First impressions of the Nokia Lumia 800

I was lucky enough for the people of Nokia Connects to send me a Nokia Lumia 800 to trial for two weeks. It arrived yesterday, and in the evening I set it up. These are my first impressions… they are far from definite, because this is the honeymoon period where you particularly see the good things and overlook the drawbacks, but still they reflect on some basic first findings.

In order to be as structured as possible, I have split my impressions in positives and negatives and made a distinction between the software and hardware.

Positives:

Windows Phone Mango:

• The start screen is a nice way of getting to things quickly and have a quick overview of some important information, such as calendar, weather, tasks, and social network notifications. The only thing I don’t know is whether in the long run it will be limiting – let me remind you that I come from Android – or refreshing in the sense that it lets me play around less and therefore I waste less time.

• The people hub is really quite amazing for several reasons:
  • The ease with which you can add your facebook, google, twitter, linkedin, etc. accounts and the way it starts importing all the relevant information.
  • The fact that you can create groups that allow you to filter people and their updates/information.
  • The fact that you can comment in the actual people hub.

• The Me tile is also very handy to see what Notifications you have and you can very quickly post to your social networks. The Me tile and People hub do transform how you interact with your SNS… it makes it much more “immediate”.
• I like the fact that there are lots of trial versions of a “Pro” app in the Market Place. A nice way to get to check out the app before you start taking out your wallet.
• I am really glad to see that Nokia maps and drive is available. I always enjoyed it on my Symbian phones and I am looking forward to using it again. Just the feeling of downloading your maps and voice navigation packs is gratifying… no more sucking up battery and data simply navigating somewhere (as is the case in Google Maps).

Nokia hardware:

• The phone is simply a beauty. There is not much more to say. It looks great.
• The materials feel and look nice. It is a high quality plastic that doesn’t feel plasticy and doesn’t feel “cold” as some metalic materials do.
• The build quality is very nice. It is a unibody design and that of course gives it immediately a feeling of robustness.
• The screen is bright and pretty legible, with high contrast and rich colours. The fonts are nice. I do need some more time to play around with it to see how well this size works in all circumstances. I’ll be the first to admit that 4.3″ is large for one-handed use, but WP is actual pretty ideal for that size, as it relies a lot on swipes to get around instead of hunting for buttons on the top AND bottom (they are all on the bottom). I would love to see how well the Lumia 900 fits in your hand and how easily it is operated with one hand.
• Audio speaker is pretty good, though not stellar. It performed decently on my “speaker test”; i.e. I could hear my podcasts well enough on my commute to work in the car.
• The buttons on the right side respond pretty well and the ports on the top (SIM card and USB) are well hidden, but easily accessible once you know how.

Negatives:

Windows Phone Mango:

• The install experience in the market was not very good. Often times the download and installation would hang, and “require my attention”, as the phone says. Naturally, when you set up a phone you install more apps at once then you normally would, but still, I hardly ever experience that on my Android and never on my  iPad.
• In order to get multiple Google calendars to sync, you need to use a workaround as described here. It does work now, though, and it is only a one-time setup.
• I haven’t been able to configure my Exchange account from work, after succesfully doing so on stock Android, TouchWiz android, iOS, Symbian^3, and S60 3rd edition. Pretty incredible.
• I haven’t nailed the problem down completely, but I believe the phone has problems downloading stuff when the application is not in the foreground or the screen is turned off. This happened to me when downloading Maps and when downloading apps.
• Though I quite like how the keyboard works in terms of language selection and prediction, I thoroughly dislike that there is not haptic feedback. I know it may be silly, but in a noisy environment I don’t here the “clicks” of the keys and that means there is all of a sudden only visual feedback, which I currently don’t find to be sufficient.

Nokia hardware:

• The phone is pretty large for the size screen it has. I realise this is because in reality the hardware was for a larger screen (the N9), but I would have liked it to be a little more compact.
• It uses Micro-SIM instead of Mini-SIM. There are instructions for how to cut your SIM card, but I simply ordered a simple Guillotine from Amazon for 7,90 euros which did the job really nicely and also gave me two Mirco-SIM adapters.

As a complete side-note, as your will probably be aware, Windows Phones are managed through software of a computer. I personally use a Mac at home, so had to do with the simpler Connector software (which you can download from the Mac App store). The software actually integrates very well with the Mac environment, syncing movies, music and podcasts from your iTunes library and syncing photos and recorded videos to iPhoto. So I am now back to downloading my podcasts via iTunes and then syncing them to the phone via the Connector software for Macs. It works really nicely and is a good enough solution for me.

