Fan Concept of WP7-powered Nokia Handset Blows Minds, Could Actually Work

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While there has been a lot of controversy regarding Nokia ditching Symbian and hooking up with WP7, fans of the upstart OS know how potentially awesome the combination could be. Nokia is a respected hardware innovator in the mobile industry whose only nearest competitors are Apple, and further down the line comes Motorola and a host of others. Combine that quality craftsmanship with Microsoft’s high-concept, blazing fast OS and you have potential for a huge success.

Fans are having difficulty containing their excitement, and WPCentral stumbled upon one of the sharpest looking “Microkia” phone concepts yet. Over at My Nokia Blog, Peter Lackman submitted these designs and went on to explain in an email about what inspired him. Mostly it was the news that Nokia had the capability to drastically customize the UI of WP7 as they saw fit and while he was aware the company has mostly decided against it, he decided to just run with it.

One element Lackman would like to see added by Nokia or Microsoft is support for a themes system similar to the one found in Symbian. He has created two samples: “Blue Leather” (above) and “Summer” (below). In these two themes, he also details some added features to WP7 like more size options for live tiles, custom backgrounds that expand to both the Start page and the list, adding sorting features to the app list, and collapsible category bars within that. “Blue Leather” looks only slightly different from what we see today, but “Summer” adds even more visual effects like making the live tiles into ‘squircles’. Lackman even went above and beyond and implemented these concept pictures into live shots of the Nokia N8, offering a realistic look at what these customizations would look like on an actual phone. Those pictures can be found at the source link below.

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Overall this is just awesome work by Lackman and shows that WP7 has plenty of room to expand its UI features even further. If you’re interested in submitting your own ‘Microkia’ concept phone, My Nokia Blog has launched their own contest called “My Dream Nokia” so check out those details at the source. As a frequent photoshopper myself, I am insanely jealous of the amount of skill Peter Lackman has that I never will. But I’m willing to give it a shot and you may end up seeing some of my own concept ideas soon. In the meantime, keep drooling over his work.

Via: WPCentral
Source: My Nokia Blog