Unless you were living under a rock, you know that the world’s largest mobile exhibition was going on 2 weeks ago in Barcelona. All the major players were at the Mobile World Congress, and of course we heard a lot from Symbian device manufacturers: Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Over the next days, I will go over the general feel of the announcements of each one, my own impressions and what we should expect from them in the months to come. Part 1 starts with a look down the Nokia microscope.
When I sat down to choose a title for this post, I came up with different ones that didn’t really cut it. “Deja Vu” was the most obvious one but I was afraid it would be misinterpreted, until I eventually settled for it. No, by Deja Vu, I don’t mean that all of the devices announced bring no innovation, as many of you might suspect, and I don’t mean that Nokia are paraphrasing themselves. What I mean is that we have seen this general theme before, 3 years ago actually during the switch between S60 2nd and S60 3rd edition, but maybe many of the recent Symbian fans are so new to the scene that they failed to see the resemblance. But I digress.
Looking at the present through the past
Nokia today are repeating history, taking successful lessons from their past, adapting and re-applying them. The similarities struck me a while ago with the N79 and N85, which, if you look past the bumped up features, are pretty much the N70 and N72 of today: full featured and adequately priced devices that marked the end of an era. The 5800 XpressMusic is the 3250 XpressMusic of today, a cheap mass market device, sporting a few nice features, and the first handset released with the brand new platform. The new flagship, the Nokia N97, is today’s N91. Ironically, both of them feature the same menu key design. It brings a new form factor, a new platform, metallic accents, and constitutes a real all-in-one device packing everything Nokia knows how to do and a bit more, and hence remains targeted more towards tech geeks than towards average consumers. It’s not an innovative device as much as it is a proof of concept for things to come and a respected attempt at an ever-demanding perfection.
At the MWC, the trend continued with the E55 and E75, or should I call them the E60 and E70 of today: a step behind in multimedia specifications, a step ahead in hardware build quality and materials, carrying the lacks and the pluses of Eseries vs Nseries? Next comes the Nokia 6710 Navigator and 6720 Classic which don’t have a predecessor in the 2006 timeline, but in 2007, when the 6110 and 6120 were announced. Not much to say here except a few improvements: these devices will sell like bread on operator’s contracts.
This brings us to the N86. If you’ve been following the story closely, you should’ve guessed what device the N86 follows. Yes, the N80. The N86 is today’s N80, a gorgeous and pocketable slider with an awesome screen (the N80 had a higher resolution, the N86 has the OLED), design accents following the announced flagship (N80 and N91, N86 and N97 respectively share the same design language), and a far better camera than the flagship itself. It marks the real beginning of an era.
One glitch in the picture
The only evolutionary difference between the general picture of Nokia in 2005-2007 and Nokia in 2009 is that in 2007, after the N70 and N72, all new Nokia devices sported the new S60 3rd Edition whereas today, after the N79 and N85, the only devices sporting S60 5th Edition are the 5800 and N97, the rest still carries S60 3rd Edition FP2. I can think of 3 reasons for this:
- Consumers today are more aware than consumers in 2006, which means that reducing platform glitches is a must in order to avoid negative reviews: S60 5th Edition is still in its infancy whereas S60 3rd FP2 is a more mature and stable platform.
- Nokia’s new focus on services means that they can’t release smartphones that don’t support the totality of their new array of Ovi products. N-Gage and Nokia Messaging are still unavailable for S60 5th, and all of Nokia’s services have been more thoroughly tested and implemented on S60 3rd than S60 5th.
- S60 5th, unlike the switch from S60 2nd to 3rd, requires a different design process and different associated costs. We still haven’t seen the “touchless” version of S60 5th so we don’t know what screen size/resolution it requires, but as far as the 5 devices announced at MWC, releasing them as S60 5th touchscreen devices would have required them to cost more, look different and behave different.
Looking at the future through the past
Where does that leave Nokia in the future? Oh well, good times are ahead, we still have the N73, N93, E90 and finally N95 of 2009-2010 to discover: respectively, the mass market 8MP phone that will sell in millions, the video flagship that will melt the heart of James Burland, the major touchscreen-touting Eseries flagship with a decent camera, and the next grand Nseries flagship that people will talk about for years to come, innovative, disruptive, trend-setter. We’ll spend a year moaning about its glitches, another year amazed by its small-step successors, one more year shouting that Nokia has stopped innovating and that Nxx was the best since sliced bread, until another true flagship comes and the cycle begins, yet again.
Looking at the greatness ahead can be really enticing, but we risk passing by all the good things that the present has to offer, and to tell you the truth, I really like to enjoy every second of the mobile industry race.