Overall, I have to say that my first impressions were very good and it is really inviting to use. In the beginning it really does take some getting used to, and I am actually still not in my groove, but I believe that the way WP works makes a lot of sense and is enjoyable once you get used to its usage paradigms.

I’ll happily use the Nokia Lumia 800 as my main phone for the coming two weeks and I’ll post my thoughts on twitter, with another post to conclude my thoughts on the phone.

Check list for the Nokia Lumia 800 review

The people from Nokia Connects will allow me to trial a Nokia Lumia 800. I have played with a few Windows Phones in the shops, but this will be the first Windows Phone I’ll try more extensively. It will be a great opportunity to evaluete how well it stacks up to their two biggest competitors, and I can see whether Nokia has a winner on their hands with this device.

More specifically, I’ll be reviewing the following things:

1. Applications. On my Android and iPad I have very similar applications, and I could switch from one to the other with relative ease. I’m going to see whether my bases are covered with Windows Phone. Particularly, I need applications for podcasting, audible, twitter, facebook, google reader, path, tapatalk, read it later, evernote, exchange email & calendar, google email, contacts and calendar, Google+, …
2. Multimedia handling. I am fully aware that Windows Phone is managed through software on the computer. With Android, I have cut the cords to a large extent, and I am curious to see how well I get on with the Windows Phone paradigm. Particularly, I am interested to see how well videos and music are side loaded – with a focus on video formats. Lastly, I don’t listen to a lot of music on my phone, but occasionally I do. I am pretty curious about the Nokia Music app they have developed, because it could be pretty much perfect for me.
3. Maps. I have always been a fan of Nokia Maps and I consider it to be a plus on any mobile phone. On Symbian it is a very mature application, while it appears that on Windows Phone it is now mainly a Sat Nav application.
4. Performance. Windows Phone does not support the higher screen resolution we have seen from its competitors recently, neither the dual core processors. Will what they have now be enough to create a quality experience. While we are at it, I really like to know how well battery life lasts.
5. Windows Phone specific functions. Windows Phone is really a pretty unique approach and I am very interested to see how Live Tiles, the Me tile, social network integration, notifications, deep app linking, local scout, “multitasking”, etc. work in normal life.

The only downside I have thus far seen with the Lumia 800 is that it has a Micro SIM. Makes it more difficult for me to actually review the device. It is of course not really a big issue in the market place. Can’t wait for it to arrive…

I want to give Windows Phone a real chance

This year at CES, Microsoft had quite a presence, particularly with regards to Windows Phone. This year, 2012, will be a decisive year for Windows Phone. It is also a decisive year for Nokia, who has bet their smartphone strategy on Windows Phone. After seeing the announcement of the Nokia Lumia 900 and having played with the Nokia Lumia 800, I believe they actually have a future.

I have, generally speaking, been impressed the several times I played wih a Windows Phone in a shop. However, I have stayed away so far for two very simple reasons: specs and apps.

In terms of hardware specifications, the Windows Phones are somewhat lacking, particularly in terms of processors and screen resolution. This is of course a very nerdy thing to say, but I do find that important, particularly when looking at how the device performs in a year’s time, with a new (heavier?) OS version and more involved/heavy apps.

However, my experience yesterday with the Nokia Lumia 800 gave me a feeling of a very snappy OS with good responsive apps. If fact, in terms of performance, I would say that it was pretty much on par with my Galaxy S2. I am sure that some more processor intensive activities, such as browsing the web, editing photo and video on the fly, and the like, do benefit from a dual core processor, but for general purpose applications and the OS, it seemed to keep up very nicely. I guess Joe Belfiore was right when he said that “Windows Phone will compete on quality, not specs“.

My second reservation has to do with the application catalogue. A little over a year ago I purchased a Nokia N8, after Nokia promising that Meego, Symbian and Qt were their future. This means I have experienced a lacking app catalogue for a long time. For that reason I switched to Android, and I have promised myself that I would not jump on a platform again with a lack of apps.

Moreover, it is not just a lack of apps, it is also that generally speaking, you need version 2 of the app to actually get mature apps. Over a year and a half ago, I started with Android, with a Samsung Galaxy S. At that time, Android had quite an extensive application catalogue, but apps actually weren’t all that great, looking back. Fast forward to now, and on my Galaxy S2 I feel that the application situation is very similar to what I have on my iPad: generally feature-rich and well performing apps.

