With Easter, the School holidays and a generally recent busy time now behind the WPDownUnder office – we thought we should put some quick catch-ups out there to cover some of the more important recent WP7 stories.  Here’s our quick grab-bag of stories, starting with our wrap of the Melbourne Nokia Lumia Live event a little over a fortnight ago. There’s plenty of videos to check out in this update post as well – some informative, and one that is downright dead-funny (if you watch to the classic finish).

 

Starting with the Melbourne Lumia Live event from Saturday 31st March (has over 2 weeks passed already?) WPDownUnder headed into Melbourne for a planned Windows Phone catch-up, and had a great afternoon meet-up with some of the heart of the online Melbourne #wp7au community; @Pedaah, @jubbing, @1800PocketPC, @niall_bigscreen, @gh8421, @NeilNuttall and later on @Gadgeroo_CM Make sure you check out Techin5′s expanded coverage of the Lumia event HERE, with links to the other blog posts on it from the team as well!

So. How did it go? Well the weather turned on a strange day, with some sun, clouds, humidity – and then early evening chill – pretty much your regular Melbourne variability But the crowds turned up in droves at Fed square

Throughout the afternoon and into the early evening that WPDownUnder was there, a steady stream of people – gave the interactive Angry Birds game, Dance-off with Timomatic or Kangaroo themed Nokia Drive demo a whirl. With a prominent display right across from the steps at Flinders Street Station – and with another famous Melbourne landmark of St. Paul’s Cathedral as a backdrop – the Nokia Lumia live event was the most prominent Windows Phone promotional event Melbourne has seen to-date.

Video 1:

Whether some enthusiasts might have hoped for a PR event on the scale of the earlier UK, Poland or Finland public launch events, realists can easily understand that the Australian market represents a fraction of the size and “bang-for-buck” of the EU or latest USA launches.

Video 2:

Video 3:

It was an enjoyable day catching up with some of the Nokia Marketing Team (Don’t worry team, your Timomatic dance videos won’t see the light of day here at wpdownunder!), having a laugh over some of the LumiaLive participants and of course, having a drink with the Melbourne #WP7AU Twitter Social Community!  Well Done Nokia for leading from the front and marketing Windows Phone to the masses.

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As well as promotion via Nokia, the Lumia range continues to see more prominent Point of sale Advertising in retail outlets – than well, quite simply any other Windows Phone before it. Not taking away anything from Nokia’s great retail efforts – let’s face it, a clapped up Hyundai Excel with a personalised number plate of WP7 parked out front a Telco store would be more Point-of-sale than Windows Phone has seen here before!  Here’s some great examples – the first courtesy of Niall Ginsbourg of Mobilewares.net WP7 Dev fame from Southland shopping centre, the second via a Tweet to me from VIC courtesy of @WizardCM; a DSE store and finally my own shot from Telstra’s Frankston retail store.

 

Absolutely GREAT to See And not to be outdone - there’s also Harvey Norman getting in on the act – with a TV Advert for the Lumia!

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Next, we have the 12070 Nokia Firmware Update. WPDownUnder was very pleased to see this deployed, with some very annoying (and persistent) issues with our Lumia 800 100% fixed by this new firmware release from Nokia (more soon in our forthcoming Lumia 800 review). However, Nokia has confirmed – also advised by Vodafone Australia - that there is also a minor bug which is introduced in this update. Details from Nokia:

I’m sure this will get a bug-fix promptly – maybe even bundled with the Internet Connection Sharing (Tethering) update Nokia have advised is coming to the Lumia range “soon”.

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Next we had the North American launch (USA first, then Canada) of the much-sought after Lumia 900! With no confirmed carrier or release locally, many enthusiasts here are already placing grey-import orders to get the device to Australia. In the US, a major launch took place – with the budget just eclipsing our Aussie Lumia launch event at Fed Square Check it out!

And an ATT advert and infomercial:

We will be sure to keep you posted on any Lumia news, and hope that some rumours from earlier today that Telstra have decided NOT to range the handset will be proven untrue! Maybe they should think about the almost 250 signatures WPDownUnder gathered for Telstra to offer this handset…and the current homepage Poll here, which has votes 7 to 1 for the Lumia 900 over the HTC Titan II 4G!

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Lastly – on a humourous note…here’s a quick clip from Nokia India – as part of their “blown away by Lumia” promo campaign, based on Microsoft’s “Smoked By Windows Phone” initiative. Make sure you listen/watch right to the end. I think this guy’s phone is the least of his worries.

Sheeds.