

Check out the video here yourself:

UNWIRED, Singapore’s first and only independent wireless and mobile conference, returned for a second run last Thursday, and saw the attendance of top-level executives from the relevant industries from across Southeast Asia.

Opened by the Infocomm Development Authority’s assistance chief executive Khoong Hock Yun, it featured half a day’s discussion on hot topics affecting the industry and its users.

From Singapore’s expected move to next generation mobile broadband (4G/LTE) to the rise of mobile computing and winning features of a mobile operating system, the conference was packed with fresh insights from a who’s who list of the country’s industry experts, who fielded a number of questions from the audience.

Of particular interest was the first panel, which starred Chan Kin Hung (head of products and solutions at Starhub), Chan Yim Leng (vice-president for consumer products at SingTel), Raymond Tan (former CEO of Berca Global Access), and Remus Tan (director of mobile networks from Tellabs). The discussion centered on the upcoming 4^th generation of cellular wireless standards, and their rollout in Singapore.

Some telcos, for instance in the US, have branded their networks as 4G, but there is currently no system which meets the 4G standards set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), although there are viable candidates. True 4G standards will be able to deliver all content, from voice to multimedia, over IP and provide a completely different user experience.

SingTel and Starhub are already conducting LTE technical trials, but the key driver, according to StarHub’s Chan Kin Hung, is devices that support LTE. SingTel’s Chan Yim Leng also cited the importance of establishing a regulatory environment as an important factor to get things going. The idea is thus for telcos to jointly roll out LTE with manufacturers and governments.

What about WiMAX, a competing wireless standard to LTE? According to Raymond Tan, the issue in many developing countries like Indonesia, where “outside of big cities, the closest thing to mobile broadband is GPRS”, is not speed, but stable throughput. WiMAX cannot provide spectacular speeds, but it can deliver stable rates of 1 to 2 Mbps, he said. Both telco panelists expressed that Singapore has no use of WiMAX, and that 3G is a more suitable standard locally.

The conference then moved on to the rise of mobile computing with a second panel made up of hardware makers. Spiros Nikolakopoulos, Motorola’s vice-president for mobile devices for Asia, called the new trend “converged computing”. Indeed, the rise of tablet devices has many people using computers when many have not even owned a desktop in their lives, he noted.

Moving forward, it is agreed that two largest issues facing mobile computing the battery life of devices and consumer education in the devices’ usage. As of today, most smartphones can barely last a day in usage. Consumers will also benefit from tips on how to get the most out of their new toys.

What will a winning mobile OS look like in the future? That was the topic for the last panel. Less than a year ago, iOS was the dominant mobile OS; now that crown belongs to Android.

If Marc Hopstein, Microsoft’s lead for Windows Mobile, APAC, is to be believed, people-centric communication and the ability to build an ecosystem around the OS are important.

But to a hardware manufacturer like Samsung, “building brand loyalty, regardless of platform” is the most important factor, said Winston Goh, product marketing manager of Samsung Asia. Customers must identify with the brand and stick with it even if they decide to jump platforms, and this is something hardware manufacturers must work towards.

The day culminated in a networking session at the hotel bar, with the first round bought by one of UNWIRED’s main sponsors Tellabs. (Never say no to free beer!) It was enlightening to listen to speakers who would not otherwise talk about what their companies are up to and what’s next for the industry.

See you next year!

Here’s the funny thing about Nokia phones: Pictures never do them justice. You can’t know how a Nokia phone really feels in real life just by looking at photos, and this sentiment is best exemplified in the Finnish mobile giant’s newly announced phones, the E6 and X7. Both phones will be launched with the latest version of Symbian, which features of slew of improvements that could possibly bring it up to par with other current smartphone platforms.

Techgoondu had the chance to give these two babies a quick hands-on and came away impressed. Put simply, these are Nokia’s best phones yet, and it’s not an overstatement to claim that they are the Symbian phones we’ve all been waiting for.

Symbian Anna

Both the E6 and the X7 come with the latest version of Symbian installed. Nicknamed Anna, it comes with a slew of performance and usability enhancements. For instance, the icons have been redesigned for consistency, text input has been improved, the browser loads faster, and Nokia claims performance enhancements of up to 25 percent.

