11 November 2008

The Future of Nokia
Are You Impressed?!?

With the recent supposed leak of Nokia future roadmap, I could not help but be more and more confused with the future of Nokia, and to a lesser extent that of symbian.

The line-up of devices, both new and old all have one thing in common, they all are compromised here and there by the clever feature diminishing product segmentation and not so helped by their unpredictable shipping lag, I realised now why these roadmap are kept in secret, away from the privy of the masses.

Having seen what other camps have to offer, I'm not current holding positive outlooks on Nokia's future as such.

Lets look at the supposed line up. There is a e-series like 'surfer' device, which shares most of Nokia N85's spec, but come with digital TV receiver, on the surface offering all the goodness of N85 with one of the unique selling point of Nokia N96 + long awaited qwerty that many would pay hefty premium (and they may already do in cases like E90).

The presentation of the package on the whole look to be full of potential and ought to be out soon...So far so good , only one tiny hitch though, isn’t 2.6 on the small side for a phone that can receive live TV? even if its a landscape phones? I mean while I expect the phone to be in the form factor of Nokia E61, which limited the screen size somewhat, I still want to watch my videos in good experiences.

The latter had bigger screen and full keypad as well, I just cannot imagine myself for one second surfing on such tiny, OH YAP, ITS Another QVGA screen as well, forget watching live telly on that small screen, e61, and even Nokia N92 both had bigger, and the latter was, err, designed years ago as a freaking flip phone, I really want to be able to use my eyes when I'm old, and holding the screen so close to my eyes cos its so small does NOT help in any sense.

Then there is a n85 refresh device that will add xenon and better d-pad, coming out probably in late Q2 next year!! For goodness sake, Nokia, why couldn't you just get it right first time around?!? The original is undeniably a very well put together package, only let down by screen visibility under run and soft buttons, surely with millions of dollars in the R&D department spent each year, someone must be paid to be critical on all potential the design? For that, does no body dare to speak against any apparent design shortcomes? From the drawingboard to the manufacture line, does no one speak out against those obvious inherent flaws? I'm out of speech either way.

At this rate, lets call it n85i, a year from now, it will probably offer no apparent advancement over Nokia N82, which will still be Nokia's image flagship for another year... Thus even if the refresh turn up to be true, its image output will still most likely be subpar, as oppose to n82 which have had firmware improvements, etc.

Now just look here, the second touch 'IP08', nicer spec than 5800 here and there, oh wait, its to be followed up supposingly 6 weeks later by a far superior multimedia touch phone 'ivalo', just think how a techy person will feel and react when missed out just due to a such short of release date differences ...

Then the 'Corolla', most likely to be announced in Feb next year, again - great device all around, a 8mp sensor plus nice resolution screen at decent size finally after years of begging, err, whats with the 8gb rom? Those extra image size and user data really will eat 8gb alive. Especially since its very likely that revamped n85 will be listed as a 'come with music phone'. Looking as by the time the project is near completion, ROM price will be drastically cheaper, If 'Ivalo' can have 32GB, why couldn't what’s seemingly the final non touch flagship go for 16 GB or even to top 32?

And whats with S60 v5.01 on 'Ivalo'? Knowing how much of disposable guinea pig Nokia thinks up of the consumers lately, does that mean all the 5800, IP08 and 'Ivalo' users, will miss out on fpxs of 5th S60 operating system, just as the early v9.x users misses out on the feature packs 1/2? Well, sc**ew that, if anything like that happens, I'm not getting a Nokia again, just to be safe, I'm almost decided to go for a Htc touch Hd next.

I think that the fundamental problem with Nokia products are due to the very reason they stay in business; that there are far too many divided segment, same as for the sheer number of models. Which are often updated in hardware, but somewhat less than ideal so in software side. Take this example, both Nokia N93 and N93i have extremely impressive hardware for its time, despite so, Instead of giving updates, it was largely ...forgotten.

I don’t like Apple's iPhone concept of one device fit all, but deep in my mind, it not only will be more futureproof, and in turns of less risks to be obsolete by developers due to code brakes; its also arguable that it offers greater and longer device life cycle internally from the manufacture.

For I assure you, its not even in the least sense amusing when a few month after you purchase a top-end device, middle-range devices surpasses yours in feature and value. One for all device oriented ecosystem has also attracted more developers in shorter time frame, proven to be easier to be supported and helped than Nokia's business model, which focuses upon far more on the amount they ship each year, thus enforcing upon quantity is merely proving they neither want to nor have the resources to produce anything that’s near perfect, nor were they able to carry all their imperfect product through software improvements.

After reading the 'spoilers', I really hope the real devices can offer more improvements quicker, but at least it could be worse. What do you guys think of the roadmap? Shock away by it at all?