Notes

The Evolution of Nokia's Smartphones and a Preview of the New Nokia N97
Nokia, whilst having 38% market global market share, has never truly been a presence in the world's two largest economies, America and Japan. We can speculate as to why this is, but the main reasons behind it are lack of support from providers, and products that weren't exactly what consumers in these markets were searching for at certain points with time.

Certainly, Nokia can be an innovator in the industry, their Series 40 operating system was regarded by many Europeans and Asians because the benchmark. However, what happened from then on? Why were check here as for example Samsung and Sony Ericsson in a position to gain so much, so fast? My opinion is that Nokia stopped thinking out of the box, and tried to use the Kaizen (continuous improvement) philosophy to something that required constant innovation and reinvention instead. You see, cell phones aren't perfect devices. There are devices we've that serve their purposes singularly well, almost to the point of perfection. Have a Japanese knife, for instance. It has been engineered and refined over time, to a point where the balance is as perfect as possible, the blade is really as sharp as possible and the aesthetics reach their height as well. There isn't a lot more that we will probably do with this type of knife. This evolutionary approach is okay for things like Japanese knives, however, not for new technology that hasn't quite found a permanent footing.

We are just beginning to explore what a personal handheld device can perform for us, and within the last couple of years, what have we seen? The single biggest leap was the iPhone. Not because of any features actually, but because of the way we connect to the device. It, single-handedly, has changed how we will interact with devices forever. Microsoft has had a page from the iPhone book, and has talked of the idea of a large pane of glass with multi-touch inputs. Apple has taken iPhone-style input and added it to the trackpads within their latest laptops, and almost every manufacturer has, or soon, should come out with a phone with an immense touch input on leading.

Forward thinking design is what makes the iPhone so unique, and it continues to this day. Google for example, takes advantage of the GPS, proximity sensor, microphone and 3G connection to provide a very usable search program that can find results catered to your surroundings faster when compared to a similar text entry could be input. Has Nokia innovated in this manner? Arguably, in the cell phone world, not many have, but expectations of the market leader are high.

Nokia took the proper decision to decrease the smartphone road way back with the 7650. That has been an extremely innovative phone, even a little before its time. Running an open operating-system, integrated camera, sliding design, the 7650 may have stormed North America and Japan. It was easily with the capacity of MP3 and video playback, custom ringtunes, and a host of other features which are favored by today's phones. Nokia really did not market the device and also it should have, especially in the markets that matter the most.

From the 7650, Nokia moved to devices like the 6600 and 3650. What sort of progress did Nokia make with this step? Next to get more info . The 7650 had an operating-system, Symbian, that allowed for applications to be installed. European and Asian developers started making a myriad of programs for the telephone, from frontends to Office document viewers, to file explorers, MP3 players, video players and much more. The phone was built with a camera, and the fairly open operating system allowed for a quite a lot of development.

The supposedly next-generation 6600 offered little in the form of improvement. Another form factor, candybar, instead of slider, however the same screen with the same resolution and size, no major differences to the OS and the exact same battery meant that it was an aesthetic makeover a lot more than anything. The 6600 became popular in popularity in the European and Asian markets, and in 2005, made its way to North America aswell, where it missed the type of success it did abroad. Another phone was released round the same time, the 3650, that was largely the same as the 6600, but was aimed at the youth markets using its funky styling.

After these came the 7610, which followed Nokia's now-common practice of aesthetic changes combined with an increased pricetag. It offered a marginally better 1-megapixel camera, but right now, the Symbian OS had third-party software upconversion of photos that interpolated 1 megapixel images from the VGA camera in the 6600 and 3650. These interpolated images that looked almost the same as those from the real 1-megapixel 7610.

The "next-gen" 6630 was the initial 3G smartphone from Nokia, and that, together with the stereo headphone output was all that was new. It didn't quite use the 3G, because 2-way video calls were a thing that was considered part and parcel of 3G phones, and the 6630 didn't have a front-facing camera.

Nokia did, however, sell a dock having an integrated camera separately, in order that 2-way calls could possibly be made. The dock had to be plugged in though, so in operation, it wasn't much not the same as utilizing a computer with a webcam, and wasn't very "mobile." Even though most of Nokia's smartphones were a lot more than with the capacity of MP3 playback, none had stereo audio output (smart, Nokia), despite the fact that the iPod's popularity could clearly be observed at the time. Users were limited to monaural audio playing back through the loudspeaker, through the wired monaural headset, or through a low-quality monaural Bluetooth headset. Yes, each of them had Bluetooth, right away! When we got to the 6680, Nokia added a slightly better camera in the back, and a front-facing VGA camera for 3G video calls, after learning their lesson with the 6630.

Curiously, there have been no other changes. By now, Nokia's innovation had slowed to a standstill. In contrast, Apple released a product that didn't do this much more technically, but really stood behind the program and continually pushed its development with each firmware update, a thing that Nokia may have done, having the most superior hardware and software at that time.

At this stage, Nokia decided it needed to rejuvenate its image through the marketing department, and came the N-series phones. These were again, not fundamentally not the same as the preceding phones, but were marketed to be better, as being "multimedia computers." They started adding more features this time around, such as better cameras, Carl Zeiss lenses, optical zoom on a model or two, and finally Wi-Fi. Some models were just rehashes of existing models; browse the similarities between the 6680 and the N70.

With the N-series came a more recent version of Symbian, one which would not run a lot of the existing applications. As consumers, we realize the stigma of failing to have backwards compatibility (cough, MS Vista, cough PS3, cough), so the development cycle began anew. What's interesting to note is that even though the Symbian platform got an update, it didn't look or feel any different. It never really had the animated menus and simplicity that Sony Ericsson's phones had, but with the fancy OS, there should have been more changes.

