Peter Bright: ‘Where Oh Where Is Windows Phone 8?’

Peter Bright, Ars Technica:

But what was a little surprising is that there were no handsets for the press to play with. There were some demonstration units carefully attended by PR personnel, and while we were able to get kind of close to them, the general rule was “you can look but you can’t touch.” This isn’t unprecedented, but it’s a little unusual for such a high-priority smartphone launch. Touching the phones, seeing how they feel in the hand, checking that their UI is nice and fast, these are all important parts of a smartphone launch.

The problem Nokia has appears to be not so much its hardware; it’s the software. Windows Phone 8 isn’t done yet. Not only is Windows Phone 8 not done, it’s not even public yet.

Hence the faked sample video and photos. The hell of it is, the Lumia 920 camera does seem to work remarkably well in low light situations. But the software’s not done for it to shoot video.

This seems like a disaster in the making for Nokia.

★ Tuesday, 11 September 2012