Nokia LA Unlocked Event (Part 1)

Well- I made it out of LA after the Nokia Nseries event in the Hollywood Hills- and what an event it was! Much was learned about the newly released Nseries devices, many friends were made with my fellow members of the blogging community, and a LOT of alcohol was consumed by all parties involved. Although no new devices were released, and information regarding upcoming devices was hard to come by due to skillful dodging of issues by crafty Nokia executives- we did get a closed door Q&A with Nokia's VP of Multimedia in North America, Bill Plummer, and a couple of his colleagues who were able to answer a good number of questions many Nokia users were chomping at the bit for. The most exciting aspect of this event is how apparent it is that Nokia is committing to the North American market for the first time in what seems like a long, long time. It's time for North America to get excited about Nokia. Read more to have a look at what went on at this event- and get a feel for how Nokia is moving forward in North America.

North America, meet Nokia.

 It's apparent that Nokia is ready to set up shop in North America, finally. The executives I spoke with were very excited about this seemingly newly discovered market. The general feeling was that the US market was a bit behind the times as far as the maturity of the rest of the global market, but that it shows tremendous potential- in some ways, more potential than other markets due to the structure of data plans. We're seen as very much a multimedia orientated and a well connected market due to cheaper and more common data plans. Users in the US are more willing to use applications, devices and services that are very multimedia centric and geared towards keeping us more connceted, which is afterall Nokia's long time moto- connecting people. We can expect to see Nokia directing our market towards this direction in a strong way. Given their tremendous success in every other market of the world and their extremely progressive nature- I think we can also expect them to nail this one to the wall.

...On to the devices

The real star of the show was of course the devices themselves. I had a first hand look at a few products I haven't seen yet, including the new N81- a super slick black slider with a very cool autoconfiguring button array that changes based upon the needs of the application. Also appearing was the N95 8GB multimedia computer with it's larger display and increased internal storage, battery and system RAM. The other new device making the rounds at the party, the device I was personally most interested in, was the US variant of the N95 with it's North American frequency 3G chip as well as the larger battery and system memory specifications shared with the N95 8GB. 

The Nokia Nseries N81

 The first thing I have to say about the N81 is that it's an incredibly attractive device. Even after seeing all the pictures and videos, I had no idea how hot this one really is. The slider definitely has a much nicer feel to it than the N95. It's spring loaded, and loaded with a good bit of tension, which not only gives it a much nicer feel when sliding open, but will also help a great deal to keep the device closed in your pocket. I don't wear tight fitting pants, but after a few months of usage on my N95 it seems to be popping open in my pocket with great regularity- causing unintended operation of the device. This seems far from possible with the very solid N81. The button array on the front face of the device also has the very cool feature of changing the assignment of the button and the icon displayed on them to fit the operation of the device depending upon with application is running at the time. The navi-wheel is a neat feature, it's a touch sensitive "wheel" instead of the usual DPad type key. Right now the sensitivity is a bit off in my opinion and there is currently only a setting to enable or disable it, not set the pressure used to operate it. I'm assured that this will be revised down the road. The rest of the device is pretty standard for the powerful Nseries line of products- WiFi, Quadband GSM radio, 2100mhz WCDMA, 240x320 pixel 2.4" TFT screen with 24 bit color. It runs S60 3rd edition feature pack 1 on a capable 369mhz ARM 11 processor. Just as with the N95, there is an option with a memory card slot or with 8GB internal storage. It supports a pleathora of bluetooth profiles- which of course includes A2DP and AVRCP. The only disappointment for me is the 2 megapixel camera- which is an absolute deal breaker for me. Some sites claim that the specs of the cam include autofocus, but the ones I saw certainly had no two-stage capture button, and based upon the operation of the device, I'm not inclined to believe it. Had this device included a 5mpix camera, or even a 3.2 megapixer- I might find myself far more interested in it. Alas, time to move on- as again, the 2 mpix hardware is a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.

