[Windows Phone 7 General] Captiosus:
Sorry, I'm just not seeing the relevance of a NOKIA-Microsoft collaboration.

Here's why:

There's no doubt that NOKIA is huge in Asia, Africa and Europe. But in Asia, WP7 will be limited until Mango, due to language support. NOKIA WP7 devices will not, in all likelihood, start appearing until Mango in late 2011, early 2012. Additionally, phones in the Asian market have always been slightly ahead of the curve over Western phones and a very tough nut to crack. They seem pretty happy with the phones they have (of course, in China, they have to love the phones they have, but that's another story).

By the time NOKIA gets their first device out, the existing OEMs are going to have a full year head start and will likely be bringing out their second generation of WP7 devices. What, exactly, is NOKIA going to bring to the table to differentiate their year-late models from the OEMs who have been working with the platform for a year? Little-to-nothing, I suspect.

Build quality? N8ter hit the nail on the head in that regard.

In Europe, arguably NOKIA's largest market, Microsoft isn't exactly loved. Every move they make is scrutinized by the European Union.

No disrespect intended to the international community here, but Microsoft is a very North American centric company. Look at how they handle the Xbox brand. Nearly every promotion is limited to the US and Canada, with several promotions even excluding Canada. One of the most common complaints on Major Nelson's blog is that Microsoft favors the United States and treats everyone else like second class consumers. This trend continued on with WP7 which released with Bing - great in the US and Canada, but abysmal in Europe, Africa and Asia - and very limited language support.

So we have NOKIA who is going to be a year late, trying to play catch up, with HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell, and Microsoft who is either always under the microscope in European Union nations or who acts nonchalantly about countries outside the United States both using a platform that will still be trying to catch up with iOS and Android, both of which look to have new iterations on new devices by year end, as well.

Just not seeing where this is going to help either company. No one in Asia is going to go overboard for a WP7 device and no one in the United States and Canada is going to want to buy a first generation Nokia WP7 phone when second generation phones by more recently established OEMs will be available.

Sorry but the two NOKIA phones as shown are outright UGLY. As for build quality, my LG Quantum is the first phone I haven't immediately put in a case. It's a solid, sleek phone, if not a bit heavy.

But I have to question your comment on the camera. I'm finding very few phones, except for several of the most recent (i.e. HTC Thunderbolt), have cameras with more mpix than WP7 devices. In fact, if I go back and look at the phones that released in the same time frame as WP7 (late 2010), most of them had either 3.2 mpix cameras or 5.0, similar to the ones in WP7. Should they put 8 mpix cameras in the new ones? Sure, but NOKIA won't be the only ones doing that. HTC, LG, and Samsung will as well.