T-Mobile Gets Nokia Lumia 810, Confirming Again Why It Ranks Fourth
Who saw this coming? T-Mobile and Nokia announced the exclusive availability of the Nokia Lumia 810, the Windows Phone 8 follow-up to the Windows Phone 7.5-powered Lumia 710. By the given description of a 4.3 inch screen and exchangeable shells (available in black and cyan), this sounds like a Lumia 820 variant for T-MO customers. But why?
For weeks, we phone fiends have been wading through news of the upcoming 920 and 820 Lumias, then whamo — the 810 is announced. Here's what we can infer from this:
- Nokia, being in the financial dire straits it's in, somehow found it justified to spend resources on an 820 variant for T-Mobile, which adds yet another SKU to produce, manage, sell and track.
- Said justification is likely because AT&T has an exclusive to the flagship 920 model and perhaps the 820, which I haven't seen any blogs explicitly state so for the latter model.
- As a result, T-MO now needs its own "exclusive" to look special, even though we all know the 810 is not the superior 910.
- T-MO is seen, again, as the Jan Brady to AT&T's Marsha Brady.
Is this really a commentary about Nokia's asinine business decision to agree to limit its new Jesus phone to AT&T (assumingly for a few extra shekels, only to shoot itself in the foot for limiting its best to one carrier during a make it or break it season)? Or is it about the fact that T-Mobile willingly agrees to get what is arguably the second or third best option to the 920, considering its history of bringing sadder looking models to market? I say more the latter (the former is another post on its own).
First off, the 810, seen here in this press shot, looks like an iPhone 5 knock-off at first glance.
Maybe that's it?! A new Lumia comes to the party masquerading as an iPhone 5 for T-Mobilers to swoon over seeing T-MO has no 4G LTE to support the iPhone. Please.
Now look back to the phones of yester-month to see how T-Mobile keeps painting this image for itself that it's a lesser carrier when compared to its bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
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