When playing around with the Lumia 800, I saw the Nokia people had preloaded some local content, such as Marca.com (sports newspaper) and ElPais.com (national newspaper) – the last is not even available on Android(!). I naturally tried both of the apps, and I came away impressed in terms of the content it provided, the interface and the performance.

In summary, I am willing to give Windows Phone a real chance after what I saw. The Nokia Lumia 800 perhaps is not exactly what I was looking for, the screen is a little too small and no front facing camera, but the Lumia 900 fits my needs quite nicely! I have asked the people over on Nokia Connects for a two week trial of the Nokia Lumia 800. Let’s hope I am lucky and I can report back on how it went.

Implementing Whatsapp on webOS phones

If you have a smartphone with a data plan and you have not used Whatsapp, I really suggest you give it a try. In a previous post, I raved about its importance for any smartphone platform, and months later I even feel more strongly about it.

EDIT: Just in case, WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia.

It’s come so far, that I would have a really hard time considering a smartphone that is not supported by Whatsapp. Two “upcoming” platforms come to mind that currently lack Whatsapp: Windows Phone and webOS.

Given Whatsapp’s strong relationship with Nokia (both Symbian and S40 (beta-stage) already have Whatsapp), I think it is safe to say that they are at least giving strong thought to supporting Windows Phone (once Mango arrives that provides the necessary contacts database API).

WebOS on the other hand may not have the necessary contacts or market share, but I find it just about the ideal smartphone platform for Whatsapp. All their phones come with a hardware keyboard and have a clear messaging focus. Also, webOS is ideal for integrating a messaging platform like Whatsapp. In this blog post I want to describe (through mock-ups) how Whatsapp could be implemented on webOS and I hope to convey to them that the actual OS takes care of many of the things they had to worry about with other platforms. Also, I hope HP sends their SWAT team to Whatsapp in order to help them implement this.

Why do I do all this? Because I fancy a webOS smartphone, but I don’t want to loose out on Whatsapp. Should you share this feeling with me, I strongly encourage you to sign this petition.

So, here we go.

Synergy

One of webOS’ strong points is something called Synergy. HP defines it as follows:

“Instantly all your content integrates perfectly from all sources. All in one place. All your contacts from everywhere come together as one big happy family. Facebook friends’ birthdays show up in their contact files. Work and personal calendars appear side by side. IM and text messages are combined into one conversation“.

This system level feature of webOS allows other services to link into the OS and feed it data. Messaging services like Skype or gTalk already offer this possibility. From what I have read, Whatsapp is at its core a Jabber-based messaging service like gTalk, so I think it should be able to work.

This means that a first step, as a user, is to install Whatsapp and add the account details from the centralised place:

From that point onward, Whatsapp is present and integrated into the Messaging app. In one single thread you can have IM, Whatsapp and text conversations with one specific person:

Furthermore, Whatsapp will integrate with the Contacts application and it shows up as a communication option for those contacts that are your Whatsapp friends:

As is clear from the above, webOS already takes care of the UI and contact integration.

Multi-tasking and card view

Another outstanding feature of webOS is its ability to multi-task through the card metaphor. Each application is represented by a card, but different parts of an application – like a message in the email app, an account in a twitter application, etc – can have a separate card. Therefore, you can imagine having different conversations open (each in a different card) for different people simultaneously. These conversations can be stacked together or left separately (as in the image below):

Notifications

WebOS is also praised for its practical notification system. The notifications are unobtrusive and allow you to deal with multiple notifications at a time or separately.

When a Whatsapp message comes in from a contact, at the bottom of the screen you will see the Whatsapp icon appear in combination with the message and person you receive it from.

If you hit the notification, the conversation is opened in a separate card. Should you not be able to reply, then the text will disappear and you will continue to see the Whatsapp icon at the bottom, so that you can deal with it, when most convenient.

Just Type and Quick Actions

Lastly, webOS offers a very useful feature called Just Type. When combined with Quick Actions, you have a very handy and productivity enhancing feature available at all times.

Just Type activates when a user starts typing in launcher or card view, which then starts an activity which can include searching, sending an email, making a phone call, etc. An app can integrate with three different Just Type components, of which one is Quick Actions. Quick Actions displays apps that initiate a new action with the user-entered text, e.g. send a Whatsapp to a specific contact, create a new twitter status update, create a new memo, etc.

Whatsapp’s use of Quick Actions are varied, but the following is an example where you quickly start typing the name of a contact and the option of contacting them through Whatsapp appears as a Quick Action.

Wrap up

In summary, I hope the above conveys how Whatsapp and webOS are a great combination. I hope that HP and Whatsapp take note and start thinking about bringing them together.

