Though Nokia and Microsoft has announced the partnership, and Nokia is present at the Mobile World Congress 2011, they didn’t really manage to announce any real phones, which is quite a let-down. However, they did managed to do two things, and that is showing a concept phone, and acknowledging the other concept phone shown over at Engadget.

Nokia may be sticking to the official line that it will begin shipping Windows Phone 7 devices in “significant volume” in 2012, but it just dropped a big hint at its Mobile World Congress press conference that we could be seeing the first device even sooner — like this year. That word came from Nokia’s Jo Harlow, who said that her boss would be “much happier” if the timing of the initial launch was in 2011.

According to CEO Stephen Elop, the “final decision” to go with Windows Phone “just happened on Thursday night of last week.” Elop later then stated in response to a question shouted from the audience about whether he was a trojan horse — that the “entire management team” was involved in the process, and that “of course the board of directors of Nokia are the only ones that can make this significant of a decision about Nokia,” which they made on Thursday night. If you look at the history of Elop, he was once a manager in Microsoft before jumping over to Nokia last year.

SOURCE via Engadget