Symbian Anna also offers a strong set of new features aimed at business users in particular, including true enterprise grade security with hardware accelerated encryption, and new e-mail features such as full meeting request support.

And with Symbian comes the usual goodies, including Ovi Maps with free global drive and walk navigation. The Ovi Maps application has been improved with a search function and new public transport routes. Along with a new music and video player, this is the best version of Symbian yet. At least it feels up to par with the rest of the smartphone platforms in terms of features and user-friendliness.

Symbian Anna will also be available as an over-the-air update for Nokia N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 devices.

Nokia X7

The Nokia X7 has an unmistakable striking design. The smooth Gorilla glass, chiseled corners which double as speaker grills and the curved stainless steel back which feels remarkably smooth and ergonomic is all quite signature Nokia.

The back of the phone is home to an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash capable of taking 720p videos, and the front sports a 4-inch AMOLED display, which is bright and rather breathtaking despite the relatively low pixel count (640 x 360). The capacitive touch screen is also the most responsive one I’ve ever tried on a Nokia phone.

Nokia is positioning the X7 as an entertainment device, and to affirm this principle, the device will be pre-loaded with two free games: Asphalt 5 and Galaxy on Fire. Multimedia playback in the browser is enabled with Flash Lite 4. Best of all, the phone comes with a stereo headset with active noise cancellation. For all your music and movies, the X7 supports microSD cards of up to 32GB.

The X7 has a recommended retail price of 360 Euros (local price not available yet), and comes in either Dark Steel or Light Steel colours. You can get it from end-June onwards.

Nokia E6

The Nokia E6 is a business smartphone which looks a lot like all the other business smartphones Nokia has released in recent years. It has a candy bar form factor with a full QWERTY keyboard, and dedicated keys to your home screen, email, calendar and contacts.

But here’s what gives the E6 a one-up over its competition: the 2.46-inch AMOLED screen (640 x 480) is actually a very responsive touch screen, which makes navigation a lot easier than the traditional D-pad. This form factor could just be the holy grail of no-nonsense business smartphones.

Pre-installed productivity applications include QuickOffice, World Traveler, JoikuSpot Premium, F-Secure Mobile Security. In addition, the Ovi Store is also home to some useful business apps, such as Salesforce.

For those business tech jargon enthusiasts out there, the E6 is packed full of enterprise functionality, including support for intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft SharePoint Server, business grade security solutions such as device lock and wipe, secure intranet access and device management, hardware-accelerated device encryption, and Cisco SSL VPN support in addition to rich IPSec VPN compatibility.

Other specs include an 8-megapixel camera, WiFi b/g/n, USB hosting, 8GB of mass storage with support for microSD cards of up to 32GB. The E6 will come in black and silver at launch, with a white version later down the road, and will has a very reasonable recommended retail price of S$570. It is projected to launch in early June.

Will it bite?

There’s no doubt that the X7 and the E6 are good products, in terms of both hardware and software. Their prices are also very affordable, unlike the outrageously priced E7. Nokia again reiterated their commitment to the Symbian for the foreseeable future, and will continue to release updates to the platform even after their first Windows Phone 7 devices hit the market.

But in all honesty, these are the phones that Nokia should have released last year, or even in 2009. If it did, then the E6 and the X7 would have stood a good chance at fighting the competition. Still, if you’re in the market for a new mid-range smartphone, they are worthy of consideration.

And like I mentioned earlier, it pays to try these phones in real life. Get down to a Nokia store, play with one, and let us know what you think!

Just days after Nokia and Microsoft joined hands in a bid to rein in the momentum that Google and Apple have rolled up in the smartphone market, the first piece of bad news has hit home – the first Nokia-branded Windows Phone devices won’t be out until 2012.

The news came from a Finnish interview with Nokia’s board chairman, Jorma Ollila, who contradicted his CEO Stephen Elop’s earlier estimation that the first such phones would appear by the end of this year.

Make no mistake about that: in a year, Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS could be so far out of sight that it would take something truly amazing or “magical”, to borrow Steve Jobs’ line, to catch up with the two current smartphone innovators.

