As someone who’s always used a Nokia, it was a sad sad day when the company abandoned its inhouse smart phone platform Meego around a year ago. Not that there was much to be disappointed about, since at the time Nokia has yet to release the flagship phone N9 that would showcase Meego, but I’ve grown to love and depend on the sensibilities of the Nokia experience to feel the dejection that there won’t be an upgrade to look forward to from the company.

And the worst part, Nokia gave it all up for a meagre existence with Windows!

15 months down the track, I’ve changed my tune. Having since decided to stay with a PC instead of jumping on the Apple bandwagon – mostly because I’m so familiar with Window paragdims (e.g. short cut keys) that I didn’t want to re-train those muscle memory – my hopes in Nokia has gotten a small boost since yesterday’s annoncement of its new Windows 8 devices.

Granted, the glimmer of hope technically doesn’t reside in Nokia per se (I don’t really care about PureView floating camera; sure its handy, but I’ve got a camera for my cameraing needs) but on the potential integration between the phone and Windows 8. Now I say ‘potential’ because both Nokia and Microsoft seem to be keeping very quiet on the software front, persumably reserving some fanfare for the big October launch date of the next iteration of Windows.

But please please please give me a well built phone that easily manages group contacts, allows mass text/email, and synchronises groups between phone and computer – and then I’ll be a happy man. You will be surprised how this simple business feature (at least this seems like a no brainer to me; I’ve never just worked with a single client – ever! – not before, and especially not now) isn’t easily available right now.

(Ok, this might be unfair: my current Nokia E71 can do sync and mass text/email, but falls short at being able to manage groups well; I don’t know about the iPhone integration, but am pretty sure Android 2.3 can’t. But I rather have a phone that makes communication that much easier than one that makes posting photos that much easier – yes, I’m getting old).