Applications have always been lacking memory on the Symbian platform, and with the exorbitant prices that Nokia has always charged, more memory wouldn't have hurt. Even in its latest iteration, the Symbian platform isn't what you'd call smooth, in accordance with the iPhone OS or Blackberry OS. Apps don't co-operate the way they should. If you get a Word document in your e-mail, it won't necessarily open up with the correct viewer, and in the rare event that it tries, crashes and slow speeds are a surity. Nokia arrived with an excellent browser on the N80, and contains used it since, but its welcome has worn off. It had been great when it first came out, miles beyond everyone else's browser. Since then, apparently, little development has been made. It's still a royal pain in the butt to surf, and much more so on flash-heavy sites. Flash of course, fails fully. Imagine should they made it work... it'd function as first phone with the capacity of browsing the entire internet, something even the iPhone struggles with. The N90 and N93 were certainly interesting, but were plagued with the same issues. The N93 had a flip-open mode, just as this new N97 does, but it wouldn't always register the flip and go into landscape mode, or, would do it very slowly.

As the N95 has been Nokia's magnum opus for some time now, its software is eons behind iPhone and also Blackberry in its reliability. Crashes and slow boot times don't make for an excellent user experience, and therefore unhappy customers.

Another problem has been that the truth of the features hasn't lived around the hype. Integrated GPS was a good idea in the N95, but Nokia didn't include any usable turn-by-turn navigation software, and instead, wanted to charge for it. Slow to lock on and frequently inaccurate, the GPS was largely a waste. The N95 featured a 5-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, but took fairly mediocre pictures which were easily beat by way of a cheap handheld camera. The time needed to go from application begin to picture taken was unbelievably long too. Meanwhile, Samsung's phones in Korea and the Japan-only phones had excellent cameras.

Smartphones need good screens. Plus, consumers love big screens. Appears like a no-brainer... have a good screen, right? Nokia went from using lowish resolution 2.23 screens to a brilliant 352�406 screen in the N90 and N80 that had pixels so tight, they couldn't be observed with the naked eye.

Granted, the screen size was small, but this attempt was in the right direction. Unbelievably, after the N80, Nokia went right back to using low resolution screens, exclusively. Until now, they increased size, however, not resolution. Given all that, I think you can see why Nokia hasn't fared all that well in North America and Japan. For several their flaws, each new phone cost the number of a complete blown laptop, a thing that doesn't settle all that well with value-centric North Americans (we save money than anyone else on the planet, but want to get our money's worth!).

And now we get to Nokia's newborn. The N97. Clearly, Nokia wants to play off the popularity of the N95 by after its alphanumeric pattern, but oddly, this seems to make light of the fact that the N96 was quite the dud. Essentially the exact same as the N95 (what is with that?) with 16 GB vs. 8, we never really saw it take off... It made the blogs, people reported buying them in Singapore and wherever, and today... Nokia has shifted. Anyways, best for them they did, because the N97 is clearly the initial big step since that classic 7650.

Nokia finally appears to have understood that finger-based touch input is here now to stay, and has included one hell of a screen to quiet my complaining. 640 x 360 resolution, which makes it a 16:9 display, perfectly friendly with oh, modern TV and movies, a thing that 20 and 30somethings want. Incidentally, they are the people who'd spend on such a device... good Nokia, good! You're finally beginning to understand your marketplace! They've gone a step ahead and included tactile feedback. That is more software than hardware, because the iPhone is technically with the capacity of this too, but I'm curious to observe how well-implemented it is. There were mice with tactile feedback a while ago, where you'd roll the cursor over a link and you'd "feel" the hyperlink there. I'm uncertain if that helps at all, but hey, if Nokia found a way to make it useful... awesome.

Also, Nokia apparently realizes that the web is important, therefore, a complete tactile QWERTY keyboard flips out. This is a great feature, that may certainly find favour here. It's interesting to observe how much Nokia has borrowed from the iPhone with regard to style... it could be seen the most once the screen is off.

HSDPA and WiFi radios were a must, and they're there, but hopefully the WiFi is N-grade these times and has decent range. 32 GB of onboard storage AND a microSD slot shows they are listening to what folks want, and this feature solidly trumps the iPhones unexpandable memory. They state the camera is 5 megapixel, Carl Zeiss lens, and will shoot VGA video at 30 fps. Well, so what? My 2.5-year old N93 could do that. In 2009 2009, the telephone should have had the opportunity to do at least 720p video with sound equivalent to the N93. I believe this is the weakest portion of the phone, frankly.

Finally, one of the important pieces of the puzzle, the OS, gets a real upgrade. From the pictures, it appears like Nokia has taken its previous ideas, and elevated them to a fresh level. The "today" screen, present on the last few generations, would present calendar appointments, to-do notes, e-mail and texts on the primary screen, letting you know what you must at a glance. They've trained with the glossy Apple treatment this time around, and the today screen, thanks to the large resolution and size, now includes Facebook, Myspace, weather and a great many other alerts. This too, in my opinion, trumps the iPhone regarding real usability, as you can get a great deal of useful information instantly, rather than needing to go into individual applications. Clear big buttons (in the pictures) indicate that this version might be easier to use, something Symbian desperately needed. If the program is as good since it looks, and the touchscreen works as well or much better than the iPhone's, it looks like we have a genuine winner on our hands. The pricing for this will be well into the $800s unlocked, but if UNITED STATES carriers pick it up and provide it at a good price, this phone could really do well if Nokia markets it right. I'm looking towards testing it!

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by Loy Bond
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