In part 3 of our MWC interview Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, we discuss the future. How Symbian will, "for the great masses of the world the first computer they will have will be an extension of the phone based on Symbian". How MeeGo's rich contextual crossing of the real and virtual world will use a map based user interface will create "the possibility for people to live in the media."
In the second half we hear about the three"buckets" (types) of competitors, the importance of open standards and ecoystems and a three-fold answer to how we should judge Nokia's future business performance (KPIs).
Read on in the full article.
Bla bla bla....after watching the symbian^4 UI demo video...I'm ashamed of being a symbian fan. After working for the last 2 years ,this is what you give us? I can go on and on and on....but i won't...because nothing will change....
PS. Nokia...Please stop hiring wrong ppl for the wrong job...
Driq
A former fan.
PS2. I'll never buy any nokia phone from now on.
The video links is confusing. I do not now which is part 1 as both links are labeled part 1.
I have now updated this. Part 1 was the first one, part 2 was the second one. You can watch them independently though - doesn't really matter as it is divided up by subject area.
Driq - I don't think I would make any purchase decision until I saw a product. Besides I think saying nothing will change shows a lack of understanding of what is going on with the platform. You do realise that it should be taken as a demo of the UI framework at best...
More of the same BS. More buzzwords, and crap talk while Apple, RIM, Android just march along delivering better and better products. I will not say that Nokia is dead but they are not going anywhere forward too soon. They lost my high-end flagship dollars.
Well, simply just like losing your religion..., throwing ball to Asia, let them play a bit to and goodbye!
Wot mr.Vanjoki says is already in a app Nulaz, Mogree and RockeTalk mix with googlemaps?
We have got this things, just to much...!
Driq wrote:Bla bla bla....after watching the symbian^4 UI demo video...I'm ashamed of being a symbian fan. After working for the last 2 years ,this is what you give us? I can go on and on and on....but i won't...because nothing will change....
PS. Nokia...Please stop hiring wrong ppl for the wrong job...
Driq
A former fan.PS2. I'll never buy any nokia phone from now on.
Yeah, pretty much. I still own a Nokia 6650 on AT&T that I use as a second beater phone, due to its fantastic battery life, so I know the company can make great 'basic phones'.
I've lost faith in their ability to deliver a great, polished, high end handset out of the gate, though. Regarding that Symbian^4 UI video: is THAT what the SF has been working on all this time? Really? And by the time it's even released, Android will be on version 4, along with the next iteration of the iPhone, Blackberry and the new Windows Phone.
Honestly, for their high end devices, Nokia should just buy Palm already (since as of today, Palm is on its death bed) to get at WebOS and slap it on their premium phones.
Jimmy1 wrote:Yeah, pretty much. I still own a Nokia 6650 on AT&T that I use as a second beater phone, due to its fantastic battery life, so I know the company can make great 'basic phones'.I've lost faith in their ability to deliver a great, polished, high end handset out of the gate, though. Regarding that Symbian^4 UI video: is THAT what the SF has been working on all this time? Really? And by the time it's even released, Android will be on version 4, along with the next iteration of the iPhone, Blackberry and the new Windows Phone.
Honestly, for their high end devices, Nokia should just buy Palm already (since as of today, Palm is on its death bed) to get at WebOS and slap it on their premium phones.
Perhaps Nokia should have kept their Symbian^4 video that offers an early peek at some elements of the UI framework (not by a long way is it supposed to be a demo of a finished Symbian^4 phone). Because some people are assuming wrongly that this is what to expect. The short vid is not even up to what is demoed on Symbian^3 preview videos. It is simplistic to prejudge what will arrive. People are looking for prettiness when it is usability and productivity that are important. The video doesn't offer much of a clue to those.
As for Palm, I see no point in Nokia buying such a dismal failure. I haven't seen a single Pre being used in public. Either nobody is buying them or people are ashamed.
Well, the point in buying Palm isn't to get into the business of selling more Pres.
The most valuable part of the company is the software, in particular WebOS. It would be the perfect marriage of a hardware company that can't do software (Nokia) with a company with great software who can't get the hardware right (Palm).
are you guys censoring comments now??!!??
my comment earlier is not showing up here ... what up with that??
Is Symbian^4 out yet? No, not even close. And you're basing your judgement on a 60 seconds long video?
Fancy animations, prettiness and pazzazz of the UI can be added later on during the UI development -- it's least complicated thing about UI design. What UI designer need to focus first is on the basic usability, consistency and stability aspects. And those things can be obviously not be recognized on a 60s video.
Oh how some people are simple-minded these days...
Last unregsitered - exactly right on the Symbian^4 framework demo. It has got a lot of development time left in it... its not a productised version etc.
And as for saying Nokia can't do software - err - the current Symbian UI may not measure up, but UI is just one element (feel like a broken record saying this). Moreover you don't get to be number 1 in mobile by being bad at software... You can say the same thing about Symbian too. I know people love to kick Nokia and I do think there are some issues at the high end (but all the players have issues), but people should also recognise that the numbers really do speaks for themselves.
Besides which the software creation process is different (it's an open world now) under the Symbian Foundation - perhaps we should see what they come up with when it makes it into products.
The Pre has some fresh ideas, but from a technical point of view the underlying lower level technology isn't very elegant... i.e. its in the ideas not the implementation. I would think it's more likely RIM would buy Palm.
