Rumor
Nokia may not use Metro for Windows Phone
Kip Kniskern over at LiveSide found an interesting answer to an equally interesting question as to whether or not Nokia will leave the Windows Phone user interface alone.
Someone left this question on a Nokia blog post where they announced Symbian development would be passed on to Accenture. This comment was translated, so it may not make perfect sense.
Is Nokia, intended to make the changes to the user interface level, unlike other manufacturers WP7? The same way as Android, Samsung TouchWiz UI and Sense HTC from? It would be nice to see in future Nokia handsets WP7 discipline of the phone interface.
The comment was answered, or at least referred to, in a video interview but it is in Finnish. In the interview Kai Oistamo discuses Nokia’s ability to improve upon the Windows Phone platform. Arctic Startup translated his discussion.
And finally, Nokia is able to modify the Windows Phone environment to their needs. Essentially this means that you might not see the boxed home screen on a Nokia Windows Phone anytime. This was also confirmed in another comment by a Nokia representative (in Finnish) by stating that “Nokia will not adopt Windows Phone environment as it is today”.Öistämö stated that Nokia is free to modify the environment as they wish, but it has to remain as a single environment from the developer point of view. Interesting comments and possibly a signal of things to come in the future.
Well, that’s interesting. While we already knew their definitive agreement allowed them exclusive rights to the Windows Phone platform, but there surely has to be some limits.
As translated the platform must be the same from a developers “point of view” whether it is a Nokia phone or any “normal” Windows Phone environment. That means there will still be some form of Live Tiles, and some sort of user interface that resembles Metro.
Nokia expects to ship their phones running Windows Phone in volume by next year, though we could get lucky and see some before the end of this year.