Night With S60 Recap
Sitting in the Chicago Midway airport typing this up as I wait for my plane, I’m completely baffled that here in gate B26, there isn’t a power outlet to be found. Anywhere. Completely beyond me that airports don’t have massive amounts of power outlets. But anyways, the Night With S60 was stinkin awesome! There’s a Flickr group here where everyone’s encouraged to post their pics, or look through them if you weren’t able to go
It was a ton of fun meeting people that I’ve talked to online for
years or months, and also meeting Symbian-Guru readers. The Yahootini’s
were exceptionally strong, and the bartender up front didn’t question
my frequent beer requests, and the food was awesome. The best part were
these little seafood on a stick things, no clue what they were but I
liked them. I also got to fondle the Nokia E90, and holy mother. First
thought, it’s smaller than I thought it was. It’s still a lot bigger
than most phones, but for some reason it looks A LOT bigger online than
it is in person. Also got to handle the 6110 Navigator, and again, it’s
small. Both devices were also very well built, felt solid. And had tiny
screens, at least compared to my N95. I never noticed how big the
screen is until I played with the E65, E90, etc. The N76 is made of
metal, which for some reason surprised me. It was VERY solid feeling,
though, but I’m not a fan of the flush keypad. The 5700 is a nice phone
as well, and they had an unbranded N75 (which, frankly, I didn’t see a
big difference, other than that it was a little bit faster going
through menus.
I didn’t really play with the phones too much, there were too
many people there, and great conversations. The store itself is an
experience. The walls change colors and design, which is weird. One
minute they’re all light blue and you feel relaxed and then the next
minute they would be fiery red and I’d be pissed off at everyone.
Interesting how surrounding colors can change your mood like that. You
can also text a command to the walls and it will change the
screensaver. Mmschei (pronounced em-shnay) and a few others and I
played with that a bit.
The Nokia store employees were phenomenal. As someone who has
spent considerable amounts of time in the 2 Experience Centers here in
Dallas, I can say that the Nokia Flagship employees really know their
stuff and have a real passion for the products. Including the S40
stuff. I mean, in the Flagship store is everything from the N95 down to
the 6030, and they know a ton about all of them. I stopped by the store
again on Friday and listened in to the interactions that the staff had
with random shoppers, and it was impressive. If you’re ever in Chicago
or NYC, be sure to stop in, it’s worth it. I didn’t get to meet all the
staff but Bridget, Linda, and Rob were definitely awesome and had a
ton of fun hosting the event for us.
The other teams that were there really added to the event.
Jouni Juntunen of the MRKTNGman blog, Phil, of course, Dan Shugrue, S60
Marketing for North America, Ganesh Sivaraman, and anyone else I failed
to mention were all really friendly. I cornered Ganesh at one point and
he gave the most enlightening, enthusiastic demo of the new Widgets
platform ever, to both me and Christina (who, not having a clue about
the technical things regarding that, was REALLY impressed). He had them
running on an N95 (No kidding, Ganesh pulls 2 N95s out of his pockets
for the demo, then a few minutes later whips out an E61i and swaps
SIMs. Rough life.) Yahoo! was part of the event as well, with a SWEET
ice sculpture that was part of the Yahootinis (video somewhere) and had
a guy there who is big in the Yahoo! Go app, but unfortunately I didn’t
get a chance to talk to him.
Also, Harper from Threadless T’s was there (if you aren’t
familiar, check out their site. It’s really slick, and they were
featured in Business 2.0 recently). The event was very well done, and
everyone was entertained the entire time (I mean, let’s face it, we’re
cellphone nerds in a store full of phones). At one point Dan and Phil
got up on the mike and made some announcements (unfortunately, this was
when I was getting the demo from Ganesh, so I didn’t hear a word they
said) and then a bit later got back up and had the drawing for the N95,
which I think it was Justin Hernandez (that’s wrong, I know, but it’s who won, and he was actually carrying a Windows Mobile
probably close?)
device, so score one for Nokia/S60! At the end a nice surprise were the
goody bags (I was glad I’d brought Christina, so I got 2!) which
contained the usual swag such as t-shirts, pens, notepads, lanyards,
etc. However, they also each had a KILLER prize in there. You ended up
with one of the following: SU-8W BT Keyboard (you KNOW I got one of
those bags!), the BT Audio Gateway, the BH-511 BT headset, one of the
stereo Bluetooth headsets, and I think something else. Christina got
the BT headset (which she’s been hounding me for one for a while now)
so I don’t get to keep that. Could NOT be more excited about this BT
keyboard, though, expect a review VERY soon.
Anything else you want to know, toss it up in the comments
section, and be sure to check out the photos here and here, and my
videos on Blip. There’s another event in Helsinki next week (I’d give
up this keyboard to be able to go to that one) so if you’re going to
that, PLEASE let me know and be sure to take a TON of pictures (I know
it’s hard). I can tell you I won’t miss another one in the States, for
sure. Also, congrats to the Chicago store, their one-year anniversary
is coming up next week I believe, and there’s some sort of event there,
as well. Thanks to Nokia, S60, the Chicago team, and Yahoo! for an
event that was out of this world. Here’s to the next one.
cool review ricky! hope to see a lot of pictures very soon of your chicago trip!
regards.
Luis
Nice review and good to meet you! Can’t wait until the next time they have another event.
-shawn (shackk)
Mar 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[...] refreshing “Evening With S60″ yesterday night. After the having held the event in NYC, Chicago, Helsinki, LA, London, Hong Kong, Miami, [edit thanks to Saara Bergstrom] and China, the team has [...]