Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s fighting an uphill battle to retain its community of developers as it switches focus to Windows Phone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Tools from what was a joint Symbian / MeeGo smartphone strategy unified under the Qt development framework. As such, Espoo just notified its Launchpad members that they’ll be receiving about $1,000 in free hardware in the form of Nokia’s new flagship E7 QWERTY slider and a “Nokia WP7 device” just as soon as it’s available. Nokia’s also tossing in a few other incentives like free access to the next Nokia World / Nokia Developer Summit, three months free tech support for all Nokia technologies (limited to 10 tickets), a free User Experience evaluation for one app, business development assistance, and help publishing apps on the Ovi store. This is also great news for us as the chance of seeing leaked pics of that first Nokia WP7 device have just increased dramatically.

Nokia giving developers free E7 and Nokia WP7 handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In an interview with Nokia VP Niklas Savander at Mobile World Congress, Phone Scoop probed a bit more on the company’s plans to rework the Windows Phone user experience — a user experience that’s been essentially closed to OEMs thus far apart from the occasional tile here or added menu item there. As we already heard from Stephen Elop, Nokia’s essentially being granted carte blanche for deep customization of the platform, though Savander says that it’s likely only to do that by pushing changes back to Microsoft for inclusion in future releases that would be available to every manufacturer, not just Nokia. What’s the logic in that? Well, he says that they don’t want to do anything to the software that would put the company at risk of getting delayed updates — not unlike what’s been happening with skinned UIs in the Android world for the past year and a half. Good call, Niklas. Meanwhile, more rapidly-deployed customizations would be relatively superficial, probably along the lines of HTC Hub if we had to guess. All told, it seems like the strategy is going to put even more pressure on Nokia to deliver differentiation and innovation on the hardware side — and to be fair, they’ve risen to that challenge plenty of times in the last decade, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Nokia says it can customize the heck out of Windows Phone, won’t do anything that would delay updates originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been available since October in beta form, but Microsoft has just turned its Windows Phone 7 Connector product to a shiny shade of gold, giving Mac owners a solid (if not Zune-free) option for hooking up their Windows Phones without firing up Boot Camp. We’re told there aren’t any new features in the latest build worth noting, so you’ll get the same options as before: media synchronization, iTunes compatibility, and support for Windows Phone firmware updates. A full Zune client would be choice, of course — but we’ll take it. And you can take it, too: it’s now in the Mac App Store.

[Thanks, Hayden]

Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac OS goes gold, hits the Mac App Store originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In our sitdown with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop out at Mobile World Congress today, we brought up something that had come up during his press conference and Q&A session last Sunday evening — that the company’s partnership with Microsoft would generate “billions, not millions” of dollars’ worth of value. This quickly morphed into an internet-wide story that Microsoft would basically be cutting a ten-figure check to Espoo in exchange for launching devices running its platform, but the reality is that Elop never said anything close to that: in fact, when we specifically asked how the money was flowing and who would be seeing black ink upfront, Elop said on no certain terms that they’re not talking specifics of the deal. He goes on to say that it’s a “very balanced relationship,” which would indicate to us that there wasn’t any massive cash transfer to kick this thing off. Regardless, the fact remains: at no time did he say Microsoft was paying to make it happen — and considering Nokia’s needs, we wouldn’t be surprised if this was nearly a zero-sum transaction: Microsoft gets a huge boost in the platform’s profile along with some services it needs, while Nokia gets a platform that it wasn’t able to make itself. Makes sense to us.

Debunk: Elop never said Microsoft is paying Nokia billions of dollars to use Windows Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola may have once said that it was “open” to developing Windows Phone 7 devices, but it looks like that possibility is now a whole lot less likely than it already was. Speaking at Mobile World Congress this week, Motorola’s corporate vice president of software and services product management, Christy Wyatt, said that while she would never say never, she doesn’t envision Motorola using Microsoft’s OS, and added that “it’s not something we’re entertaining now.” Wyatt went on to say that “there were a bunch of things that we believed about Microsoft that ended up not being true, mostly about what functionality it would have in what period of time,” and further explained that Motorola is looking for “an opportunity to create unique value,” and it doesn’t feel it can do that on a “closed platform” like Windows Phone 7. Obviously, it does feel like it can create unique value with Android, and Wyatt dismissed concerns about a potential duopoly between Android and Apple, saying that “It could be a duopoly on platforms but I’m not sure why having another OS is a good or bad thing.” Incidentally, she also said that the upgrade process for Motorola’s Android phones has “humbled” the company a bit, and she promises improvements in the future, noting that “we were better with Froyo then with Éclair and we’ll be even better with Gingerbread.”

Motorola exec nearly rules out Windows Phone completely, laments ‘closed platform’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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