While the upcoming launch of the Nokia Lumia 900 will be AT&T’s largest by far users may want to be wary about how future-proof the device will be.
I visited Nokia’s sparkling headquarters in Sunnyvale to discuss the upcoming launch of the Lumia 900 and I asked how confident can people be that this handset will be able to get the next major Windows Phone update, which many are expecting toward the end of the year.
“We don’t know yet,” Chris Searight, Nokia marketing launch manager, said. He also added that the company is really anxious to “know what comes next.”
I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he misspoke, as the leaked details we think we know about Windows Phone 8 reportedly came from a Microsoft video to Nokia partners. The companies have also said many times that there is a “unique” relationship between them, so you would hope that Nokia would know what the deal is. Or at the very least, it would know how to message the uncertainty in a better way.
If this confusion remains, I’ll really have a hard time recommending the Lumia 900, even though it’s shaping up to be a great device. The specs look pretty good and in our brief time with it at CES 2012, we came away impressed.
But the upcoming Windows Phone 8 (or whatever it’s finally called) is supposed to be a major update that brings a lot of new features, adds security and changes many fundamental elements of the platform, presumably for the better. There’s always something better down the road but when you buy the Lumia 900, you’re buying into this ecosystem for at least 18 months (the average length of handset ownership). It’s kind of crappy to know that your device may not be able to update to the latest and greatest in just six months or so.
To be fair, the confusion doesn’t mean that it won’t get the update. I’d also go out on a limb and say that even if it just ran Windows Phone Mango, the Lumia 900 would still be a solid handset in 15 months or so.
It’s just not a great first step for a company and a platform which are trying to mount a significant comeback.
If you’re curious about the Lumia 900, check out our video of it from CES 2012 below.