PS. a couple of notes:

• I don’t actually own a webOS smartphone, so I sourced the screen shots from different web sites. I hope this causes no problems. A thanks to the actual creators of the screen shots – you know who you are.
• Thanks to my sister for photoshopping all the screen shots in order to show how Whatsapp would integrate.

Nokia E6: a niche smartphone

The fine folks of WOMWorld/Nokia sent me a Nokia E6 for a trial period of two weeks. In this post, I wanted to write a couple of quick comments on my experiences with the device.

However, before I get into the device itself, I wanted to dedicate one paragraph to the context in which this device is launched. Nokia announced last February that it has chosen Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS for its smartphone platform going forward, while in the mean time “extracting” value of the legacy Symbian platform while they can. In line with this strategy, they have launched two additional Symbian^3 devices since then: the Nokia X7 and Nokia E6. We have already seen that Nokia’s Q2 results were very poor, and it is becoming obvious that Nokia has lost preference and market share among smartphone buyers with its Symbian offering.

Despite all this, I got interested in the Nokia E6, because of the price point (SIM-lock free for 325€ on Expansys.es) and my previously positive experiences with the Nokia E71. So, how does the Nokia E6 fare? To cut a long story short, it can no longer hold itself as a general purpose smartphone, in my opinion.

The device has one thing going for itself: hardware. In every way possible, it is a great piece of kit. It looks nice, feels good in the hand, is very sturdy, has a well performing keyboard, a nice crisp screen (though a little small), and a good camera (if you don’t mind full focus cameras).

In terms of performance, the Nokia E6 also holds its own. It’s not a 1GHz dual-core processor and you notice that, but it is by no means a slouch. You zoom quite nicely through the whole OS without really any hiccups. The only thing that was disappointing from a performance perspective  is battery life. I had expected to easily get two days on one charge, and I didn’t. And that was without using it very intensively (though with data on continuously). It would certainly go for a day, so it wasn’t worse than any other smartphone, but I was expecting a bit more with such a large battery and small screen.

One of the corner-stones of the Symbian^3 phones that were launched up until now, is that in terms of specs – screen resolution, RAM, processor speeds – they were all the same. This facilitates the development of the OS and apps for them. The Nokia E6 departs from this in terms of screen size and screen resolution: it has the smallest size of them all (2,4″) and the highest resolution (VGA vs nHD). This means in practice that Nokia has had to make adjustments to make Symbian^3 work well on the E6. In general, I feel they did a good job and normally text is easy enough to read and touch targets are easy enough to hit. There are some exceptions though:

• Only in some some instances – like HTML emails in the email app – the fonts are really too tiny.
• In some apps you can move around nicely without using the touch screen by merely using the dpad  (normally the legacy symbian apps), however in others you basically can’t use it at all (like Nokia Social), while there is a bunch where you can’t use it for everything (like Ovi Store). A bit of a mixed bag, though not critical for me in real life usage.

All these “incompatibilities” with the rest of the Symbian^3 smartphones combined with Nokia’s limited commitment to Symbian (I’d call it at maximum “maintenance mode”), makes me worry about how well the OS will be supported in the future. I imagine they will update for critical bugs, but I somehow doubt we’ll see Symbian Belle on this phone (they’d have re-adjust the UI for the different screen for a second time).

The real problem, however, with this phone comes with third-party applications. They are few and of those available, some are very poorly optimised. Thank goodness, Gravity works great on the phone, but I need a little more than that. I don’t use many apps, but for me a proper Google Reader app and a proper Dropbox app are pretty vital. Both are offered on the Ovi Store – I tried NewsFlow, Grap!, Cutebox – but because they are Qt apps, they do not work properly on the phone. Mostly it is matter of fonts, way too small, but sometimes it is the whole UI that is misconfigured (the app is perhaps designed for portrait, and the E6 screen has a landscape orientation). I am sure some will be optimised, but it is not a good experience to get a phone and then not have your most vital apps available from Day 1.

The last issue is the reason why I consider the E6 not to be a general purpose smartphone. If you know exactly how you want to use this phone in the coming year, perhaps the E6 will do just fine. However, if you rely on apps to make the phone more useful to you, it is quite likely that the E6 is not a great choice, as it is quite likely not future-proof.

So if it isn’t a general purpose smartphone, then what is its use-case? Well, the two distinguishing factors are its keyboard and the good looking and better feeling, small form factor. Hence, for anybody that does a lot of calling and emailing/texting/IMing, but is not too worried about Web service integration or a wide app catalogue, this phone will be great. Add to that the stellar Nokia Maps, and we are in fact talking about a good business usage phone (except if you need to Mail for Exchange accounts synced!).

