Nokia and Microsoft announced a huge partnership in the wee hours of this morning, but sadly, some reports claimed that we won't be seeing any Nokia-branded Windows Phone 7 handsets until the end of 2011. We don't have to wait that long to get an idea of what a Nokia/WP7 phone could look like, though, as renders of such a device have leaked out. It's entirely possible that we'll never actually see the device pictured above hit the market, so don't get too excited about it, but these concepts do give us a good idea of what can happen when the folks from Nokia and Microsoft put their heads together.

Even though these are just renders of what could come from Nokia and Microsoft's partnership, I have to say that I already like what I'm seeing. The full-touch handset looks pretty slim, and the curved back would fit well in a user's hand. Of course, you can expect Nokia to push out phones in a multitude of colors, just like it did with the N8, which could widen a device's appeal quite a bit. Final Nokia-WP7 hardware may be shipping as soon as the end of this year, but after seeing these renders, the wait just feels like it got a lot longer.

Via Engadget