MS will most likely provide support and marketing and stuff, but Nokia will still pay royalties for WP7... (that's the revenue part of the partnership for MS, so it's unlikely that it will disapear)

How do you work that one out when Elop is the CEO and Nokia will only be making the hardware, unless someone is very stupid i very much doubt Microsoft will want or even need royalties from a partner ? even if sold under the name of Nokia.

It all depends i guess on the partnership contract.

That's how partnerships work. The hardware maker (OEM) in this case Nokia, will pay Microsoft a certain percentage of the price of every phone they sell. That is the nature of the business. The situation Nokia is in right now, is an uncommon and unnecessary one, considering how the first impressions of Harmattan/Meego hybrid.

Anyway, I understand many of the folks here are open source junkies and tinkerers, but I think WP7 gets too much unnecessary flak. It seems quite promising imo. Misses some key features, but not enough for me to call it junk and all the other disparaging things people say here.
Android is a great OS, but a bugfest as I've come to notice with seemingly ALL google software, I've passed through quite a few, and they've all been troublesome. I currently use a Nexus S.

Obviously the terms of the contract are confidential, but royalties payment have been mentionned in february.
Exemple:

It's over. Just admit it already. Elop has infiltrated Nokia and he's begun his treacherous reign by swearing fealty to Microsoft on behalf of everyone in the company. Ruinous lowlife.

I always take the "vampire rule" in regards to infiltration - think: Lost Boys.

If he was invited in, the damage made should be blamed on the person(s) inviting that entity in... I'm still stuck on blaming the board of directors for inviting in Elop.

Here's where we're just going to have to disagree. Your arguments aren't that well thought out in regards to sales, especially around what will happen simply because it has yet to happen for: Samsung, LG, Dell, HTC have not sold in record quantities. In fact, Dell is basically "dumping" the Venue Pro on eBay direct sales for half price basically.

The whole belief that Microsoft is the answer... I disagree with wholly. I'll caveat my belief by also stating that the N9 is not the answer for Nokia either. Neither phone or phone ecosystem tied to either of those possibilities will help Nokia regain their lost share.

In fact, I bet that it will drop their core share to something half of what it is today in just 1 year - that's called speculation, not fact. Mainly because Zune Marketplace isn't even in most of those places, so that means content isn't there. Now that ecosystem is starting to lack some bite - Microsoft's that is. They're finally testing in Australia now for WP7.

Bada has more exposure to more countries than WP7. And I'd call Bada a niche player.

So no... if you want to discuss rationally things, I'm game and I do not feel as if you're thinking through it all. Elop deserves no praise. No decision he's done so far has furthered Nokia's endeavors nor helped their bottom line. Everything that Nokia has on the plate is for a later delivery.

N9 - later this year. WP7 devices - later this year. Last huge device was a Symbian device (N8)... which they're slowly abandoning and/or have given to Accenture. So... yeah. I don't see any truth to what you and e-boy (forgot his name, not intentional) are ranting and raving about.

I have a WP7 phone. Right now. Let me tell you this... it ain't ready for primetime. I've also played with build 7661 of Mango. Allow me to say that it brings some nice things to the table; still not ready for primetime.

OOooo... I found a site pimping behind-the-scene pictures of a slightly pre-CEO Elop courting the Nokia board!
Check it out!!

Explain further if you don't mind I'd like to hear the shortcomings as you sound like you have particular needs

i'd like to object to the use of the word proof in the title of this thread

Multi-tasking is still a bit sub-par as compared to N900's method of multi-tasking. Closer to Palm since it's a card based method that looks like it was spawned from WebOS.

Live tiles still do not seem to be as functional on some apps as they claim to be - 1st party apps inclusive. It's on par with iOS notifications in the sense of how delayed it is.

I can still bog down a 1ghz phone rather simply with just a few (I'd say unoptimized) apps rather quickly. The UI remains swift; however it takes longer for apps to load up data - MSN Onit is a prime example. Takes it forever to load data; whereas Pulse on Android is pretty damn swift and they do the same thing.

The browser is the biggest improvement... it truly moves it closer to my like of Dolphin HD or MicroB. Not perfect, still lacking the Adobe Flash that I like (I'm a Flex dev) but it's a noticeable improvement. It's gone from a 1.0 to a 3.8 on a scale of 5.0.

The e-mail client grabs, but doesn't seem to sync IMAP correctly... still. The speed has improved, it's a lot better than Modest; however I've had better. The threaded look is better than before though. There's a ton of improvement needed here.

Music - I'll admit it. I own a 120gb Zune. Still use it, still love it. So my experience there is great, it's improved on speed and transitions (background) don't seem to slow it down. So the improvements there are fine.

Copy and paste... ok this part pisses me off. I can copy but paste only once. WTF. Sometimes I need to paste multiple times. Not being able to is just plain weird. I can understand copy/paste once on raster images and the like. But links? Or text? I dislike that limitation.

It's still a pain to customize, the tiles are different colors for some apps - my OCD kicks in and I like things to be uniform or at least similar.

There are other things, like the planned addition of forward facing cameras, better memory management and some other features that directly address what I'm looking for in a phone. But after having integrated Google Voice on Android - I use GoVoice on WP7 - and having my updates come in on a timely manner, GoVoice and all of the apps seem to delay on notification. It's bothersome. IMAP e-mail is the exception... but it still feels a tad bit delayed versus Google's GMail level of integration, better than Modest - which seemed to sync just fine, but not all of the time.

There's tons of apps that I consider necessary, but missing - Skype for instance. IM+ Pro is what I use and it just... seems SLOW AS HELL. N900 kills the level of IM integration here. Downright kills everybody to be honest.

So yeah... there's some deficiencies in the apps, features, battery life (better than N900). I love the UI, dislike the delays on loading stuff - just feels more sluggish than a 1ghz processor.

Hope that answers your question.