Second encounter with the N8 - Final batch of gripes (I swear!)

Recently I posted my thoughts that rose from my first encounter with the N8. The N8 in question was a prototype and it didn't have a SIM in it and was hardly connected to the internet, so really trying it out proved impossible.

This is "part two" of my encounter with the N8. This time there's a SIM on board, and I went ahead to put all my settings in to begin using it as if it was my own device.

Again, this post is going to focus on things I'd like to see changed in the N8, but I swear that after this I'm done with griping!

Ovi logins, and how it's driving me insane

Among the first things when starting up the phone was logging into the Ovi service to "get the full benefit" of Ovi services on my device. I logged in and then proceeded to do all the usual setting up one has to do. (Login to Ovi counter: 1)

My first priorities were to try out the Nokia Social Hub app and to then setup my e-mail. Steve Litchfield was quite harsh on the Social hub app, recommending everyone to give it a pass. In the Phones Show Episode 122 he shows us as the application stutters when you scroll. When I gave it a try it worked surprisingly well. Okay, I come from a Maemo-heavy background, so maybe I'm just used to stutter ( ;) ), but I found it quite usable. The desktop widget that came with this app was quite unintuitive, and it was hard to understand it's logic. My biggest problem was sorting out the different views you got to see by using the widget, and then not finding these views when using the app "normally" on its own fair and square. Wonder what on earth is going on here.

To add my Ovi chat or whatever to the Social program, I had to log-in. (Login to Ovi counter: 2)

Here's also a translation inconsistency in the bit where you add accounts:

Here I've added my Facebook account.

When I went to setup my Twitter account, the languge had changed to English.

The e-mail turned out to be a bit of a downer, as well. I set up my GMail and Ovi accounts. Guess did I have to log-in to my Ovi account again? Sure did! (Login to Ovi counter: 3)

Can't scroll by having my finger on the text, btw.

Above is me trying to scroll down the page by dragging the text. Won't work, you'll have to catch the miniscule scrollbar on the right to go down. Yawn. This was the only place in S^3 where I found myself doing this. Inconsistency! Argh.

Here's another oddity I ran into in the Mail app:

An e-mail from my GMail inbox.

When viewing mails from the GMail inbox, the text was nice and big and it mimiced the "threaded" view of e-mails you have in the PC browser version of GMail. This was really nice and enjoyable, and with pinch to zoom working quite nicely here. Then I opened an e-mail from my Ovi inbox:

Nice and... unreadable.

For some reason, when reading e-mails from my Ovi e-mail account, the text would settle itself very poorly on the screen. First, its too small to read unless you put the device right up in your face and second, if you pinch to zoom, then the text doesn't reallign itself with the changed view. So its either this miniscule print or then endless scrolling left-right-left-right to read one paragraph. C'mon, this renders the e-mail app on the N8 unusable for me. Why does it attempt to mimic the view you see in the webmail versions of these e-mail services anyway?

I then went on to have a look at the new Ovi Store (Login to Ovi counter: 4) although I first did it in the browser by accident, so I launched the Ovi Store app (Login to Ovi counter: 5) and found it to be nice and improved. I was intrigued by the topApps application (Login to Ovi counter: 6) although found it odd, that searching for other apps besides the ones listed in the assorted "most famous in category..." wasn't possible here. I then fired up Maps (Login to Ovi counter: 7) remembering something about pinch-to-zoom on the maps and it was pretty cool. I really enjoyed seeing the maps on the nice and bright screen, and maybe for the first time ever Maps didn't feel too heavy for the hardware it was running on.

Syncing my stuff

I was really hoping that on the N8 I could sync to my Ovi Calendar from the calendar app. For some reason, I had to do it through my address book, where it promted me to sync my contacts from the Ovi cloud service (Login to Ovi counter: 8). Upon starting this process, it asked me if I also wanted to sync the calendar and images or something, which I naturally did. Bit of a strange logic here.

When going through the syncing process, I was confronted with a message that I hastily tapped out of the view somehow, and suddenly this was staring at me:

Sorry... what?