As for me, like I said in the beginning, I am certainly not getting the phone, as I need the phone to be able to “grow” with me, and I can’t see that happening with the Nokia E6, but I am sure it will make some people very happy.

Can Google+ replace Facebook and Twitter?

Just over a week ago, Google launched their new endeavour into the social world. Finally, Google+ saw the light of day after having been part of the rumour mill for many months. It seems Google is onto something and I am trying to replace two twitter accounts and one facebook account with Google+. Will it work? Only time can tell, but I’d like to outline my reasons for trying.

In order to deal with different areas in my life, my current setup is the following:

1. I have a closed-off twitter account on which I tweet and share photos with only my brother, sisters and mother. This is the total “inner-circle” and it is limited to them. Here I can share all I want, as only they see it.
2. On Facebook I have a normal account with some 100+ friends, acquaintances and colleagues. To be frank, I do not share much at all, as the audience is too disparate and 9 out of 10 times, I feel a message or photo is inappropriate for some of the people on there.
3. I have a second twitter account that is public and here I actively share and connect with people around the topics and mobile, tech and web.

As is immediately obvious, in the past I had to use different services and accounts to create these artificial walls, and still I am not completely happy with how it works. It appears that Google+ allows you to manage this much more elegantly with the use of Circles. This doesn’t mean the complete move will be a smooth transition, and I currently foresee the following challenges:

• I need to get the most important people on Google+, particularly those of my closed-off twitter account. These are not very tech-savvy people, so I don’t want to force them into a beta service, just for my benefit.
• Furthermore, the people from the inner circle, all use different smartphones and everyone can connect with each other through the use of mobile twitter clients and this makes it all much more dynamic. Currently, Google+ is only on Android, and I am the only one with an Android phone.
• The Facebook account is an easier story. I wasn’t terribly active on facebook anyway, so I am in no rush to get everyone over. Hopefully, many people will see the value of particularly Circles and make a switch.
• Lastly, and perhaps the biggest stretch, is to try to get a twitter-like experience on Google+. In terms of sharing, it is rather simple, as you simply share “in public” and you’ll have a similar effect.
• However, in terms of getting updates, it’ll be less straight forward.  Twitter is a chronological feed of updates and in order to quickly scan information, this is very handy. Google+ has a stream feature where interactions with updates push those updates to the top of the screen. This is similar to Google Buzz and it didn’t work so well there either, which makes me wonder why Google made this design decision.

In summary, I have already deactivated my facebook account. None of my facebook friends are on Google+ yet, but I am hopeful. I won’t be able to give up on my two twitter accounts yet, but will see whether I can at least move much of my activity to Google+. It seems feasible to move completely to Google+, but it will take time.

The third ecosystem in smartphones: WebOS or WP?

The smartphone market is quickly maturing. In 2010, already 21% of phones sold (globally) were smartphones and this trend is expected to continue and even accelerate. There are many contestants in this competitive market, but analysts agree that we have two dominant ecosystems: Android from Google and iOS from Apple. Their dominance as ecosystems in the smartphone market is based really on two pillars:

• They ship units in large volumes
• They have many application and service providers offering apps and content for the OS and its associated handsets.

This “duopoly” is not really healthy for anyone, except Google and Apple, and I hope this year 2011 will mark a change. Who are the players that have any chance of making a change to the status quo and for what reasons? In terms of ecosystems, it is safe to say that there are two that will be fighting for the third place: Windows Phone and WebOS.

Windows Phone

Last month, we saw how Nokia and Microsoft announced their plans for a deep partnership with the objective of using Windows Phone as the primary smartphone platform for Nokia smartphones. They expressed very clearly that with this, they want Windows Phone to become the third ecosystem. I don’t want to go into details, but in this deal two companies that dearly needed help came together. Windows Phone 7 has not done as magnificent as was expected. Only a handful of manufacturers made some handsets and since the announcement of these, no new handsets have surfaced (though some are now rumoured). It is clear that it needs more push. Nokia is the manufacturer that is supposed to give the necessary scale to this OS.

These two large companies both need this partnership to be a success, so we have to take it very seriously. That being said, we don’t have to expect any results in 2011. Perhaps Nokia announces and even ships one WP handset by the end of the year, but shipments in volume will become a reality only in 2012. In the mean time, we can assume that other manufacturers will take a back seat and see how this partnership plays out and how it will affect them.

