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Nokia’s Product Manager for the new Nokia Email client held a conference call to brief on the service and take some questions earlier this week. I know a lot of people are getting pretty pumped up about this service, and I happen to think it’s quite brilliant and shows a lot of promise. There’s certainly a good amount of work to be done on the client, but the perceived roadmap looks quite positive and I’m rather excited about some of the features and aspects of this app.

I’d like to first start by explaining some of the market research that Nokia has put behind this service. Nokia’s goal with the beta release is to address some of the reasons as to why mobile email doesn’t have as much penetration in the market as would be expected. There are four reasons as to why there are not many people currently using Email on their mobile devices-

1. Discoverability. Many users simply don’t realize that they can get email on their device.

2. Ease of setup. A lot of jargon about SMTP, POP/IMAP, SSL etc. turns a lot of people off. Even if you know what these terms are, quite often pulling your own teeth out can be a preferable experience than getting your provider to relay this very important information.

3. Predictability of cost. Lots of users just don’t want to be surprised with a mobile bill at the end of the month. Outside of the US, decent mobile data plans are paltry at best- if you’re a heavy emailer… this could be a massive surprise headache. Understandably, a lot of users don’t want to find out how big of a problem this could be for them.

4.  Demand not present- some people just don’t want email on their phone. Some people genuinely would prefer bird flu to being bombarded with email the second it comes in.

So, aside from passing out literature on how bad bird flu really is, Nokia is addressing most of these issues with this new push email offering. There are two main steps they have taken to battle these impressions of mobile email. With regards to the ease of setup, Nokia is attempting to make this as transparent as possible; if your ISP or email provider has been identified already by Nokia’s server, all that is required is a username and password. Gmail and Yahoo premium service, as well as some regions are compatible with the service at this point. When I setup the email client myself, I simply told the software that I had Gmail then entered my username and password. Incoming/outgoing mail server as well as SSL information was immediately setup for me in a completely seamless process.

The second point of interest for Nokia when getting this up and running was the hurdle of that ‘predictability of cost’. Nokia is working with mobile service providers to incorporate the cost (yes, they DO plan on charging for this eventually) into your monthly bill as a service, not by how much data you’ve pulled down with the app that particular month. So even the heaviest emailers will know exactly what the cost will be- no surprises for using more data than you had expected. While they’re working with severally many undisclosed mobile providers, the eventuality exists that some providers aren’t going to play along. Nokia has assured us that the service will be available somehow for these users. So regardless of what mobile provider you have, this will be a service available to you.

This is, of course, a work in progress. There are several points that absolutely need to be addressed before this is a mainstream product- namely support for exchange servers so locked down that they won’t allow Mail for Exchange or Roadsync, Hotmail, and more ‘across the board’ support for Yahoo mail as well as quite a few other features that I’m sure readers here will be keen on.

There’s also the fact that it’s a fairly feature light operation at this point. You’re able to add attachments, you can CC and even blind carbon copy contacts when composing mail- but there’s no support for multiple email addresses, messages aren’t removed from the sever when deleting a message from within the client on a POP account, there’s no folder support for Gmail users, there’s no option for delivery reports, and the list goes on. However, this isn’t really the focus of the email client. Indeed the focus is on consumer email at this point. There’s a hierarchy that they’re working with right now when deciding what needs to be addressed, and when- which reads as…

1.Notification. Simply knowing that there’s an email waiting. This is job #1 for the Nokia email client.

2.Ability to easily and efficiently navigate the inbox. See how many emails you’ve got unread, when and what day they’re from as well as who’s sending and the subject. Simple.

3.Deleting email. Cleaning out your inbox is apparently very important to a lot of folks. I’m the kind of guy that gets email notification and reads it on the spot or discards it- though many users need to be able to cleanly and quickly removed newsletters that aren’t going to be read, SPAM (this is all on your provider to thwart that nasty stuff- the client isn’t going to filter it), or otherwise rubbish email that’s not likely to be read for whatever reason and has been filling up your inbox all day long.

4.Readability. It’s down on the list, but also obviously quite important. Though HTML support seems to be near zero concern- more on that in a minute for sure…

5.Replying to an existing email- again, notification is job one- but it’s also quite important that you’re able to respond to an email with reasonable ease from within the client.

6.Composing new mail. It’s likely not seen as much of a priority because the focus is, again, on consumer email. It’s noted that everyday users don’t generally compose new emails on the go- hence the priority of such a task being well low on the list.