This is in Finnish, so probably this wouldn't make any sense to many people anyway, but here's another example of something I griped about in my "part one" post. The finnish translation is really poor in S^3, and at times completely unreadable. Here words are cut so short that I've no idea what could be their meaning. "Automatic sync" yeah got that much, but what on earth is it asking me below? A weird check-box (that isn't one) and the option to Sync or get out. I was a bit lost here, went with "Sync". Syncing seemed to work fine.

Things I liked

Now, because I promised to stop griping about the N8 (or actually S^3 to be precise), I will end this post with a few notions of what I liked.

For some reason, I really enjoyed the SMS notification up front, on top of everything in the desktop view. I found that the little "bubble" was quite functional and well placed both in portrait and landscape mode:

Landscape SMS notification.

The turning of the screen was nice, although not the fastest I've seen. A huge difference to S60 5th was, however, that I think Nokia didn't want the device to be too sensitive to turning the screen, and therefore there's a "wait period" to see if the user's serious or if tilting was an accident. Somehow it just seemed to be implemented really well and the delay seemed intentional and well controlled. Thank you, Nokia! Gripe #1 from S60 5th Ed. fixed!

I really enjoy the threaded SMS conversation view:

Lookin' good! -b

Tapping on a message bubble reveals the SMS in its full:

Single SMS view.

The obvious thing I liked (no, loved): the friggin' awesome camera!

Conclusions

So there. I feel like I've made my peace with Symbian^3 and the N8. I've finally said a lot of what I wanted to say about why exactly S^3 is stilla way away from being great, the way it should be. No Symbian^3 device will find its way to be my main device, but I think a lot of people can enjoy it to the fullest. I also think that most people won't even notice half of the stuff I gripe about!

In bringin out these negative points I wasn't aiming to flame, but to show the aspects of the UI that still need work in my opinion. The purpose of this is two-fold: I want people to read about these little things that eat into your experience, and second, nowhere can you read detailed examples of what exactly is wrong with Symbian^3's UI, it just gets called old and lame. I think I'm somewhat fair here in taking the time and effort to point some of them out and hopefully I've made it clear as to why I think these "features" are faults. I think this should make it easier to fix them. Also, since I've called them out, so I've done my part.

Am I completely off here?

A Collection of Good Reads on Nokia

Inspired by an article written by Kyron over at Maemofanatics.com, I decided to put together a list of links to interesting articles about Nokia and the mobile industry.

With Nokia World 2010 coming up it's good to stop for a moment and make sure that your perspective of Nokia is accurate. So below I've tried to list the articles that have profound insight or a more holistic view of the mobily industry. All articles below understand that the history of the mobile industry didn't start with the iPhone nor even the Motorola Razr. The articles are in no particular order.

#1) The already mentioned article from Maemofanatics.com recapping the past 8 months of Nokia: http://www.maemofanatics.com/show-and-prove-why-its-too-late-for-nokia-to-be-secretive/

#2) Juhani Risku, former Nokia CEO shares his thoughts on how Nokia should be "rescued": http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/22/nokia_manifesto_risku/

#3) Symbian-Freak  Chris McFann: "The truth about Nokia, Symbian, Maemo, Nokia N900 and the Nokia N97", written about a year ago in August 2009, this article still rings true: http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/08/chris_truth_about_nokia_symbian_maemo_the_n900_and_n97.htm

#4) Feel that Nokia should adopt Android? Read this to find out why that's completely off: http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/010/07/why_symbian_and_meego_are_best_for_nokia_1.htm

#5) Hear it from the horse's (Anssi Vanjoki's) mouth: Nokia will not adopt Android: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703571704575340543144779152.html

#6) Check yourself in to what MeeGo really is about in this good summary by Kyron over at Maemofanatics.com: http://www.maemofanatics.com/meego-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/

#7) A great recap of sir Tomi Ahonen's report on the marketshare situation Q3 2010. Mindhsare, marketshare and the truth about Apple's influence: http://mynokiablog.com/2010/07/23/nokia-cant-compete-in-the-high-end-really

And finally:

#8) What exactly did current Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo inherit? Is the buzz generated by Wall Street Journal really accurate? Another one of Tomi's children gets shortened down, this time by Mobile Industry Review here: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/07/nokias-fall-from-grace-the-background-story.html


What do you think of these articles? Are there any more like these worth knowing about?