Windows Phone does have a few things that will help it become the third ecosystem. As far as I can tell, they are the following:

1. The OS has a very distinct look and feel to it and it has been generally well received.
2. Microsoft has managed to grow its app catalogue way beyond what can be expected from an OS with the market share that it has. It clearly shows they have the right tools, contacts and marketing dollars to make that happen.
3. Microsoft brings content and entertainment to the table with Xbox and Zune integration.
4. In theory, Windows Phone smartphones will be produced by multiple manufacturers which should facilitate scale and sales.
5. Nokia is very keen on pushing WP to the mid-range and even low-end of the smartphone market, which should help create even more scale.

However, there are also things that are still question marks:

1. The current iteration of the OS is very immature. It lacks very basic features in comparison to iOS, Android and WebOS.
2. The promised updates are suffering delays, which is even causing the very loyal crow to worry – listen for instance to Paul Thurrott in the last Windows Weekly or Matt Miller on the last Mobile Tech Roundup.
3. The OS is only available on smartphones, while the 3 main competing platforms already have a working version on tablets as well.
4. Will the Nokia-Microsoft deal affect other manufacturers’ plans regarding WP smartphones? Possibly… If not in the long term, at least in the short term.

WebOS

In the other corner, we have HP with its WebOS. When WebOS was announced it was received very positively. I have rarely heard anything negative about the OS. A completely different story was the hardware and application/content ecosystem. The purchase of Palm by HP last year gave everybody hope that HP’s resources could help WebOS develop into something truly competitive, as it gave them the scale necessary to develop WebOS and hardware more quickly and spend some more money on marketing the products as well as pushing/convincing developers.

Indeed, it has quite a few things going for itself when it comes to fighting for that spot of third ecosystem:

1. As I said, WebOS is an acclaimed OS in terms of usability and feature set.
2. They have already “ported” it to tablets, and analysts agree that WebOS is very suitable for the tablet form factor.
3. They will be porting it to the PC and in 2012 all HP PC’s will come with WebOS loaded.
4. In theory the development environment is pretty good.

However, they still need to work hard on these things…

1. The developer story. Palm did not manage to entice big name developers in the same way as Microsoft has. HP, on the other hand, has good relations and I hope they will persuade the big ones to also focus on WebOS. That being said, in the mean time they are swithing from Mojo to Enyo and this switch will take large part of 2011. Until that switch is complete, there is uncertainty as to how to best develop for WebOS.
2. Marketing and sales. HP has never been terribly good at selling smartphones. I wonder whether they have the necessary operator relations in order to push WebOS hard. They will also need to accompany that distribution with very aggressive marketing, as they are coming from far and they are competing with the two established players, Android and iOS.
3. Product development and management. The past of WebOS products has been plagued with underperforming hardware, scarcity of form factors, not enough push through carriers and large launch windows. Though hopes were that HP could help in this area, I should highlight that despite the Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad specs being fine for now, when they eventually launch competition will be fierce. Moreover, WebOS is still missing the preferred form factor: the slate form factor.

Wrap up

To be frank, from what I am seeing right now, I feel that 2011 is not the year of the third ecosystem. The fruits of the Nokia/Microsoft deal will not be seen until shipments in large numbers start in 2012 and Microsoft has no real competitive tablet strategy we can even talk about. HP will have trouble selling in large numbers, as they only offer a limited number of devices and they don’t manage to create the buzz/appeal that Apple has. However, should HP manage to execute well in 2011, they’ll have a leg up on Windows Phone, but they have to do very well!

I am afraid, we’ll have wait for 2012 to be able see actual changes.

Why I am upset at Nokia’s recent announcement to dump Symbian

I know Nokia has not yet dumped Symbian, but the announcements of last week were certainly the nail in Symbian’s coffin. We just have to wait for it to whither away and then we can proceed with the funeral. I am being a facetious, as it’s really not that dramatic, but as a recent purchaser of the Nokia N8, for the amount of 500 euros, I am a little unhappy with how Nokia has positioned itself over the last 4 months. Let me explain myself in terms of how events rolled out over those four months.

