Nokia LA Unlocked Event (Part 2)

 One of the biggest things I got from the Nseries event in LA last week was how incredibly accessable the Nokia executives allowed themselves to be. Not only were they mixing with the crowd all night, allowing users to have one-on-ones with them and get a little face time with a Nokia executive, but the group from WOM World was allowed a closed door Q&A with Bill Plummer, VP of Multimedia for Nokia North America, and a couple others from his team. It was incredibly informative (even if some of the team didn't know the model numbers of the Nokia accessories, or even the N81- which I don't mind telling you, was a little shocking!) and they did a fair job at answer the questions they were able to, and handled some of the odd questions quite well. I'll get right to the meat of the information-

The Internet Tablet, 770, N800 and beyond...

One thing that was made abundantly clear by Mr. Plummer is that Nokia is very committed to the Internet Tablet device. He mentioned the progression of the device as such- 770 = Uber geek, N800 = Geek... and then he said that what comes next is going to be much closer to a mainstream device- though I guess it's important to note that he did not say it would be a mainstream device, just that it would be closer than the previous products. That being said, he made a point to mention that Nokia has learned a tremendous amount from the Linux and tablet communities, and it is apparent that they are quite appreciative of this. Not much was spoken of devices to come, even after the presumed name of the next device was thrown directly at them from Thoughfix of tabletblog.com, who got the information from the ever overly-informative FCC website. WiMAX was briefly discussed, though nothing at all was said of GPS, or a slider qwerty- though as he mentioned that this will be more of a mainstream device, I can't imagine we wouldn't be seeing the slide-out keyboard, or the GPS as well. Nokia is progressing all the time as a converged company, both with products and services, so I'm sure we're in for a lot more than just a keyboard and GPS- I certainly hope so, at any rate.

The Battle for Global Warranty (...and how it fits into the Battle for World Domination)

One brave soul butted heads with the 14th level end-of-the-kung-fu-video-game master that is Bill Plummer and asked about global warranty. She told the story of her N80 and how it had failed not three days into its use. Being, I presume, an LA resident- she tried without luck to get the device repaired by Nokia in LA, and again in London. She punctuated her question/remark with the plan of asking "people on the streets" if they can help with the device during a trip to the UK in the near future. The answer to the very important and ponderous question made sense, and was exactly what I had assumed- it's about regulatory and legal requirements and red-tape. See, the challenge of a globally warranty wasn't much of a problem until recently, when these quad band devices started appearing on the market. Certain devices are intended for certain markets, and those markets have regulations that people don't usually think about when importing the latest device. I'm sure Nokia would prefer to be able to provide all customers with the same warranty regardless of where they purchased a device from, and where they took it- but the simple fact is that they just cannot, at least not yet...? It's just one more piece of the global market puzzle that they are fitting together with these quad band devices. Quad band devices that it seems Nokia is going to stick with, at least as far as the high-end devices are concerned. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of the big devices from Nokia released as quad band devices right out of the gate. Nokia is working hard to harmonize with the different regulations and frequencies required by different markets. More about being a progressive company, once again. There was a little talk of Software Defined Radio, and the ITU... These are the battles that Nokia is facing, and seemingly going at head-on lately. The point is that Nokia sees that global solutions and variants make the most sense, and they're committed to working through the issues at hand- including the fabled global warranty. They also feel that the North American market make sense in their whole ideal of convergence- more so than any other market. That gets me, as an American, excited.

The "Door" to a Choice of Services-  with attention to familiarity and freedom 

 Of course, we weren't going to get through the night without some discussion of Ovi. A lot has been covered with regards to the new services portal of Nokia already, so I won't rehash all of that- but I will emphasize a couple points that Mr. Plummer presented us with that evening. Ovi is about choice, it's about the freedom to decide what services to use, to be able to make the decision to use the service you've become familiar with. This is what I got from him, I haven't studied up on Ovi much- so I'm just assuming I have it right here, but it sounds to me that Nokia is partnering with several providers to give real choice to the users as to what service they use. He mentioned Facebook, or Flickr, or Snapfish or several other options- they're not picking and locking you to one service or provider, they're just consolidating them for us, making things easier- not more locked down. After all, we're talking about an "Unlocked" mobile manufacturer's world, right? I really need to investigate this Ovi thing more... the more I hear, the more intrigued I am. Especially when I hear that Nokia has gone and done something like acquire  Navteq for 8 billion dollars over the weekend. Talk about progressive- what did you do this weekend? It's big news... 

