Nokia planning to sit back and relax until 2012

Ask some people ‘which company created the hand phone’ and you might get Nokia as an answer. It is the wrong answer, but you can’t blame them. That was how successful Nokia was in the market. Models like the 3210 and 3310 hit the market like a bomb which made these people notice the existence of a mobile phone. No doubt, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, Alcatel and a few other companies already had their hands on producing great hand phones, but when Nokia entered the market with those models, it kicked them into the middle of last century. Its turnovers increased almost fivefold from 6.5 billion euros to 31 billion euros in 2001. The Nokia 1100 handset was the best-selling mobile phone of all time and also the world's top-selling consumer electronics product with over 200 million units shipped. Over the years, Nokia has kept up with the market requirements and released greater number of mobile phones compared to any other companies. It spread its hand phones over a wide range of different series. Today, there is the E, N, and X-series, and the lower-end models. Nokia was so strong that they didn’t feel the impact when the giant corporation, Microsoft entered the market with its Windows Mobile fitted into smart phones such as HTC and O2. In fact, there were many brands which had their go at trying to bring down Nokia over the years. They all failed. Its sales in more than 150 countries generated global annual revenue of over €42 billion and operating profit of €2 billion as of 2010. However, when Apple introduced, its iPhone, it redefined the way we look at mobile phones. Everyone wanted a smart phone. Nokia knew they were already in trouble at that time but they were holding to their plans to just improve the Symbian operating system they were already using on their phones to make it more like a smart phone. By this time, all the other phone makers had already started making proper smart phones with either Windows Mobile or Android, which is probably the second most successful operating system.

Android devices and iPhone were going much forward leaving Nokia and Windows Mobile devices behind. Microsoft studied the market and made a drastic decision by changing its entire OS to a new thing. It brought out the Windows Phone 7 OS which gave the same user experience as an iPhone or an Android based phone. Nokia on the other hand was stubborn. They kept on trying to do things differently. They sort of pulled it off with a few models such as the 5800 music express and the N97. Even so, it was no close to its competitors. Ovi store, the market for its applications is also far behind iTunes app store, Android market and even Windows market place. They continued their attempt by using different operating system such as the Maemo OS on the N900 and rumours also said they were going to try Meego, another operating system. They even released a new version of their symbian last year, Symbian 3 on devices such as the mighty N8 which had a 12 mega pixels camera. Frankly speaking, the hardware produced by Nokia these days are one of the best and even better than iPhones and Blackberrys, but the only set back is that Symbian OS. It’s too slow and not as cool as the others. Nokia was in big trouble by this time and had to reduce its size by cutting off workers. On February 11 2011, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft employee, unveiled a new alliance with Microsoft, and announced it would replace Symbian with Windows Phone 7. Although it isn’t the greatest move (android would have been better in many ways), it looked like a solution. Photos of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 based devices were also released but there isn’t any device until now. They are still releasing phones that run on Symbian3 such as the new E7. I really can’t understand why they are moving slowly. I mean in 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and it was the 120^th largest company in the world in 2009. In July 2010, Nokia announced that their profits had dropped 40% in the global smart phone rivalry. So what are waiting for? Haven’t they learnt their lesson the hard way? They are just sitting back and watching themselves committing suicide. Last month, Nokia announced that its Windows Phone handsets won’t be available until early 2012. If you ask me, I think they were already too late 2 years back. They have to do changes quickly. They say in the mean time their primary business strategy is to reach the 3.2 billion people who don’t currently own mobile phones, and the other nearly 3 million who can’t or don’t access the Internet on their devices. So they aren’t exactly aiming high there. What they are saying there is, “We are going to step back and let the others feast in the high-end, money-making market”. It’s simply pathetic isn’t it? Another question that bothers me is how they are going to update their Symbian3 for the new device if they’re going to kill it next year. If they do kill it, wouldn’t it be unjust for those who have just bought the E7? The right thing to do would be to update the Symbian3 or to simply update the device to the new Windows Phone7, but I just doubt they would do that.

Looking at the way things are going, I ‘m guessing the next generation won’t know what is Nokia. They’ll have their iPhones, Blackberrys and android devices. Nokia might just go down, bringing Windows Phone with it because let’s face it, without Nokia as its strong hardware partner, Windows Phone will never survive in the unforgiving market. It would be sad to watch the 100 years old Finnish company go down just like that.

-jaggy jagadis-

Nokia N8

I should probably say that this is my first phone review. Hopefully this goes well.

