Is Nokia X7 coming to AT&T? Who knows but it should be free

If Nokia X7 or any other Symbian^3 handset would come to the catalog of AT&T operator in the USA, because Symbian^3 is not as attractive as iPhone or Android that AT&T sells too, AT&T should offer Nokia's handset for free for new customers. That's the only way to move any of these handsets in this market.

Nokia Music Unlimited / Comes With Music coming to an end

It looks like Nokia's unlimited music download service (that was available on specific phone models) is going to be discontinued this year. It is being discontinued as we speak in Finland, where the news come from: no new Comes With Music / Music Unlimited handsets are shipped to Finland after 12/31/2010 and the 1 year licence can not be renewed after 1/10/2011.

This probably means that the service will be discontinued in most markets in 2011 as well. The service could survive in some special markets, like India. There is no official announcements from Nokia yet.

Nokia's usual Music Store (where you can purchase songs one by one) continues to operate.

One can only guess why the service is being discontinued. It probably didn't gather enough interest and drive enough handset sales.

Via e's Phone Blog

Is Windows Phone 7 the only way to get a decent UI to Nokia phones?

There has been rumors out there that Nokia would have held discussions with Microsoft about using Windows Phone 7 OS in Nokia devices in the future.

Given how slowly Symbian's UI has developed (two years between 5th Edition in 2008 and Symbian^3 in 2010), I think it is fair to say, that Symbian UI may never be able to compete with iPhone and Android, especially in the smoothness of transitions and ease of use. Nokia has said that Symbian is supposed to compete with these two platforms, but that may not be very successful.

Then of course there is Meego, which will probably be OK. However, it is also unclear how easy the UI is to use, when you compare it to iPhone and Android.

At the moment I don't have a strong confidence that Nokia can write a UI that works.

That said using Windows Phone 7 OS in Nokia devices can be the only chance Nokia has to bring a fresh, modern and easy to use UI to their devices.

We will see if that will happen in 2011. In any case, it will be an interesting year to watch. There has been rumors of Nokia using WP7 and even Android Honeycomb. That rumor may not be true. Meego phones will come out hopefully, and there are also the Symbian UI improvements Nokia has been promising.

CES is around the corner, will we see the first announcements there? Steve Ballmer coming to stage with Stephen Elop?

Happy New Year to all readers!