Nokia’s new Windows Phone is awesome. But I won’t buy it.

Nope, won’t do it. I don’t need it. Honest. My Samsung Focus is still a great phone, works brilliantly and of course is just over a year old.  And yet.. here I am thinking I want Nokia’s new phone. Why? Because the one thing that most phones out there don’t have right now is great design and great build quality.  The current crop of smartphones have dubious materials at best, even my current phone feels like it would shatter or snap with some effort.  My Blackberry phones were all pretty solidly built, but pretty they were not.   And even some of the more solid HTC phones still don’t have much variation from model to model.

Cue the Lumia 800.

It’s absolutely gorgeous.  It has this slightly raised and curved screen and the body is made of one  piece of coloured polycarbonate, so scratching it will not be as noticeable as in other phones.  It’s just one of the best looking phones I’ve ever seen.  The specs aren’t cutting edge as cutting edge however. A single core processor, no front facing camera. which admittedly, in the case of the front facing camera, isn’t up to top of the line phone standards.  I’m not so concerned about the processor as Windows Phone’s Mango OS runs better on 1 processor that all Android phone do on dual core.

Nokia claims they only had about 6 months to push this phone out and it’s a brilliant device given that the Nokia/Microsoft deal was only signed in April 2011.   The time frame is probably why Nokia isn’t even bringing this model to North America this year.  Expectations are early next year with an announcement at CES in January, with more new Nokia windows phones in 2012 and we’d be impressed by what’s coming.

I hope not. Because I’ll want them all.