Let's hear about it in the comments.

- Chris

The N8, summary of life so far

The Nokia N8 is bound for the shelves towards the end of Q3 of 2010 and so far the device's journey has been quite colourful. In this post I'll sum up some of the buzz around the device and contemplate on it's future. All this in a strongly oppinionated but I'll try to give some sources along the way!

The N8 first made it's appearance in leaked photos of a leaked prototype. Consequently, by now it seems that the N8 has quite efficiently been blogged to death. It seems that a video showing the prototype N8 has been released every other day since the first leak in March (was it March? correct me here any time) of 2010.

Since then official pleas by Nokia to the blogging public, the Russian authorities and finally legal action against a blogger have coloured the hype surrounding this device. Throw in the leak of yet another (similar) device sporting a physical keyboard and it's remote mid-review wipe, cheap chinese copies sporting a physical keyboard, and you pretty much have the story of the Nokia N8.

The reception

The N8 has been received with mixed impressions. Although the stunning camera quality has been praised everywhere, the rest of the phone has received only lukewarm reviews. Most feel that Symbian^3 simply isn't different enough for the N8 to be something to get excited about.


However, the general attitude has been very anti-Nokia for as about long as anyone can remember, with Nokia's #1 leak man Eldar Murtazin leading the lynch mob. This guy gets his hands on pre-release alpha versions of devices and forms often negative views of the devices. He has been criticized for being too eager to bash Nokia products, as some things he has said prove to be wrong or fixed in the next batch of prototype devices. None of this is about to change, as the man now faces Nokia's legal team in accusations of stolen property.

Click here to read mr. Murtazin's initial thoughts (Google Translated from Russian).

What does the N8 mean?

I've spent some time trying to put the N8 in perspective with everything else that Nokia is (seems) to be doing at the moment. Here are some things about it that I think it stands to mark:

- "At Nokia, we can do slim and attractive devices with huge capacitive touchscreens"
- "At Nokia, we like to stuff our devices full of technical features not present in other devices. "
- "We are adamant about the possibilites of Symbian as a smartphone platform, and so S^3 is present in this device."
- "The N8 is a natural continuation of our strivings to include better and badder camera hardware into our N-Series devices."

( Bear in mind that these aren't actual quotes of Nokia's personnell! )

Here's a few thoughts on Nokia's strategy that they aren't quite as outspoken about:

- This is Nokia's attempt to get a hold on the competition and the trend of things: slapping on a gorgeous camera is something Nokia has been best at for years, so this is Nokia playing hardball at their own game.
- At the same time, the physical form factor is very foreign to be a Nokia device, thus marking that Nokia has subjected to competitors' pressures in this respect.
- The N8 must be a Symbian device, because MeeGo will simply not be ready by the release of the N8.
- Symbian^4 is still lightyears away, that's why the N8 must run S^3.
- The N8 will be sold at a price point, where only Symbian devices will be sold. In other words, Symbian will be the (high)mid range smartphone platform and only MeeGo devices will be sold at the highest smartphone price point.

Will the chicks dig it?

I think there's a chance that the answer is: ... Probably not.

I was tempted to write "Yes." but some field tests with female test subjects have ruled the device to being something between "OK" and "fugly". Why is it important if chicks dig it? Its because I feel that if the chicks dig it, then it has the chance for mass appeal. After all, roughly half of us are girls.

The males of the general public might find it quite enticing, however. It's got great specs, it's got the capacitive screen that everyone seems to want and you can do that pinching gesture. Personally I can say that the latter especially is nothing special. But hey, people come up with features they always want and ask after, whether they really need it or not. For example Bluetooth was a must for many, eventhough they never used BT devices. Of course as a result BT can now be found on every device.

It will come in nice colours, though (again, very unlike Nokia!):

So what do you think? 

What are your expectations and/or predictions for the N8?