Notes

The Evolution of Nokia's Smartphones and a Preview of the New Nokia N97
Nokia, whilst having 38% market global market share, hasn't truly been a presence in the world's two largest economies, America and Japan. We can speculate as to the reasons this is, but the significant reasons behind it are insufficient support from providers, and products that weren't exactly what consumers in these markets were looking for at certain points with time.

Certainly, Nokia is 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 other newcomers such as Samsung and Sony Ericsson able to gain so much, so fast? My estimation 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, mobile phones are not perfect devices. You can find devices we've that serve their purposes singularly well, almost to the stage of perfection. Take a Japanese knife, for instance. It has been engineered and refined as time passes, to a point where in fact the balance is really as perfect as you possibly can, the blade is really as sharp as possible and the aesthetics have reached their height as well. There isn't a lot more that we will likely do with such a knife. This evolutionary approach is okay for things such as Japanese knives, but not for new technology that hasn't quite found a permanent footing.

We are just starting to explore just what a personal handheld device can do for us, and within the last few years, what have we seen? The single biggest leap was the iPhone. Not due to any features actually, but because of the way we connect to these devices. It, single-handedly, has changed how exactly we will connect to devices forever. Microsoft has taken a full page from the iPhone book, and has talked of the idea of a big 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 in the near future, will come out with a phone having an extra large touch input on leading.

Forward thinking design is why is the iPhone so unique, and it continues to this day. Google for example, takes benefit of the GPS, proximity sensor, microphone and 3G link with offer a very usable search program that may 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 cellular phone world, not many have, but expectations of the market leader are high.

Nokia took the right decision to go down the smartphone road way back with the 7650. That has been an extremely innovative phone, a good little before its time. Running an open operating-system, integrated camera, sliding design, the 7650 could have stormed THE UNITED STATES and Japan. It had been easily with the capacity of MP3 and video playback, custom ringtunes, and a bunch of other features which are popular with today's phones. Nokia really did not market the device together with it should have, especially in the markets that matter probably the most.

From the 7650, Nokia moved to devices like the 6600 and 3650. What sort of progress did Nokia make with this particular step? Close to nothing. The 7650 had an operating-system, Symbian, that allowed for applications to be installed. European and Asian developers started making lots of programs for the phone, from frontends to Office document viewers, to file explorers, MP3 players, video players plus much more. The phone was built with a camera, and the fairly open operating system allowed for a a great deal of development.

The supposedly next-generation 6600 offered little in the way of improvement. A different form factor, candybar, rather than slider, however the same screen with exactly the same resolution and size, no major differences to the OS and the very same battery meant that it had been an aesthetic makeover more than anything. The 6600 took off in popularity in the European and Asian markets, and in 2005, made its way to North America aswell, where it didn't find the type of success it did abroad. Another phone premiered around the same time, the 3650, that was largely exactly like 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 out 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 first 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 something 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 with an integrated camera separately, so that 2-way calls could possibly be made. The dock had to be plugged in though, so functioning, it wasn't much different from utilizing a computer with a webcam, and wasn't very "mobile." Despite the fact that all of Nokia's smartphones were 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 seen at the time. Users were restricted to monaural audio playing back through the loudspeaker, through the wired monaural headset, or through a low-quality monaural Bluetooth headset. Yes, they all had Bluetooth, right away! When we surely got to the 6680, Nokia added a slightly better camera in the trunk, and a front-facing VGA camera for 3G video calls, after learning their lesson with the 6630.

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

At this time, Nokia decided it had a need to rejuvenate its image through the marketing department, and came the N-series phones. We were holding again, not fundamentally different from the preceding phones, but were marketed to be better, to be "multimedia computers." They started adding more features this time around, such as for example better cameras, Carl Zeiss lenses, optical zoom on a model or two, and lastly Wi-Fi. Some models were just rehashes of existing models; check out the similarities between your 6680 and the N70.

