- Today, Windows Mobile is a pretty
but hobbled smart phone platform,
extensively built for business.
But about two years ago,
Windows Phone was a family of trailblazing handhelds,
with a style you couldn't find anywhere else.
I'm Michael Fisher.
And the phone I'm holding
is a remnant of that brighter bolder time.
This, is the Windows phone that never was,
the Nokia McLaren.
If you know anything about Windows phones,
you can probably see where the inspiration
for this design came from.
Remember that phone that AT&T was pushing
about three years ago?
The one with the bumble bee paint job
and the 41 megapixel camera?
That was the Lumia 1020.
And this, well this is what Windows fans
might have called, the 1030.
This is a prototype obtained by Windows Central.
Pardon all the tape,
but it's there to hide all the serial numbers.
In the hand, it feels like what it looks like:
A larger, metal-clad version of the 1020
with that immense camera crater around back,
making things a little awkward,
until you get used to it.
The specs are unremarkable for at late 2014 device.
Which is no surprise.
The Windows phone ran very well on even low-end hardware,
so there was no reason to spec it out.
And even thought that massive camera suggests
some intense obstacle stabilization,
the sensor within was not 41 megapixels,
but instead somewhere between 21 and 23.
And since the camera's software
was never completed on this device,
we don't know anything more about it.
The real stand-out feature of McLaren
is its sensor package.
Which would have made it a much more exotic Windows Phone
than any we'd seen before.
The five and a half inch display is self-capacitive,
which means it detects your finger
based on how it changes the charge of the electrodes
mounted beneath the glass.
That means it's capable of sensing your finger
well before it touches the glass.
And that would have made possible,
a bunch of new interface options.
This particular phone was programmed with only two.
Mixed View lets you hover your finger over a tile
and watch it explode into sub-tiles.
Which is a neat party trick,
but in my opinion, not terribly useful.
We saw similar stuff from Sony and Samsung
a few years back.
Much more impressive to me
is the fact that McLaren can sense how it's being held.
So, if you're gripping the phone upright
and lean it on to its side,
it'll prevent that accidental rotation
to keep the software at portrait mode.
But if you hold it another way,
that tells the phone you want to view things in landscape,
it'll do that for you.
That's the idea, anyway.
This is pretty really software at it's buggiest.
And that's just the tiny taste
of the intuitive capabilities Microsoft was cooking up.
And might still be working on.
As recently as two months ago,
I posted a video demonstrating all kinds of pre-touch
features on what looks like another McLaren.
I'll drop the link to that video in the description.
Some will call this "empty gimmickry",
incapable of ever pushing Windows Phone into relevance.
And maybe the latter point is true.
To me though,
the McLaren stands for more than that.
It's both a landmark to a once great phone manufacturer
and an echo of a Microsoft that once embraced
doing things differently.
Boldly striking out
in the opposite direction of the competition,
not just for the sake of being different,
but because in some ways
its design choices made more sense.
And it wasn't afraid to express that.
It's a shame it didn't work out.
Windows 10 Mobile, though superior in many ways,
still lacks the vibrance and stability
of the earlier versions.
But I'm glad I got to share with you
what might be the last remnant of that exciting era.
There's a lot more to the McLaren, folks.
And if you're looking for a true deep dive,
be sure to hit up Windows Central
for the full write-up and two more videos.
Links in the description below.
Also, subscribe to Mr. Mobile
for more videos just like this.
We'll see you next time.