More importantly, would consumers still care for the Nokia brand then? As new handsets and tablets emerge from the Mobile World Congress halls this week, users are already looking forward to dual-core phones running on Android Gingerbread, while tablets from HTC, Samsung and LG continue to push the envelop with the built-for-tablet Android Honeycomb OS.

What will Nokia be putting on stores this year? Symbian and Meego are not going to cut it – if Nokia itself doesn’t think so, how can it convince consumers to part with their money for devices running what is essentially end-of-life software?

In fact, by hedging so heavily on Nokia, Microsoft also risks alienating its important Windows Phone 7 partners and further dampening its chances of expanding market share.

HTC, Samsung and LG all put out great Windows gizmos last year with hardware that is no worse than any they’d put on an Android phone. How will they prioritise and market Windows Phone 7 now?

If they decide it’s time to shift even more resources towards Android, then 2011 could be very depressing for Microsoft. It may have nothing much new on the shelves this year if Nokia delays its first Windows handsets until 2012.

In the past, you’d expect Nokia to roar back with a comeback gizmo, like how it finally came out with a first clamshell phone in 2004, following the success of rival handsets. But the company is suffering from inertia – a deadly thing in the tech industry – after seeing a chain of ventures like Comes With Music and Meego fall by the side.

To be fair, this year was always going to be a long, chilly one for Nokia. Joining hands with Microsoft hasn’t exactly warmed up its hopes.

In the few hours after technology behemoths Microsoft and Nokia unveiled one of the most dramatic partnerships in years to take on rivals Google and Apple, terms like MicroKia, Noksoft and NoWin have quickly become popular sarcastic phrases for tech pundits predicting a doomed marriage.

As if the two new allies needed reminding, the jokes are a measure of how uncertain the future is for two companies playing catchup in the smartphone game, despite a deal that seems, on paper, to be joining their still considerable powers to crawl back their rivals’ leads.

The challenge is steep. Android is riding high in both market and mind share for fast-growing smartphone sales, while Apple’s strong brand keeps it high on many users’ wishlists despite being overtaken by the Google smartphone operating system last year.

In comparison, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software, which Nokia will be adopting in its phones this year as it gradually casts away its self-made Symbian OS, is way down the charts in number five, with only a small hold on the market.

The best news for Nokia fans will be that the company is finally ditching the dated Symbian OS, which has been the biggest problem holding the company back from launching a successful competitor to Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S.

Notably, the changes were unveiled yesterday by new CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft man, who is also the first non-Finnish to run the one-time paper mill firm which transformed into the world’s biggest phone maker in the 1990s.

So far, his deeds have matched his words. Following an internal memo to staff describing how the company is facing a jump into icy waters as their floating platform burnt unabated, he has done what many a Finnish leader at Nokia has failed – cast aside pride and face some hard truths.

Just five months ago, outgoing executive and long-time Nokia stalwart Anssi Vanjoki had said that using Android on Nokia phones would be like Finnish boys peeing in their trousers to keep warm in winter – a temporary solution that made things worse in the long term.

Vanjoki is gone now, as are the Finnish analogies. And Elop has even hinted that the centre of gravity for Nokia could be in Silicon Valley in future, instead of Scandinavia – something unthinkable just months ago. Among other changes: the move from Nokia’s own Ovi online services to hook up with Microsoft’s ecosystem that includes Xbox Live, for example.

Will the changes matter now? Or are they too late to help Nokia catch up with the leaders?

Lessons from the past are not encouraging. One example is Sony, which was bypassed by Apple in the MP3 player wars in the noughties because it was mired in proprietary technologies and corporate infighting. The Walkman maker is still struggling now to gain the same mojo it had as the top electronics maker in the 1980s and 1990s.

Yet another example, this time closer home, is Palm. The company will forever be remembered as the one which put a PDA in many users’ hands, bringing in a new era of mobile computing in the 1990s, just like how Nokia will be seen as a driving force in the same period as cellphones gained widespread use.

