Let�s be cool... or what Nokia could do next

Release a high quality phone with

1GHz processor
512MB RAM
Good battery life
Super thin with Gorilla glass screen
Stable Symbian^3 and upgradable to Symbian^4

then people may get excited about Nokia again.

I think Nokia should reconsider their free offerings and figure out how to make them easier to access. How many people actually care about free navigation, push e-mail and whatnot? To be realistic here, not so many do. If you only need to travel the same routes everyday in the same city/town all year-long, you don't really care about getting free navigation and maps. If you connect with people through social networking, push e-mails to you are just hyped piece of tech whose significance is over your head. But if you do need one, you want it to be dead simple.

BlackBerry services, for example, aren't free but still they're utilized by quite a large array of users, from grads to dads, from teens to professionals. That's because it's very easy to get access to them. Here on this side of the Blue Planet, you only need to send around 2 to 3 simple text messages to a telco-run abbreviated number to get a BlackBerry push e-mail account and PIN; the whole process only takes minutes, less than five minutes, and you're good to go. Account management is done via text messages or the usual Web interface. Now try to get and setup an Ovi account -- ouch!.

Nokia thought more users would drool over and line up to get their shiny new gadgets because their free offerings would craze them. Well, they thought wrong... Users want features that are imminently valuable and useful to them, not those that have no obvious real-world use.

I've been an intense user of Nokia's maps and navigation since they were far from free, but that's because my job makes me have to travel overseas pretty often (at least once a month for a week or so). I've also been using Nokia's Ovi Mail because my job makes me have to communicate with people from different parts of the world, but I'm aware that there aren't many people who appreciate it.

cylon6 wrote:From what I can gather Symbian 3 offers things similar to other touchscreens, one tap, pinch to zoom etc. But it seems to put people off because it just looks old and like Symbian looks now. I honestly think that if the N8 launched and what was onscreen had a different font, icons, calculator and calendar but with the exact same functionality more people would be saying "wow that looks great!"

The first impression is made with the eyes. I can see that the N8 UI looks great, but some of my friends look at and say it isn't snazzy enough and that is just based on the icons/transitions etc.

And that's a symptom of what Nokia doesn't get and why they aren't seen as "cool."

Part of making a new OS seem new is making it look new. Consider what Apple did, not just with iOS, but with OS X when it first came out. Not only did Apple add pre-emptive multitasking, a Unix core, better memory management, and support for more advanced processors, but they gave the OS a brand new look and much better graphics. Far from confusing existing Mac users, it emphasized that OS X was something new and it improved user perception of the new OS.

It appears Nokia realizes this and plans this for S^4, but since it isn't clear at all whether N8 will be upgradeable, N8 must rely solely on S^3, which looks like a much older OS than it is.

cylon6 wrote:From what I can gather Symbian 3 offers things similar to other touchscreens, one tap, pinch to zoom etc. But it seems to put people off because it just looks old and like Symbian looks now. I honestly think that if the N8 launched and what was onscreen had a different font, icons, calculator and calendar but with the exact same functionality more people would be saying "wow that looks great!"

The first impression is made with the eyes. I can see that the N8 UI looks great, but some of my friends look at and say it isn't snazzy enough and that is just based on the icons/transitions etc.

You might think what's killing Symbian's image is a bunch of boring icons and fonts, but the main complaint is far beyond that. Symbian hasn't had consistend product development in ages. As many people have said in previous posts, they don't need to make cool. No complaint has been petty enough to just criticize Symbian's styles. It's the dearth of real compelling products that's killing it. If symbian puts out a solid enough device, word of mouth will help it spread far.

-Gene

Nokia has the wrong folks running the company- they need a refresh, new ideas, or they won't return...need to stop Manufacturing and Finance from running the firm- marketing !!

I also own a N97 mini and I'm as disappointed as many other users in the web (we all know the rant about the N97/mini).
How about a give-in rebate for N97/mini users when buying a N8 e.g.?
Give back your N97/mini and get lets say 100 or 200 $/� rebate for purchasing a N8 or future MeeGo device.

slitchfield wrote:Just in answer to all the questions about whether the N8 will get an upgrade to Symbian^4 as and when the latter is ready, there's no technical reason why it shouldn't be possible, as far as we know.

Whether Nokia choose to offer this is another matter. It would really only appeal to geeks, to be honest - the mass market users would be horribly confused by an upgrade to their handset that totally changed the interface. I know my wife, for example, would. What users want is more stability and faster, smoother operation using the interface they've already got to know.

Whereas geeks (like us) love tinkering, changing and transmogrifying! 8-)

See, this is where Nokia will screw up. They could upgrade the N8 to Symbian^4, they could push the platform, but they won't. For a period of say three years, every Symbian handset should get updates to the platform as a whole. Nokia need to learn from Apple here.

With the iPhone, even older handsets get new features. Now I know the 2G isn't getting iOS 4, but it's three years old now. The 3G might not be getting multitasking, but it still got wallpapers and folders. The 3GS got the lot. Apple develop the iOS platform and the better experience means people are happy. Improvements made in new handsets get filtered down the chain to people with older ones. It's the same with Android, everybody with a device still being supported gets bug fixes and new cool stuff.

But Nokia don't do this. They prefer to support dozens of devices with multiple different firmwares all at once and to not keep customers happy. For instance, I have an N82 and an N79. The N82 has as much ram as the N79 and although ~10% slower, it has dual processors, so it has the power to run FP2. So why didn't Nokia update it? Why didn't we get ultra snappy screen rotation and nice looking menu transitions let alone good stuff like Destinations?

Nokia need to get it into their heads that product support is not just bug fixes for whatever revision of the OS you're on - it's new features too. Push the platform, not the product. This incidentally is why you pretty much have to stick to one of the handsets Nokia likes, because if you don't, you'll be waiting on the bug fixes for years whilst the loved handsets occasionally get good stuff, like the 5800 and kinetic scrolling. E71 got free nav, the N82 didn't, both FP1. Gah. This totally schizo approach to updates is a definite black mark against Nokia.

And now we come to the N8 - we know even before release that a new version of Symbian will be available in probably less than a year from the release of the N8, we know the N8 will be able to run it, but we can't put faith in Nokia to do the right thing and give us an update.

cylon6 wrote:From what I can gather Symbian 3 offers things similar to other touchscreens, one tap, pinch to zoom etc. But it seems to put people off because it just looks old and like Symbian looks now. I honestly think that if the N8 launched and what was onscreen had a different font, icons, calculator and calendar but with the exact same functionality more people would be saying "wow that looks great!"

The first impression is made with the eyes. I can see that the N8 UI looks great, but some of my friends look at and say it isn't snazzy enough and that is just based on the icons/transitions etc.

But Symbian with S60 was always fully customisable and themeable. Has the ability to use themes been dropped from Symbian^3 on the N8?

With themes the UI can look however you want it.

My suggestion is for Nokia to promise an upgrade to S^4, when it comes out, to the N8(which is going to ship with N^3 installed). This promise of an upgrade will allow early adopters to not feel as if they should wait so as not to miss out on the newer S^4. Even if it was a minor upgrade charge to get S^4, N8 owners would do it to keep current with features.

The Nokia board has taken matters in its own hands as how to make Nokia cool again. The Wall Street journal is reporting (tonight) in the USA that Nokia is conducting a world-wide search for a new CEO.
Bye bye old big boss.