One of the main reasons people still prefer to buy a Nokia rather than something from a competitor is their consistently amazing build quality. For all the potshots we like to take at Symbian, the death of MeeGo, and the decision to bet the farm on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, there’s something to be said about how dependable the hardware that comes from the Finnish handset maker can be, so call us confused as to the latest bit of news from Digitimes that says Compal Communications will be building the first round of Nokia Windows Phones. In other words: despite the fact that Nokia has factories all over the world, cranking out at least 1 million devices every 24 hours, the world’s largest mobile phone vendor has opted to outsource their production of Windows Phones. The conspiracy theorists out there will try to spin this as some sort of attempt by Stephen Elop to get rid of Nokia’s handset unit, but a more realistic explanation is that Nokia wants to get to market as fast as possible with Windows Phone, and the amount of time it would have taken to retool their existing factories would mean they’d miss their self imposed Q4 2011 deadline.
We already know what the first Nokia Windows Phone will look like, it’s basically the N9, but with a camera button and Qualcomm hardware inside, so now we just have to wait for two key pieces of information: price and availability date. By this time next year we’re confident that every single Nokia Windows Phone will be built by Nokia themselves, but for now you’re just going to have to deal with this slight hick up. Don’t get us wrong, for all we know Compal will produce amazing Nokia devices, but we can’t help that it just feels like cheating.