Yesterday afternoon, at 15:00 PST to be precise, Nokia held a press conference to unveil the Lumia 900. Now I didn’t get a chance to watch that event because I’m (thankfully) not at CES this year, busting my ass like the rest of the IntoMobile team to bring you up to minute breaking new coverage. That being said, had Nokia opted to live stream the event there’s a strong I wouldn’t have even bothered staying up till 01:00 Helsinki time just to watch a supersized Lumia 800 being announced. Luckily for me though, Nokia has decided to upload their press conference to YouTube. It’s just a hair over 23 minutes long and it features Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop; Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer; and Kevin Shields, a former Microsoft employee turned Nokia Vice President. I’m delighted to say that Nokia fed Kevin Shields a few vicodins, because the last time he spoke publicly, which was at Nokia World in late October last year, he was the textbook definition of an employee who had far too much enthusiasm, to the point of severe annoyance.
Strangely enough, the video ends right when it’s time for Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility, to say a few words. Part of me thinks that this wasn’t done intentionally, that someone at Nokia made a mistake with iMovie, but another part of me thinks that this is the same Nokia we’ve always known, the Nokia that doesn’t care about operators and instead pushes their brand above everyone else’s. It’s too early to say how strong AT&T’s relationship with Nokia is, and to be honest I’m not really going to care until both companies grow a pair of balls and announce a price tag and ship date for the Lumia 900. Until that happens, the jumbo Lumia 800 is nothing more than a smartphone that lives in the heart’s and minds of the few Windows Phone fans living in North America.