1. I bought my first Nokia N8 in September-October last year. After trying it for a little over 10 days, I decided (with a little pain in my heart) to return it, as I had some serious issues with the browser, the lack of apps and the fact that Symbian^3 would be a jumping stone to Symbian^4 and that there would be a compatibility problem between the two. In fact, I wrote a post about this where I explain that the N8 is just not a high-end smartphone.
2. Then, to my surprise, in October Nokia makes some very important strategic announcements, where they basically take care of my three issues. First of all, they stop developing Symbian^4 as such and will roll the planned improvements into Symbian^3, basically future-proofing Symbian^3. Secondly, they will push Qt as the development platform as it is a powerful and slick development environment and will link the two operating systems, Symbian and MeeGo, on an application level. Even Nokia states that they’ll use Qt for future internal development of apps and UI. Lastly, they announce a new and modern web browser in Q1.
3. Based on these announcement I feel more confident than ever to purchase the Nokia N8. In the end, hardware can not be upgraded, but software can and Nokia is apparently very serious about doing so.
4. A bit over a week later, Nokia makes another announcement regarding Symbian. The Symbian Foundation is ramping down its activities and Nokia is taking in Symbian in order to speed up development of the OS. In the article they state “Make no mistake, Nokia chooses Symbian” and re-emphasize what they stated before about Qt.
5. At that point it certainly looked very hopeful for Symbian^3 users and I was very happy to have backed Nokia despite the flaws the device had, simply because I personally believed in the strategy (and I liked the N8′s camera of course).
6. Now 3 months later, Elop gets on stage and basically announces that Windows Phone will be the future smartphone OS for Nokia. In the mean time, they’ll finish getting Symbian devices (that are in the pipeline) out of the door, they’ll continue to make improvements to the Symbian^3 software and UI, but the future is clearly Windows Phone.

As a result of this announcement, the investment in Symbian^3 will be less than what could be understood from October-November’s events. This in itself is a shame, but not the end of the world. I find it more worrisome that with this they have of course killed any chance of a flourishing ecosystem around Symbian. If Symbian did not have the “superapps” yet, then we can now be pretty sure that they won’t ever have them. As an example, I seriously can’t see Amazon developing the Kindle app for Symbian after this.

This means all in all, that I have purchased a Nokia N8 based on expectations created by Nokia only 3-4 months ago and that have shot down now. This doesn’t mean I don’t agree with Nokia about their future direction, but it does mean that I think they should have handled things a lot more cautiously in the past 4 months.

Are Nokia phones really that bad?

The last week the news around Nokia has been rather negative. Particularly around the Q4 results, but also because of rumours of a new delay of the Nokia E7, a related delay of PR2.0 for Symbian^3 devices, and possible delay of MeeGo devices to, perhaps even, the second half of 2011. Though I personally feel that all these are (or could be) negative news pieces for Nokia from an industry perspective, I am also a very happy user of the Nokia N8 – despite previous complaints that the N8 was “only” mid-market smartphone. It is this, me as a happy N8 user, that I want to dedicate a few paragraphs to.

Before I start highlighting things I like about the N8, please let me assure you I am not blind to the flaws in the current iteration of the N8′s software – most notably text input and web browser. Nokia’s admission of these problems and its expressed commitment to solving them with PR2.0 convinced me to go ahead and buy an N8 after having returned the first one.

From an industrial design point of view, I find the Nokia N8 a great device. It is slim, is made of really nice materials, feels nice in the hand and has an overall quality to it. I know some people don’t like how the camera module protrudes or how the top and bottom look like they are sawn off, but I like it. Though I normally use it with the perfectly fitting CC-1005 silicon case, because it is a little too slippery for my liking and I am worried about dropping it, I often enough take it out to admire the industrial design.

The thing I absolutely love about the N8 is its camera. Lots has been written about the N8 in that respect, so I won’t go into specs. I do, however, want to say I had never had a camera phone that allowed me to make decent photos in the evenings in my living room. Now I always have a decent camera at arm’s length and I can now record memories whenever and wherever. For me this was a really important factor in buying the N8 – Check out Steve Litchfield’s editorial on All About Symbian, where he also emphasises how important this can be. Many will say, simply buy a decent compact camera, but there are two issues with that. First of all, I have my phone at arm’s length at all times, not necessarily a stand-alone camera. Secondly, the Nokia N8 allows you to share those photos with the world instantly – important when you live abroad as I do.

Lastly, I want to discuss performance of the phone. It is nice for a phone to theoretically be able to do something, but that in practice does not work well. These are two obvious examples of how the N8 offers great performance:

• In the case of GPS plenty of devices have suboptimal performance. In turn, my N8 locks on to my position while driving in a car between mountains and on a very cloudy day in less than 2 seconds. Combine that with the Ovi Maps application (locally stored apps with free Voice Navigation), and you really have a pain-free navigation solution on your phone. On top of that, I should say that its GPS chip is very frugal with battery consumption. All together a great job on Nokia’s part.
• Another issue I have had with other phones is Wifi uploading. Most phones have no problem uploading a picture from the phone to a Web service, but uploading a 120Mb HD video to YouTube is a different story. On my N8 it is generally speaking a very simple task (once you have PixelPipe installed), whereas on Android phones this was such a frustrating experience (as it almost always dropped the connection half way through the upload) that I prefer to forget it.

