Nokia’s Stephen Elop was seen dramatically throwing the iPhone away during a TV interview, shooting down every Apple dissident’s smug belief that in the current smartphone market, the tech giant will soon be fighting hard for its place. Considering BlackBerry’s recent slight about the iOS UI being old and the constant Cupertino-Samsung patent wars, it’s clear that the popularity of iDevices is a force to be reckoned with.
Well, it’s probably a sentiment shared by Elop too since he found it necessary to publicly air his feelings about the iPhone, even though he did it in a jovial manner. During the Hjalliksen kanssa (translated as With Hjallis, according to WMPoweruser) show on Finnish TV, the Nokia CEO was being goaded to reveal more about the Lumia 928. While he tried to dodge questions about the rumored device, the interviewer pulled out an iPhone and asked how long it would take to replace it with the unannounced smartphone.
In the YouTube video posted below, Elop can be seen responding with a ‘Oh, how embarrassing’ when Hjallis slips the Apple phone out of his pocket and insists that he’d rather have the Lumia. The CEO then takes the iDevice from the TV presenter and tosses it away while chuckling and saying he can fix that. Well, at least he didn’t go as far as Ballmer did back in 2009. The Nokia executive was actually on the show to introduce the relatively low end Lumia 620 which has now made its debut in Finland and his reluctance to talk about the handset that has yet to receive an official launch is understandable.
As for the Lumia 928, it will allegedly land in the US through Verizon. Speculations about its specifications imply that it will sport an aluminum body and an 8.7MP Carl Zeiss Tessar lens-equipped camera powered by PureView. A 4.5-inch OLED touchscreen is expected to be stretched across its face, while a dual core 1.5GHz processor may keep it running. Other mentions on the unconfirmed features list cover 1GB of RAM, 32GB internal memory and an additional 7GB of SkyDrive storage.
Since Elop refused to acknowledge that he ‘knew’ anything about the rumored handset during his iPhone-bashing interview, we’ll just have to rely on our previous report which touted that the new Lumia would be out stateside in April.