Last night at 7pm, Nokia and Nicki Minaj took over Times Square in New York City to announce the new Lumia 900 as the end of the “smartphone beta test.” We were there to check it out, of course, and it was a lot of fun. The VIP party at the RLounge was cool and all, but it didn’t have enough windows to see the show from, so we stuck with the outdoor viewing.
Using the latest CGI technology the team behind the massive Hollywood blockbuster, i-Robot, created one of the world’s largest LED displays.
Nokia took control of nine of the square’s famous electronic screens to ensure the crowd were immersed in light and music from every direction.
The light show was introduced by international superstar Nicki Minaj, who sang a medley of tracks from her new album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.
Dozens of the world’s leading visual artist worked for more than 5,000 hours, day and night for more than three weeks, to create the hundreds of jaw-dropping effects that were used on the large screens.
All of the electronic screens were controlled from a mobile server that was fed by eight miles of cable spread over four square blocks of the city.
Combining real dancers with 200ft high computer generated graphics, a building in the square was turned into a living, breathing entity. The building was made to appear as though it was filling with water and then “melting” in front of the crowd.
The ground-breaking visual event, to launch the Nokia Lumia 900 in North America, was choreographed to an exclusive Nokia Lumia remix of Nicki Minaj’s hit ‘Starships’, performed live by DJ and producer Doorly.
Here’s an overnight rough cut video of some of the footage Nokia took:
And here’s our even more rough cut video:
Originally published on Pocketnow on April 7, 2012. More Windows Phone articles from the Pocketnow archive.