With the announcement at last month"s Mobile World Congress of its new entry-level Lumia 610 handset - along with confirmation that its flagship Lumia 900 will soon launch in new markets around the world - Nokia now has a broad range of Windows Phones filling numerous price points. But one criticism that is still levelled at Nokia - and at the broader Windows Phone ecosystem - is the lack of hardware diversity across its devices.
The absence of dual-core and quad-core processors from Windows Phone remains something of a sore spot for some users, who believe that such devices must therefore be less capable than Android handsets and iPhones. In an interview with China"s Yangcheng Evening News (via Pocket-lint) - ahead of the launch of Nokia"s Lumia devices there this month - Nokia CEO Stephen Elop seized the opportunity to tackle this perception.
He claimed that the dual-core and quad-core processors that have found their way into new high-end devices are “not so useful” and “just a waste of battery”. He also cited contests such as Microsoft"s ‘Smoked By Windows Phone" and Nokia"s similar ‘Blown Away By Lumia" as proof that users don"t necessarily need multiple cores to be able to achieve ‘real life" tasks quickly and efficiently.
Of course, he"ll probably change his tune when Nokia releases its first dual-core Lumias - most likely with the launch of Windows Phone 8 later this year, which is expected to introduce much greater hardware diversity into the ecosystem.
> Check out some of the new features coming in Windows Phone 8