Random Bits... 

There was far more discussed in this Q&A- I've got about 40 minutes of video recored with the N95, if anyone is very interested in it, I'll gladly post it here- though some parts of it were hard to hear because for some reason people kept coming and going during the talk, opening the door to the very loud party going on downstairs. Near the end people seemed to be getting bored, so there was a lot of third-party discussion going on in the background- which I found frustrating and a little insulting to the good people up there that were doing their best to make themselves and their knowledge of our concerns and questions available. At any rate- some of the other things that were mentioned...

Multimedia buttons on the N95 are available to the software developers- Nokia isn't hiding them. Developers are free to map them to their hearts' content. It's just like when the N95 first came out and so many people were upset with Nokia for "locking down" the GPS- we now know that of course Nokia made the GPS data available for third-party developers- it's now up to the big players like TomTom to get off their asses and provide us with software that works in todays ultra converged market. It's up to the software developers to decide if they want to use these multimedia keys. Seems like Nokia has had it with the dual slider, so are we really going to be seeing a lot of devices with the four multimedia keys anymore? I'm thinking we won't... but it's just like the two buttons at the top of the N81- once again, they've been made available to the developers. It's in their hands now.

A lot of work is being done to simplify the wifi, with regards to discovery and connection. We're told to keep our eye out for announcements of this "in the near future". Don't know what that's all about- but again, progression... I'm excited, anyone else?

The lens cover on the 8GB and US variant N95s.... this was the only question I wasn't satisfied with (and the ones where they said they can't comment on features and existence of unreleased devices, but that's not unsatisfying, it's understandable. I'm sure we've all gotten that email from Nokia at least once- my inbox is full of them!). When asked what the deal was with the lens cover being nixed on the 8GB and N95, it was said that this due to a number of things. The US radio and antenna requirements were referenced as well as the real estate that the thicker battery takes up. Neither of those answers satisfied me, but were far less frustrating than when we were told that it was a request of the community to drop the lens cover, that concerns were made that it interfered with the spontaneity of taking an image. What's this all about? First of all, I'm a moderator of an N95 community that is over 6 thousand strong, with about 5,000 daily readers- I've not heard this. Not once. In fact, I've heard nothing but either indifference or complete disgust about the removal of the feature. Secondly, how much quicker is it to thoroughly wipe the lens and ensure there is no dust, dirt, smudges, lint or otherwise on the lens of your damn 5 mega pixel Carl freakin' Zeiss lens and fire up the camera utility than it is to flick open a slider and take a picture? Are we talking about arthritic people having trouble operating the slider? No- that answer didn't satisfy me in the least. Obviously, it's also a bit of a sore spot for me, as I really, REALLY want a US 3G N95 and love my lens cover. The trade off for all that RAM vs the lack of a lens cover is a no-brainer, but it doesn't make me happy.

 VGA resolution- the Japanese do it, why not Nokia- is it being worked on, is it on the radar for short-term? The response came that Japanese markets are different, they expect different things, and it's apparently not seen as important as other things that Nokia is working on. They mentioned that they're always looking for ways to improve upon the quality of screens in the devices, and if that requires adding more pixels, so be it. They didn't seem to think it's a priority, but it's presumably being worked on. No idea of dates, devices or anything else- just that it is on the radar.

One last very brief mention- any CDMA fans out there...? Nokia is working on further solutions and momentum is being reached with Sprint and Verizon to materialize these solutions. Cheers to everyone still afraid of GSM - :P

That's about it... any questions, as always- I'm more than happy to discuss what I've heard and my thoughts on it !

Comments (4)

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Great review
written by Churraheefilms.se, October 05, 2007

Real good overview from your LA meeting. You havent be lazy!
Damm lens cover :x
Thanks for you share this news

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written by Al, October 05, 2007

You should cut up the video file from the Q&A and put it on MOSH

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written by James @ Nokia Creative, October 05, 2007

Wow! That's a serious review of the evening!

I'm with you on the Ovi thing . . . what is it!!?

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written by PseudoFinn, October 05, 2007

LOL- I don't know James, at least I don't exactly know what it is. I gotta check into it...

Al- You want it, you got it! I'll cut it up and post it up... I might have it up later tonight, or tomorrow afternoon. Keep an eye on the main page- I'll reference it there. Cheers

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