So that being said, what’s next for the service? How does all of that relate to what’s going to be done first with the client? Notification being the high priority means that Nokia is addressing issues regarding speed. There are a couple of factors at play here. There are two types of operations performed when receiving notifications; push and polling. Push means that when (for example) Gmail receives a new message for PseudoFinn, they kindly pass along this email to Nokia’s servers immediately which is in turn rocketed over to my phone. This should happen near instantaneously, however right now there’s a bit of a lag. It’s not bad- generally a minute or two… certainly could be faster, and some users are experiencing over 10 minutes for an email. Waiting 12 minutes for push email isn’t exactly brilliant by anyone’s standards- but you can be assured that Nokia is working hard and fast on this one. Again, it’s job number one. Conversely, email providers that only support polling means that every 15 minutes or so the Nokia servers will ask your provider if there’s a new email, if so- notification occurs in the client. This is of course dependent upon what your provider has set up for you. Push is obviously a feature you clearly want to have if notification is also at the top of your list of concerns. So speeds with regards to getting the notification needs to be addressed – and you can be sure it is – but users are also reporting general ‘slowness’ that hasn’t really been understood to be notification, the initial sync when setting up the application that can take a minute or so which some users clearly do not care for, or the operation of the client itself – which I’ve not really found to be the case yet in my experience. Speed on all of these levels is a big point of interest for users, and therefore Nokia as well.

Folders are also something that’s being worked on – but as with all of the coming features outlined by the Product Manager, no timetable has been given. For users that employ the usage of folders in their inbox, this will obviously make it a better experience and a bit easier to navigate the inbox on the client. This is such perceived as such an important feature from the feedback Nokia has been collecting that I’m told it’s right at or near the top of the list of to-dos. Cheers.

One of the biggest complaints that Nokia has received thus far into the beta is the fact that if you are using a POP account, the deletion of email on the client is not propagated to the server. As they have received a large number of desperate pleas for this (some have apparently fought the urge to bounce their Nokia handset of something very unforgiving, like concrete or the wall on the other side of the room because of this – more than likely not a pretty thing for Nokians to hear), it’s absolutely something that is being sorted at this very moment.

One thing that I really would like to see is HTML support. One of the chaps that were in on the Q&A was keen to mention this before I had a chance, and the Product Manager was keen to note that he’s only the second user to inquire about this – despite the fact that there have been some 8 thousand people out there right now playing with the client. As the third person on this list, I find that quite odd- especially as readability was rather up there on the hierarchy. Some emails simply cannot be read with the client because of the lack of HTML support. Many newsletters just won’t be readable for Nokia email client users. Flickr, a site I personally use a great deal and often get notifications on throughout the day are just as unreadable. Ironically, several emails from the folks at Communicano who organized the Q&A are also unreadable – other than the default statement at the bottom of the message letting me know how to stop getting such mail from them if I’d rather not have that happen anymore. This is to me, and seemingly only two other users on the planet, is in fact a readability issue. Nokia – see #3 on your list, please and thank you. At any rate – if you, dear loyal Symbian-Guru reader would like to be the fourth person to put your name on the list for this feature, I’m afraid to report that chances aren’t good for a prompt resolution to our humble request.

One thing that is always on the horizon for services and software like this from Nokia is better and more integration with the OS. While this doesn’t replace the native email support already in existence on your Nokia- they’re working on it.

So why is Nokia set to take on the task of resolving the issue of a dismal showing for the use of mobile email? Well, in November of 2005 Nokia announced that they were going to drop a cool $430 million dollars to acquire Intellisync along with their 450 San Jose based employees… it’s time for a payoff on that. Further reasoning behind the development of this client is to reinforce the idea that software and services are integral to the mobile experience. Nokia isn’t just selling phones anymore, they’re selling the software and services that make the experience.

While this is truly a work in progress from Nokia, I absolutely applaud them on the efforts thus far and see a great deal of promise in the roadmap for this one. If mobile email is something that you do, think you’d like to do, or wonder what the big ol’ deal is- hop on over to email.nokia.com. Sign up for a free (at this time) account and check it out. It’s also been put up this week on one of my favorite branches of Nokia – betalabs.nokia.com.

One last thought I’d like to leave our readers with- and ask for a bit of feedback on Nokia’s behalf is this- while in beta, the service is free… but you can rest assured that they definitely intend to get a few bucks for it down the road. It’s far too early for them to speculate (at least to us) how much that’s likely to be – they are, however, open to suggestions. So… how much are you willing to pay for this service? Are you even willing to pay for that matter? If not – what do they need to add to the service to interest you?

PseudoFinn is a guest contributor here on Symbian-Guru.com, and will be posting sporadically from now on. He started out over at N95Users.com and NokiaUsers.net, and can still be found haunting the forums over there. PseudoFinn has a long history with Nokia and S60 handsets, and Dotsisx and myself (The Guru) are really excited to have him on board. 

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