Vaibhav Sharma, over at his new Handheld Blog, has produced a well thought out, history-summarising essay on the existence of the Nokia N9 and Lumia 800. He asks the question "if we had not seen the N9 before would we have loved the Lumia 800 even more?". Undoubtedly the N9's existence has softened the impact of the Lumia 800's styling on the jaded tech media, but then again, as Vaibhav points out, the N9 and Lumia 800 are aimed at complementary geographical markets.

This is when we all wondered, if we had not seen the N9 before would we have loved the Lumia 800 even more? The short answer to that question for me is yes. When you first look at that design, most people go head over heels over it and if Stephen Elop got on stage at Nokia World and showed off that design for the first time, we’d have had an even bigger WOW.

Now for the long answer, knowing that the Sea Ray was coming, should Nokia have released the N9? I’d again say yes. Why? First and foremost, the people in the countries where the Lumia 800 is going on sale haven’t seen the N9. So for a vast majority the design is fresh, new and amazing. The minuscule minority, which has seen the design before will still love it, its still less than two months old in the real world and Windows Phone doesn’t make it any less pretty. Infact, I’d say that the jazzy WP UI is a great match to the N9’s physical design.