With the launch of its Lumia range of Windows Phone 7 handsets, Nokia may well have shocked us all with a complete overhaul of Microsoft's operating system graphical user interface. The metro-style look and aesthetic could have been ditched for what looks much more like, dare we say it, an Android approach.

Pocketnow has got its hands on a few preliminary mock-ups from one of Nokia R&D's senior designers which show a very different approach to the standard Windows Phone 7 UI.

It has long been known that Nokia has been given special dispensation by Microsoft to redesign its front-end for the Lumia range as it sees fit. But the Finnish company decided not to make such radical changes for the initial wave of Windows Phone handsets, Lumia 800, Lumia 710 or Lumia 900.

And now the designer herself, who has also worked on the Nokia 808 PureView, has moved away from the Windows Phone team to work at Accenture, so it is unlikely that these concepts will ever be seen on an actual handset - nice as they are.

Nokia has told Pocketnow, that the designs "are purely her own personal design explorations and were never part of any project being done at or for Nokia", but as the site convincingly argues, why would she spend her own time working on Windows Phone UI mock-ups?

That'd be like us playing with gadgets and games in our own time... Er... Hang on...