The Nokia N8. Its the one of the latest phone by Nokia which comfortably sits among the higher level smart phones by Nokia. The N-series phones are made to offer a full smartphone experience. It is in some ways a combination of the current Nokia business phone, the E-series and an all rounder entertainment phone. In other terms, its a hybrid.

This flagship model was announced around April but for some reasons, it took 6 months to reach our stores. It seems like they deliberately launched it after the IPhone 4 to avoid this phone living in the older generation era ( IPhone 3gs era). Obviously, its aimed at the smart phone users who seem to prefer the IPhone and the younger Android users.

Now, lets not waste any time and get to the phone review...

Outlook and design features

Its aluminium unibody makes the phone look more stylish and thin. In-fact, the design is so nice that Nokia has decided to go with the same design for their upcoming E7. The available colors are silver, grey, orange, blue and green. The unit I tried was grey and orange. They both look great and pretty sleek. All the buttons are well-placed and easy to reach. The design itself rests nicely on the palms and surprisingly, I find it easy to operate with one hand. It doesn't feel like you're running your finger on a marathon when you reach the corners of the phone.

Hardware

The 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU does not make the N8 a super High-tech phone. Most killer smart phones these days come with a 1Ghz CPU. However, based on Nokia's claim that the Symbian 3 is light, I think its good enough. A few minutes of pressuring the phone, proved that the CPU can handle the OS smoothly. and I am sure it will do great with games as there is a dedicated graphic processor. One thing that puzzled me is the 256MB RAM. Even the latest Garmin requires at least 256MB of RAM. I wouldn't want a phone that hangs when I pay that amount of money for it. The N8 comes with a built in memory of 16GB and expendable by microSD up to 32GB

Display

The N8 spots a large 3.5" AMOLED capacitive touch screen display with a 640 x 360 pixel resolution. The scratch resistant, glass display look nice and bright. But having operated the Iphone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S, the N8's display does not set the standards high enough. The IPhone 4 has a LED-backlit IPS TFT display with a mind blowing 640 x 960 pixel resolution and my personal favorite, the Samsung Galaxy S's Super AMOLED display. The display on the N8 looks only as good as my Bold 2's 480 x 360 display. Of course its more brighter, but it doesn't make me feel that my Bold 2 is out of the topic. The sensitivity of the touch screen is as good as the best capacitive touch screen phones out there. It feels very responsive and the vibration feels very natural.

Camera

Oh when I said Hybrid, I should have also say that its a camera. This is probably where the N8 kicks all the other smart phones out there back to a time when phone cameras were meant for emergency use. The 12 megapixel autofucus camera snaps pictures which are as good as high end point and shoot digital cameras. Its better than any phone camera out there. Its wide angle Carl Zeiss is also accompanied with a xenon flash to take stunning pictures in low-light situations. I tried snapping a few pictures and immediately could notice the much clear and vibrant pictures compared to the Sony Ericsson Satio. The N8 also records video in high definition, 720p at 25fps.. Other features include the usual face detection and geo-tagging. The only let down in the camera is the software. I expected the new symbian 3 OS to have a more user friendly camera interface.

Connectivity and internet Browser

All the smart phone features can be seen on the N8 . It has a built in GPS receiver with A-GPS support. The OVI maps is descent for a voice guided navigation software and best of all is its free for a life-time. However, personally, I'd still prefer using the Garmin software if I am going to use it as a car GPS navigator. The N8 supports HSDPA and also has WIFI connectivity which was I used to test the browser. The browser supports flash and java but using it wasn't as easy as using the browsers on android and IPhone. Even the new Blackberry Torch beats it. Other connectivity include Bluetooth 3.0 and stereo FM transmitter.

Others

One of the key features in the N8 is the microHDMI port. This means u can play your videos in HD on your TV or monitor. It also supports DivX playback which looked quite nice on the 3.5" display. The built in accelerometer allows motion based games to be played and rotating the phone to change the display orientation. The sound quality on the N8 is rather impressive as it reminded me of the stereo speakers on the Walkman series phone once upon a time. I'm not sure why, but probably because the sound just sounded right.

Conclusion

I would say the Nokia N8 is one great phone. It will sit on top with the kings. The only problem for me is Symbian. I never really liked symbian for the touch screen phones from the start. When it first came out in the 5800, it looked very basic and backwards. Sad to say, it still looks the same and I wanted it to change. I understand that its made for simplicity, but its just not my cup of tea.