The Nokia Nseries N95 8GB Multimedia Computer

And now the device that seems to be everyone's favorite, though I'm not as impressed. The updated Nokia N95 8GB model "Multimedia Computer". A lot of people have been drooling over this device ever since the rumor mill started kicking out specifications on the device. With it's (ever so slightly) larger screen, increased system RAM and higher capacity battery and super sharp black casing- who wouldn't be drooling into their socks? Me. I for one think that the black casing isn't as appealing and sophisticated looking as my Silver/Deep Plum device sitting in front of me. I think it almost looks a little cheap, especially in person. Something about it doesn't scream "classy device" the way my first generation N95 does. The  8GB internal memory is also what I consider a drawback as well. I personally dogged all over the iPhone because it was limited by the lack of expandable memory.  6GB cards are already available and 8GB cards are going to be obtainable by January, if not December. You not only lose the ability to carry around several 8GB cards, but you're also not going to be able to pull the card, toss in in another device such as an N800 Internet Tablet to immediately view your images on a larger screen, or pop it in your desktop/laptop or a buddies computer. No thanks on that one. Plus, I'd feel like a jerk when the 16 gig cards come out. The increased battery is nice, but at the cost of a lens cover- eh... if that's all you got for me, I'll pass. It's gonna take something very special to get me to drop my beloved lens cover. I don't want to be wiping my lens everytime I go to use the camera. I also really enjoy the ease opperation made possible by opening the lens to snap a photo. Yep- gonna have to be something really special... that very special thing is the increased RAM. Now this is a great feature that I'll pay good money to upgrade my current model for. I'm a bit of a power N95user. There are three or four programs that I like to have running all the time, all day long- this is simply not possible with the first generation N95. With v11 of the device's firmware, I was constantly plagued with "out of memory" errors and general system crashes- v12 went a frustratingly further step to just quietly, rudely and indiscriminately kill programs without  the user's consent as if he or she doesn't know better. This is just about unacceptable to me as a power user. It's also not the case with the black N95 with the incresed RAM. A couple of us tried opening programs until we received an error message telling us we've gone too far, or being to kill applications as it saw fit. This didn't happen, and we tried our hardest. We launched the multimedia menu, the camera, music player, GPS, a few office apps, web browser, contacts, messaging... we kept going, but it was no use. The thing is rock solid. Unfortunately one thing wasn't rock solid about the device- the slider. Again- still the same old problems with the clicky, loose (dare I say) poorly designed and constructed slider. The apparent differences in the device's outward appearance with regads to the slider made no difference as far as the wobble goes, it's just to allow for the larger screen. A few 8 giggers had wobble, a few didn't- just like the first generation N95's- it's a crap shoot as to what kind of slider you get. Made by Nokia (in Asia) or Made in Finland (by reindeer) matters not, as always. I can't say I'm terribly surprised by this. What I was surprised with was the face of the device- the larger display no longer has that scary soft exposed feeling of a laptop  screen- it's nearly flush with the rest of the device's facade. A hard plastic covering now protects the display. Something I could have gone for a while back. Still, with the cheap looking black case, and the limited storage memory- it's not the device for me. That's next up.

The US variant Nokia Nseries N95 Multimedia Computer

This is the one. The US version of the N95. It doesn't have the larger screen of the 8GB version, but it does have a card slot- as well as the increased RAM and a larger battery. It also has the 3G chip with the frequencies required for it to operate on AT&T's UMTS network- as shown connected to such a network on the left. This model comes in silver with black (just the backplate) or brown (hmmm, yuck?). I was attempting to do a speed test on dslreports with the device when I was called away for a closed door Q&A with Bill Plummer- the big boss at the event. He's the VP of Multimedia for Nokia in North America. That makes him the guy you fight at the end of the kung-fu video game- not the end of the leve, but the big boss at the end of level 14. That guy. At mention of this Q&A, I dropped what I was doing and got going. I even passed by a bunch of silver bags as I was walking up the stairs to the closed door session. These bags apparently contained complimentary booze in the form of Moet Champagne, an abundance of Nokia literature- and a set of Nokia A2DP headphones. At the conclusion of the Q&A, the headsets were all gone. Either they were pilfered by random LA event attending scum, or they simply ran out before what I consider to be the real guests of the event, the bloggers, could get their hands on them. Infact, only one or two bloggers actually got the prize in the bottom of the ceral box- I'm glad for them, but the retail jockeys that were at the event that scammed the headsets can rot. (Can you taste my disgust yet?) At any rate, I got something far more valuable from the Q&A- video captured with the N95 for all of you. :) I even got my email address to the VP of Marketing for Nokia in North America, who assured me that he'd get us headsets, and mentioned something even more valuable and exciting to me. Guy- if you're reading this, please get in touch with me when you can. I'll be patiently awaiting your contact (as much as I can!). In the meantime, I've got a video to cut, edit and post in part two of this reporting on the event in LA last week. I expect I'll have that and more information for everyone in a day or two. So keep your eyes glued to this blog- there's some really good info in that Q&A. 

Stay connected for part 2... in the meantime, please discuss this news article !

Comments (2)

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written by James @ Nokia Creative, October 03, 2007

Wow to go!! Nice article. So you got the whole Q&A? Excellent work.

It was great meeting you in L.A. Looking forward to the reunion!

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written by PseudoFinn, October 05, 2007

Thanks, James.

It was fantastic to meet you- I'm quite the fan of your blog, so it was quite a treat hearing that you were going to be there. DEFINITELY looking forward to the reunion!

Yeah- I recorded the whole Q&A- but I decided not to post it, it was pretty dark in there- so the quality wasn't that good, and it was pretty loud with all the music downstairs... so I just blogged a story about it. The article is up, I'd love for you to read that one too and let me know how I'm doing.

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