With the N-series came a more recent version of Symbian, one which would not run most of the existing applications. As consumers, we know the stigma of not having 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 had the animated menus and ease of use that Sony Ericsson's phones had, but with the fancy OS, there should have been more changes.

Applications have always been short of memory on the Symbian platform, and with the exorbitant prices that Nokia has always charged, more memory wouldn't have hurt. Even yet in its latest iteration, the Symbian platform is not what you'd call smooth, relative to the iPhone OS or Blackberry OS. Apps don't co-operate the way they should. If you receive a Word document in your e-mail, it won't necessarily start 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 arrived, 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 even more etc flash-heavy sites. Flash of course, fails fully. Imagine if they made it work... it'd be the 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 get into landscape mode, or, would do it very slowly.

While the N95 has been Nokia's magnum opus for quite a while now, its software is eons behind iPhone and also Blackberry in its reliability. Crashes and slow boot times don't make for a good user experience, and consequently unhappy customers.

Another problem has been that the reality of the features hasn't lived up to 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, wished to charge for it. Slow to lock on and often 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. Enough time needed to go from application start 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. Sounds 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, following the N80, Nokia went back to using low resolution screens, exclusively. Until now, they increased size, but not resolution. Given all that, I think you can observe why Nokia hasn't fared all that well in THE UNITED STATES and Japan. For several their flaws, each new phone cost how much a full blown laptop, something that doesn't settle all that well with value-centric North Americans (we save money than anyone else on earth, but need to get our money's worth!).

And now we reach Nokia's new baby. The N97. Clearly, Nokia really wants to play off the popularity of the N95 by following its alphanumeric pattern, but oddly, this appears to make light to the fact that the N96 was quite the dud. Basically the exact same because the N95 (what is with that?) with 16 GB vs. 8, we hardly ever 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, as 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, that makes it a 16:9 display, perfectly friendly with oh, modern TV and movies, a thing that 20 and 30somethings would love. Incidentally, they are the ones who'd spend on such a device... good Nokia, good! You're finally starting to understand your target market! They've gone a step ahead and included tactile feedback. This is more software than hardware, because the iPhone is technically capable of this too, but I'm curious to see how well-implemented it is. There have been mice with tactile feedback time ago, where you'd roll the cursor over a link and you'd "feel" the link there. I'm not sure if that helps in any way, but hey, if Nokia found a method to make it useful... awesome.

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

HSDPA and WiFi radios were a must, and they are there, but hopefully the WiFi is N-grade this time around and has decent range. 32 GB of onboard storage AND a microSD slot shows they've been listening to what people want, and this feature solidly trumps the iPhones unexpandable memory. They state the camera is 5 megapixel, Carl Zeiss lens, and may shoot VGA video at 30 fps. Well, just what exactly? My 2.5-year old N93 could do that. In 2009 2009, the phone should have been able to do at least 720p video with sound equal to the N93. I think it is the weakest area of the phone, frankly.

Finally, one of the most important bits of the puzzle, the OS, gets a real upgrade. From the pictures, it appears like Nokia has had its previous ideas, and elevated them to a fresh level. The "today" screen, present on the previous few generations, would present calendar appointments, to-do notes, e-mail and text messages on the main screen, helping you discover what you must at a glance. They've given it the glossy Apple treatment these times, and the today screen, because of the large resolution and size, now includes Facebook, Myspace, weather and a great many other alerts. This too, for me, trumps the iPhone regarding real usability, as you can get tons of useful information at a glance, rather than needing to get into individual applications. Clear big buttons (in the pictures) indicate that version might be easier to use, something Symbian desperately needed. If the software is as good as it looks, and the touchscreen works aswell or better than the iPhone's, it appears like we have a real winner on our hands. The pricing because of this will be well into the $800s unlocked, but if North American carriers pick it up and offer it at a decent 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
My Website: https://www.articlesubmited.com/check-out-top-ten-richest-country-in-the-world-now/