Anticipation is steadily building as we draw nearer to the debut of the first ever Nokia Windows Phone, but what exactly should we be expecting? Over the next few weeks we'll be taking an in-depth look at exactly that question, and we start with the all-important area of hardware design. 

Microsoft: Nokia Windows Phone is key to success

Nokia has a huge bedrock of loyal supporters who have been using Nokia phones for years and keep coming back for more with each new generation.

And there's no question that Nokia's commitment to design quality and an insistence on using the best materials to translate that quality into the finished product is one of the main reasons why. We've seen it in just the last couple of weeks with the newly launched Nokia 701, for example. Its design quality immediately stands out, and shows Nokia's continued commitment to producing mobile hardware of the highest possible standard.

So considering how important its debut Windows Phone is, you can be sure that Nokia will play to its strengths and deliver on its reputation for producing top-quality hardware.

One of the reasons the first group of Windows Phone 7 handsets that appeared last year failed to have much of an impact was simply that they were all so similar.

Yes, part of that was due to the platform itself and Microsoft's insistence on a fairly tight hardware specification. But that still leaves plenty of room to manoeuvre from a design point of view, and you can be sure Nokia will seek to use that room to maximum advantage with its first Windows Phone.

Nokia has done well to keep a fairly tight lid on the handset's development, so to start talking about specific features would be nothing more than speculation. But based on Nokia's track-record and what we've seen from the likes of the Nokia 701 and the Nokia N9, we can expect plenty of wow factor, and that when it comes to design and design quality, the standard all the other Windows Phone manufacturers will have to live up to will be Nokia's.