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Manageress Cherish at Nokia Arch

LONDON, United Kingdom – “Who wants to see something amazing?” shouts Cindy. Within seconds, young men are heading towards the Nokia Arch to see what she has to show them.

She’s one of the team of ten Nokia Lumia 800 product demonstrators based at Westfield Stratford City shopping mall, close to the 2012 Olympics site in East London.

Led by Cherish Meade they are gearing up for the big week when Nokia’s Windows Phone goes on sale all over Europe.

Nokia Arch Westfield Stratford

But this arch is potentially being rolled out in cities all over the globe so Nokia Conversations went down there to grab some pictures to let our readers see what they think about the retail experiment and the Nokia Lumia 800.

As I’m preparing to chat to Cherish, I hear Simon shouting out: “Julia, Julia where is your Lumia?” And almost instantly he is surrounded by a bunch of girls who seem interested in the phone, but it’s hard to tell, because Simon is a handsome lad.

Nokia Arch customer

Cherish tells me they are all very excited about the Nokia Lumia 800 going on sale.

“Reaction has been very positive so far. Most of the time their reaction is OMG: this is so good.

“It makes people smile when they pick up the handset because it feels so smooth.”

Staff at the arch are there to talk potential customers through the strengths of the Nokia Lumia 800 before they head to the shops and buy one.

Nokia Arch customer

And they’re there to help them after they have bought it, in case they need a hand transferring contacts and getting started.

Simon guided me through how easy it is to load up friends to the People Hub via the contacts transfer apps which works via Bluetooth.

“It’s really simple,” he said. “One swipe, to the left, and it’s two thirds of the way down the next screen.

“People will find it simple, but it’s nice to be able to reassure someone who is new to this.”

Nokia Arch customers

In the first five days alone, Cherish and her team carried out 1,000 demos at the UK’s busiest shopping center.

“Everyone is having fun coming to work,” she says. “Nokia Lumia 800 is bringing sexy back.”

“You can take a picture in less than seven seconds from taking the phone out of your pocket. So you never have to miss a photo opportunity again on a night out.

Contacts transfer

“You can listen to the Nokia Mix Radio on the underground.

“And the People Hub has everything, your friends, Facebook and Twitter updates.”

Cherish is really pleased with the way the arch is working and reckons it would be popular anywhere in the world.

So I ask her if she’d be confident enough to take the arch on a World Tour.

“You bet,” she says. “I’m there.”

See our previous post about the Nokia arch.

Image credit: GG.Photography