Wirelessnorth.ca

We’ve once wondered if this whole white-hot field of mobile experience design only got itself invented originally by frustrated Europeans simply trying work-around to the UI limitations of nokia smart phones.

You see, back in the olden days (like 24 months ago), it was the mighty nokia that ruled the global smartphone market. Nokia n-series phones had by far the most features (wifi, 3g, storage) and the best cameras and video cameras etc. But still, hobbled as they were by 9 digit keypads and a notionally open, but still crufty, symbian OS, of that good stuff was sometimes hard to make the best of.

And then RIM came along and took their classic “well-duh” usefulness of a querty keyboard and threw in a cute and handy little trackball. Was that so hard? Apple meanwhile showed how intuitive mobile experience could be with just a big-ass touch screen and a handful of brilliantly simple multi-touch gestures.

Interaction design, problem pretty much solved right?

You would have though the smart n-series engineers would have seen this coming.

Well maybe they did.

There’s big news out from those whacky finns today. The “real” nokia iphone-killer has stepped forward. And unlike the early, lackluster, reviews of RIMs stormy foray into ipodicide, the nokia looks to press all the right buttons. At least… on paper.

- big touchscreen
- AND slide out querty keyboard (kinda like android)
- A real camera
- Lots of storage
- A real webrowser build on webkit (RIM are you listening?)
- And… drumroll… flash support in the browser

A few caveats of course. No doubt the n97 will still be hilariously expensive once it reaches our shores. Flash support has been the main gripe, if not holy grail of iphone developers. But we at WirelessNorth.ca are still skeptical. We’re convinced there’s more than likely there’s a good reason flash doesn’t work on mobiles. You have to remember that flash was always designed to rely heavily on host cpu to render it’s fairly math-intensive vector-based animation instructions. So “runs flash” vs “runs flash at all usefully faster than a slide show without demolishing your battery life” remains to be seen.

Nonethess thanks to our long time friend Moore’s Law, the full convergence of mobile and desktop web experiences will happen eventually. Today at least is another step towards that reality.

One other thing is for certain. We ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to smartphones. The iphone/smartphone avalanche is just beginning, and this snow storm going to be driving some tremendous change and growth in the industry in the next few years.

Pssst someone better go tell the network engineers…

The hits just keep on coming from Rogers. It’s official, the red team is launching Nokia’s flagship n95 device in Canada. And it’s about damn times. The N95 has HSPA support, a 5MP camera, full 8GB memory, blackness, Nokia’s s60 operating system with a gazillion apps out there and… we assume… Rogers won’t disable the wifi either.

Stay tuned. No word yet on pricing or plans. Do keep an eye on what they want to charge for this thing with/without a gruesome 3-year contract. You can get an n95 today unlocked from tigerdirect for under 500 bucks. More details when we have em, Rogers is launching the thing in earnest on friday.

This thing and iPhone will bring some more serious competition for Canada’s hometeam RIM, especially when it comes to the high-end consumer segment. Your Pearl is suddenly looking long in the tooth.

As widely reported everywhere Ted has announced he finally got the iPhone. Rogers reports their Q1 earnings today, some notable points, ARPU (average revenue per user) is up almost $5 to a wallet crushing $72 thanks in part to a growth in Data ARPU (now 14% of revenues) and as Rogers seems to have lost some low end share to growing competition to the likes of Telus’ Koodo and other discount brands. (we hear koodo is doing well, despite the branding)

Meanwhile, further rumours have the Nokia N95 (and other n series?) coming to rogers as well. Certainly Rogers will price the hell out of the high-end Nokias but notice these two announcements would Rogers is finally (and smartly) dropping the hammer on their GSM advantage on Telus and Bell. Those two share a network based on the increasingly-orphaned CDMA standard not supported by nokia or apple.

The coming of May means an important tradition, the coming of the Spring quarter and new mobile pricing and marketing plans from all the big carriers. What shall it be this time?

Just off the phone with a CSR at Rogers for one who informed your editor of this little tidbit: the reason Roger’s roaming charges on data are so high (not unheard of for folks to run up 800-1000 blackberry bills on a few business trips to the US) is because Rogers has never had a roaming plan for data. There’s a thought. But, says the CSR as well as sources from other carriers, starting next week expect some new new rate plans across the board as each carrier launches their spring campaigns and Rogers clears the deck for iPhone.

Expect the iPhone in June or so. Expect it to be the second gen iPhone with 3G and a few other tweaks to the current model.

Thank goodness for decent blackberry plans on Telus and new GSM entrants on the horizon, elsewise your future is looking awfully Rogery and you might as well sign over all your future paychecks to Ted right now just to get it over with.

Younghee is a product and interaction designer from Nokia. This talk though left me on an arc from curious to wondering about some unanswered questions about Nokia’s actual role in the developing world. Nokia is engaged global product development. Mobile phone users are of course massively global. How do you design products for poor neighbourhoods in Mumbai or Rio. Nokia conducts charrettes of sorts with locals, design contest sketches and forms all on one sheet of large paper, interviews photos, the whole family comes, high illiteracy too requires interpretation.

winning example a phone you can point at the sky to get the weather. intuitive, many people dependent on weather.

winning example an environmental phone that measures air quality and charges by solar power.

Ghana phone with 4 sim cards, because there are 4 providers and you need multiple SIMs as you move about.

Everywhere, unbreakable waterproof durable – common requirements (does this help nokia?).

And the skepticism, not that the devices aren`t potentially enormously valuable and empowering to people, but how does, and how much money does nokia make from impoverished people all over the world?

she`s not talking about operators at all, or how those services are delivered and contracted. What about them? [Rob next to me mentions there are some opperators that deliberately set up in conflict zones because they are unregulated. And when government returns, they leave.]

And are these commando-style ethnography missions truely effective practice for nokia?