Videos of the first Nokia handset to use Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system have hit the Internet after Nokia CEO demonstrated the phone to staff earlier this week. Codenamed "Sea Ray," the device is a Windows Phone-powered version of the Maemo/MeeGo-driven N9 that was announced earlier this week.
The N9 looked great, and so does Sea Ray. A deep black, featureless glass front, single piece polycarbonate body, and a 8 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss-branded lens; the only obvious differences are the tell-tale camera button and slightly different placement of the LED flash. No mention was made of the release date—though we know it will be no earlier than fall, since the phone will ship with Windows Phone "Mango"—nor do we know if the phone will come in the same range of colors as the N9. The Sea Ray demonstration unit was black; N9s will be available in black, magenta, and cyan. (Magenta is my pick, recapturing the spirit of the hot pink RAZR.)
The video, made yesterday, doesn't show off the phone too much; most of it is a look at Mango itself, rather than the hardware. But the mere existence of the video is something of an oddity. Before showing off the phone, Elop said, several times, that those present should stop taking videos and pictures, and that he didn't want to see the phone showing up on the blogosphere.
The video that leaked, however, is clearly professional; filmed by a fixed camera on a tripod (not a handheld cellphone), with clean cuts between different video feeds. This strongly suggests that the stream was intended for internal distribution.
As such, there's more than a hint of this being an "official unofficial" leak. Many of the responses to the N9 were along the lines of "Wow, if only I could get that with Mango!"—this could be Nokia's way of saying "You can!"