No we don't censor comments. It may have tripped the automatic spam filters though - feel free to repost it.
Kind of suprising that no one picked up on the interesting elements in the comment... Maps as a generic UI (and clearly we talking about a different level to anything available today). Regardless of what you think about Nokia they are number 1 and on that basis alone people should pay attention when they talk about the future.
I'll admit i dont feel nokia has ever been good at anything software, and i'm a nokia fanboy. But their threaded text app conversations STILL isnt available, and it was never that great to begin with. We've been waiting years for a good email client with html email. Their ovi store debuted without the ability to redownload the app if installation fails. These are FUNDAMENTAL issues that should never have been allowed to happen if you were good at software.
heck even though ovi maps is good, its taken them quite a many number of years for maps to get there.
How many services have had similar issues? Ngage. I can go on and on. I'm not trying to bash nokia without merit. But their strength has always been good hardware, phone with a decent camera. Its NEVER been software. Thats why it boggled my mind when nokia wanted to transition themselves into a software/services company; the one area that they lacked the most in my opinion.
RogerPodacter wrote:I'll admit i dont feel nokia has ever been good at anything software, and i'm a nokia fanboy. But their threaded text app conversations STILL isnt available, and it was never that great to begin with. We've been waiting years for a good email client with html email. Their ovi store debuted without the ability to redownload the app if installation fails. These are FUNDAMENTAL issues that should never have been allowed to happen if you were good at software.
heck even though ovi maps is good, its taken them quite a many number of years for maps to get there.How many services have had similar issues? Ngage. I can go on and on. I'm not trying to bash nokia without merit. But their strength has always been good hardware, phone with a decent camera. Its NEVER been software. Thats why it boggled my mind when nokia wanted to transition themselves into a software/services company; the one area that they lacked the most in my opinion.
I'm with you, Roger. I'm also a fan of Nokia's hardware; software has never been their strong point though, which is more of a pickle considering that it's where smart phones are at now, an emphasis on the OS and available applications.
And don't think I'm an Apple fanboy; I would love to see an N97 Mini form factor Nokia phone, running, say, the new Windows Phone 7 OS.
It's funny how some of you say Nokia has bad software, yet they are number one. You people always take shots at Nokia, yet they continue to be number one time and again. The video on symbian^4 was a DEMO ONLY. It's not a finished product, yet. Please, understand what you see and read before making half-baked comments.
Unregistered wrote:It's funny how some of you say Nokia has bad software, yet they are number one. You people always take shots at Nokia, yet they continue to be number one time and again. The video on symbian^4 was a DEMO ONLY. It's not a finished product, yet. Please, understand what you see and read before making half-baked comments.
Yes, but both Symbian^4 and Windows Phone 7 were demos, and both will be released at relatively the same time. Microsoft's new mobile OS seems like a breath of fresh air from all the wanna-be Android and iPhone clones. S^4 looks like an OS from three years ago.
True that what we see in these videos is probably a million miles from what we will see running on S^4 devices. Especially true when considering that Version 3 devices are still months away from appearing. In one sense it's good to see them already working several releases ahead of themselves. It shows that they do have some type of roadmap (hopefully packed with ideas).
What I don't get though is why they are releasing these short framework/UI demos. I understand the showing of Version 3 at MWC as they had to show something rather than just chatting about services but the videos above just show what appears to be Nokia still playing catch up (in their future UI) rather than taking the current UI benchmarks set my Android and Apple (already a year or 2 old), then just working on top of that. It all looks like catch up (as proven by most of the above comments).
Function over form is always going to win for me and Symbian still offers enough real world function for me to not be bothered by outdated UI's, but unless Nokia can deliver that Swishy Swashy wowness in the UI department on their high end devices then the bad press and lack of innovation or whatever claims will continue.
It's now "wowness" that is needed. What really matters is ease of use and productivity. Having fancy transitions doesn't really add a great deal, because once you have seen it, it is old hat.
Nobody can really tell much about ease of use from these videos. I would say that it is pointless comparing the ^4 videos to the Win Mobile 7 videos for these reasons:
1. Windows Mobile 7 is running on a handset, Symbian ^4 is on a software emulator.
2. Windows Mobile 7 is clearly further developed, see 1.
3. The Symbian ^3 demo shows more and looks better than this ^4 framework demo.
4. The QT for S60 pre-release "Garden" videos several seen running on a 5800xm shows more and looks better that this ^4 framework demo.
So I don't believe that there is anything to be learned about ^4 as it will look when finished from this video.
Really great series of interviews, gives a tremendous insight in what makes Nokia tick. Thanks.
germcevoy wrote:
Function over form is always going to win for me and Symbian still offers enough real world function for me to not be bothered by outdated UI's, but unless Nokia can deliver that Swishy Swashy wowness in the UI department on their high end devices then the bad press and lack of innovation or whatever claims will continue.
Very well said, and I totally agree.
The current Symbian UI, as I'm using on the 5230 right now doesn't have much of the "wow" factor (apart from the Beta Labs photo viewer), but its incredibly reliable, and very (VERY) feature rich.
There are a lot of people shouting out about how outdated the UI is - but to be honest that doesn't really matter. What matters is how the device actually performs on frequently used tasks, and on that count Symbian is easily amongst the best.