But if Nokia can't have a say in what display resolution or camera to ship, how can they ever hope to produce _anything_ that differentiates them from other WP7 licensees?
Value-added services such as Comes with Music and Free Maps Forever doesn't help here (or at leat it hasn't in the past). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
But the number one way to sell more Nokia Windows Phones? Get on the other U.S. networks besides AT&T. AT&T is still the king for iPhone but Sprint and Verizon combined sell about as many iPhones as AT&T does, so Windows Phone is missing half the market by only really being on AT&T. (Yes, there are other Windows Phones, but no serious handsets outside of AT&T.)
http://wmpoweruser.com/intel-android-dual-core-so-poor-havin...
tl;dr, Thanks to good software engineering and lower specs, you get a phone that is completely up-to-date software wise at a great price point.
http://www.intomobile.com/2012/06/04/uk-nokia-lumia-710-now-...
Because the entire smartphone industry seems to have been whittled down to a meaningless hardware spec race by ignorant fools. Doesn't have quad core ? Crap phone. No 5 inch screen ? Old hat.
Despite all of this, it's the worst phone I've ever used. The software was so dire that at one point, phone calls couldn't be made - even where other, older, Nokias could. I actually had to download Ovi, their app store. It wasn't preinstalled! It constantly froze, the touchscreen interface sucks, it's unresponsive even when it does work...
Nokia cannot do smart phone software properly. Here's hoping that Microsoft can do better, but I can assure you that if they do not, Nokia phones won't mean a damn to mostly anyone.
(Not only has the iPhone always used it, not only was it the first phone to ever use it, Steve Jobs was the one who convinced Corning to invent the stuff, if his biography is to be believed.)
As to why the fixed resolution, my guess is it’s reflective of MSFT’s desired positioning for WP as sitting in the middle of a Mobile OS spectrum; between iOS (totally locked-down, fully integrated hardware/software) and Android (completely open, fragmented hardware/software). In a sense, I guess that’s where Windows has always been, though with WP, it leans closer to the iOS side. Given that, having strict requirements, like that on screen resolution, go towards providing a consistent experience across devices (regardless of OEM) and ensuring all apps work and display the same on all devices, making development easier as well. The way I see it is you get iOS consistency and security (and some limitations) with the broad device/form-factor selection of Android (less the fragmentation); though, as evident by the resolution limitation, there are of course some compromises made with this approach.
Also, rumor has it [1] that these limitations are largely being relaxed with Windows Phone 8 (aka ‘Apollo’) and the OS will support 4 resolutions. I believe MSFT is holding an event to announce details on WP8 in a week or two.
[1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/windows-phone-8-details-...
Skype effectively can't work on WP7.x. It is an almost useless app as a function of the limitations that Microsoft has imposed because of the hardware that they chose.
In fact that is true throughout the platform -- the sort of powerful, feature rich apps on other platforms simply don't exist on WP because they are strangled by the limitations of the platform.
As a better-than-featurephone email device WP7.x is excellent. And yes, if you focus on flipping between home screen sections the performance is excellent, as it was on WebOS devices. That isn't what people generally use their device for, however.
Skype is fairly poor on WP7.x I agree, but it does the job for voice calls in the interim while Microsoft work on making the carriers into even dumber pipes than they are already.
I think it would be wise not to underestimate Microsoft's vision, even if they do seem a little chaotic at times.
I wouldn’t say any of the new Nokia Windows Phones (Lumia 710, 800, 900) use ‘old’ hardware at all. You have to realize the WP OS currently doesn’t support dual/quad-core CPUs and has a fixed screen resolution (800x480); so if that’s what you’re referencing, I’d say that’s not a case of slow development cycles but a limitation of the OS that Nokia must abide by.
And what’s the value in just looking at something purely based on hardware? What should matter is how it performs. WP is optimized to work with the minimal hardware specs MSFT has called-for and is remarkably snappy with it's single-core processers, and gets great battery life, so how would ‘newer’ hardware add-value here?
So, given the above, what ‘cutting-edge’ tech would you have them add? Resolution aside, the Lumia 900 has one of the best screens around, it’s 4G, I’d say it has the best offline navigation around (Nokia owns Navteq after all), and I’d say the phone's design itself is pretty cutting-edge as well.