alweekes wrote:PR is important, but only of any value when you have the end user experience to back it up and support it.There's a reason Apple are sitting on some $25 billion of cash reserves, despite sales volumes much lower than the likes of Nokia. Anyone that says either PR or device UI aren't important, they need to rethink that stance, or continue to bury their heads in the sand.
Yes Nokia still sell loads of 'smart' phones, but they are heavily promoted through the networks, and relative to their capabilities, low cost. They are in a different market space at present to Apple and the high end Android devices and that's an important thing to realise. They may have a sustainable business in this area, but the only way to get the sort of money that Apple seems capable of amassing is to increase those margins considerably and that means increased cost to the end user, which means the reason for spending that extra money has to be utterly compelling.
I'm no Apple fan, but I can really appreciate what they do well, which is to make high technology items utterly simple and intuitive to use. I had a play with an iPad at the weekend and whilst I still came away from that with no desire to have one in *my* life, it was fascinating to see anyone, from small children, to elderly grandparents, pick it up and use it without any apparent thought. You just touch it, and things happen that make sense. For consumer with high disposable income that's the way to gain sales. They're not geeks and aren't prepared to invest time and effort into careful optimising the device or using workarounds to make the device work for them.There isn't a single Nokia / Symbian device that brings that user experience at present.
Apple and the other newcomers to the smartphone market are spreading through the passionate and enthusiastic proselytizing of their user base and the tech press. It's this element that Nokia are missing out on at present; there's nothing 'impressive' to show people, the slick UI and the ease of use that's present on other devices is absent from current Nokia range. The upcoming Nokia N8 looks interesting and obviously has an awesome camera, something Nokia are putting a big spotlight on, but how many many end users will care? Many of the curent high end devices don't have cameras as good as even 3yr old Nokia's, but has that stopped their sales growth? No.
The great engineers at Nokia need to realise that it's not the specs that sell the product, it's the user experience as a whole. This lack of holistic approach is the root cause of the problem, in my view. Couple Nokia's prodigious hardware talent with some better end-user experience and I see no reason why they can't reclaim this ground.
There's an old adage in engineering that's as true now as it ever was: -
"A system is only as good as its weakest link"
Those weak links are what Nokia needs to concentrate on. A great camera won't overcome a lack of RAM / poor UI / buggy software / an app store that doesn't work etc. etc.
When it takes 9 button clicks on my Nokia phone to perform an operation that I *don't even have to do* on my Milestone (changing screen brightness for anyone interested), the problem becomes painfully apparent. The Milestone has an ambient light sensor that works properly and so the need to adjust manually is totally eliminated. My Nokia has a sensor too, but it the software behind it doesn't work properly, so manual intervention is required.
It's why I think the recent article on here about UI was both interesting and disingenuous at the same time.
I agree that little has changed in UI over the years (Palm Pre being the only obvious exception to this, although the old themes are still present , even there), but this is a very simple view of UI.
UI *is* the experience the end user has, more than it is about how things look or are laid out. So yes, all we need to do is fix the current UI, but that UI is wrong, simply because it doesn't work with the user, so many times it works against them.
I'm sure the example above seems utterly unimportant to many here, but I use it as an illustration, it's just one of many similar annoyances, that, by themselves, aren't a big deal. The problem comes that there's so many 'little' things wrong, that it adds up to a whole that just leaves me and most of the tech press cold.
So yes, PR is important, but the only way that will work in my view is to get that passion and enthusiasm in the user base, such that the best sales tactic of all, that of personal recommendation, works once again.
Andy Weekes.
i agree thats kind of what i meant, its not so much the eye candy.
Swop the sim on your E71 and see how many times you have to set up a new connection, apps---communications---email--settings--general--scroll to service info--access point change. repeat for internet, ovi maps, google maps, ebuddy etc. This of course after you've gone through tools..connection..packet data blah blah blah, do i sound petty? maybe i don't have to do that with an android.