But neither company changed fast enough as the market changed. Palm could not come up  with PDAs that offered colour screens, MP3 playback and wireless connectivity, when competitors rushed ahead to wow users. Similarly, Nokia was slow to compete with the iPhone’s touch-screen capabilities when it was launched in 2007, instead putting out dated Symbian phones that fell further behind.

Questions are thus inevitable for the Nokia-Microsoft deal.  For sure, the ready-made Microsoft Windows Phone software, which has been getting great reviews from users, will give Nokia a shot in the arm and help save time and money developing a new OS on its own – something that it has failed to do in more than a year with a joint venture called Meego with chipmaker Intel.

But the first question is whether users will be receptive to Nokia phones running Windows Phone. Despite launching Windows Phone 7 to generally good response late last year, Microsoft had only 4.2 per cent of the worldwide smartphone sales in 2010, down from 8.7 per cent in 2009, according to research firm Gartner.

Meanwhile, Android has grabbed number two spot by gobbling up 22.7 per cent of the market in 2010, up from just 3.9 per cent in 2009. Nokia’s Symbian, while still top in 2010, has lost share by close to 10 percentage points in the same period, down from 46.9 per cent to 37.6 per cent, and may well be overtaken in 2011 by Android as the most popular smartphone OS.

Sure, Nokia is still the leader in overall phone sales, which include so-called feature phones that do not have as sophisticated Internet features, and it could conceivably use its brand to up-sell Windows Phone 7-based devices to these users, particularly in its strong bases like India.

But the question is whether Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 have enough momentum behind them to push devices into the hands of users. In terms of apps, for example, Apple’s iOS and Google Android have far more in their respective stores to bring users onboard.

This is also where you question why Nokia has not chosen to go with Android, which would seem to give it the instant lift it seeks, through the plentiful apps as well as users who are already happy with the underlying interface. Seeing how well Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson have competed with their Android phones in the past year, you’d have expected Nokia to jump onboard a platform that is growing at an astounding 888.8 per cent year over year.

Another issue is how the partnership will pan out. Microsoft has set strict conditions on how its operating system can be customised, for example, telling long-time partner HTC to limit the use of its Sense software interface on its Windows Phone devices.

If Nokia doesn’t customise its Windows Phone devices enough, it will end up as another cookie cutter phone maker, competing on price and looks rather than any real innovation. That’s bad news for the long term.

On the other hand, it will be to Microsoft’s detriment if it focuses too much on Nokia and ignores the HTCs, Samsungs and LGs of the world, which despite putting Android on a higher priority, have more momentum than Nokia over the past year and are crucial to Windows Phone’s success.

If this sounds like damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, it is. Yet, neither Microsoft nor Nokia can afford failure, which will almost certainly guarantee that they’d be so far behind as to be impossible to ever catch up again with Google and Apple.

The last thing that neither company wants is a partnership of two falling giants in a death hug. But if the two heavyweights do not quickly come up with a “must-have” phone in a market that declares winners and losers every quarter, their combined gravitational pull could just drag them down faster together.

Nokia will also integrate their existing ecosystem into Microsoft’s. For example, Ovi Maps will become a core part of Bing’s mapping services and Ovi’s apps will be, through some way, brought into the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Watch the following press conference:

The partnership has provoked a tonne of negative criticisms. Most users and observers are shaking their heads, saying that Nokia should have gone with Android instead. Nokia’s stock price seems to agree, taking a nose dive shortly after the announcement.

But while we were hard at work trying to Photoshop a mash-up of Nokia phones with the Windows Phone 7 user-interface to go along with an article announcing that very piece of news above, Engadget obtained images of what could well be the very first Nokia WP7 handsets!

As you can see from the picture, the hardware design is distinctly Nokia. The chiseled back and striking colours look gorgeous. We would have preferred a physical keyboard, though.

Still, keep in mind that these pictures are merely conceptual. But we like to think that “conceptual” means “anything goes”, so this phone might well have a 2GHz dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM and 80GB of storage. Oh and the screen looks like it has a resolution of 1,280 x 800 – can you hear the Retina Display crying?

Jokes aside, would you buy a Nokia-branded Windows Phone 7?

(via Engadget)