Lastly, Nokia build-in a Power Saving mode that can be switched on with two clicks from wherever you are in the phone. This really helps you get the most out of the phone. From personal experience I have noticed that I only need the Power Saving mode off when I do active browsing (3G speeds) and chatting (keyboard feedback). For all other instances, I am fine with this mode switched on. I can easily get a day and a half on the phone while always having Gravity and Whatsapp connected.

So yes, I read much of the negative press around Nokia and I do sometimes feel it is a little undeserved. Nokia still makes great phones that are a joy to use. In this post I have hopefully made clear some of the aspects that I enjoy a lot.

Drivers of mobile data uptake in my circle

Now that we have left 2010 behind, I wanted to write a post about something that sort of crystallised over the year: almost my whole family and some of my closest friends – mostly non-geeks – got a data plan for their phone. Here are some paragraphs with reflections of how this happened.

Cost issue

In research I do for telco clients one of the basic findings is that a large barrier to mobile data up take is cost. Some people find the concept of Internet on their phone interesting but are not willing to pay a reasonably high monthly tariff. In this year data plans have come down quite considerably. My Dutch family members all have a data plan of 10€ a month for unlimited (though throttled) Internet. 10€ appears to be psychological barrier and is considered reasonably acceptable.

In addition to cost in itself, we should consider the aspect of contractual commitments. Two of my family members were slightly more sceptical about the usefulness, but as the data plan was optional and they could stop anytime, they made the jump. So far neither have given it up. Giving people the option to trial a data plan for a couple of months is a great way to get them hooked – provided their phone allows them to do something useful with it.

Use cases

It is of course not just a matter of cost, it is just as much about what you can do with it. I have had a data plan for my phone for at least 4 years. Of course I made use of it, but it was more because of the potential than the actual usage. For main stream acceptance to materialise, you need concrete use cases. You need to be able to show someone what it can do for them.

For my Dutch family and some of my friends it was all based on communication and sharing… social networks and instant communication. Before I go into two specific applications, let me say they are not alone. According to TNS’ Digital Life survey (link), social networking and email were the two applications most used on a mobile phone on a daily basis in both the Netherlands and Spain (Disclaimer: I work for TNS). For my family, the two most important applications are Whatsapp and Twitter.

• Whatsapp (link). Whatsapp is a smartphone based instant messaging platform. The two key characteristics that make it so attractive are that it is multi-platform and extremely easy to configure.  Instant Messaging has existed on mobile phones for a long time, but has never really taken off. I believe this is mainly due to its “complexity”… for a non-techy person to create an IM account, finding the relevant application for your phone, installing it, adding your friends and configuring the application and connection settings is just too much to ask. Whatsapp is simply installed on your phone, and then it goes out to automatically register you an account (based on your telephone number), look through your address book to see whether there are Whatsapp users (your Favourites) and it automatically configures itself as always-on and connected. Even my mother could handle that. Furthermore, it is availably for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Symbian. It is really good mass market IM system that allows you to instantly share text, audio, video and images.
• Twitter (link). Whatsapp is more suitable for one-to-one communication. Twitter, on the other hand, has allowed my small circle to group-chat and share images right from their phone. We all created protected/closed accounts and using twitter on the phone (through an app, of course) has really brought twitter alive for the family. Again, the nice thing is that twitter is multi platform. Facebook could have been an alternative, but it is more complex while twitter is nice and casual.

Devices

Lastly, it is worth noting that the range of smartphones used is quite wide. From the rather basic Nokia 6700 slide that my mother uses to the more advanced iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S and Nexus Ones that others use. In between, we find a Blackberry Curve, a Nokia E72, Nokia E71 and Nokia N8. The nice thing is that those two applications work equally well on all phones. Some have touch screens, others have T9, others a full qwerty, some a rather poor camera, others a very nice camera, but they can all do the basic thing of sharing and connecting with your circle of friends and family.

And this is what has changed in the past year. It has become easy and affordable to enhance and intensify your communication with your phone. Besides that, you can check the weather, see the sports scores, see the news, but that is not what swayed most of my non-techy friends. It was enhanced communication.