Nokia N97

2010 Metal Monsters: Nokia N97 mini and Motorola Milestone

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:15:04 +0000

While I’ve previously pitched the Google Nexus One head to head with the Nokia N97, concentrating on screen size and general capacity, there’s another timely and interesting comparison to be made in the smartphone world, centred on metal construction and all-round communications and multimedia ability. Here, I take the industrial designed Motorola Milestone and the Nokia N97 mini – which will stand up to my intensive testing best?

“Both sit in the hand and feel like they mean business. The cool metal and ultra-solid build mean that you at least can see where your £380 has gone – in contrast to certain plastic devices which shall remain nameless (that creak and bend at the slightest provocation).”

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Nokia N97 Mini Oakley edition debuts at the Olympics

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:30:03 +0000

We somehow missed that in the Olympics coverage but apparently Nokia used the event to release limited version of one of their handsets. The Finnish company collaborated with Oakley to produce…

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AAS Insight 107 – Ovi Maps and N97 video discussion

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:00:09 +0000

In All About Symbian Insight 107 (AAS Podcast 171), Rafe, Ewan and Steve chat about some the information from the Anssi Vanjoki interview. We respond to some of the questions around what Nokia could have done, the implications of device families, and the awareness of the issue. Steve then reports back on Ovi Maps 3.4, before we finish with a discussion of how Nokia is like Batman (thanks Ewan). You can listen to AAS Insight 107 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here’s the RSS feed.

Multimedia from All About Symbian

In this podcast we cover:

Some thoughts and discussion on the Anssi Vanjoki video series – including response to some some of the feedback we’ve had.
Ovi Maps 3.4 – new features and performance improvements
Some reflections on Nokia’s attitude and discussions of where things are going.
Ewan says Nokia is like Batman!
and more…

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Nokia N97 mini goes Gold, brings bling to smartphones

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:15:02 +0000

From the designers that brought you the Nokia 6700 classic Gold Edition comes the Nokia N97 mini Gold Edition. This gilded gadget brings “smart” into the luxury phone category and brings QWERTY….

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Video: Anssi Vanjoki on the N97 and Symbian^3

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:30:04 +0000

At Mobile World Congress, I sat down with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, to talk about the Nokia N97. The highly anticipated device was released last summer and while it has been a commercial success for Nokia, it has been subject to a great deal of criticism from consumers for its software and underpowered hardware.

With the release of version 20 and 21 of the firmware, many of the software issues have been resolved. In the video, Anssi Vanjoki acknowledges the issues and explains how Nokia has learnt important lessons, which have been fed into the process of creating Symbian^3 and Symbian^3 devices. He says that “we have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect”.

Key points

The N97 was a success for Nokia in terms of sales and the margins (money collected) on the device, but “it has been a tremendous disappointment in terms of the experience quality for the consumers”.
This was not anticipated by Nokia. Nokia has been able to repair the situtaion through the release of version 20 and 21 of the N97 firmware. Nokia acknowledge that it “has been an unbelievable cycle of things for us, that has taken far too long to repair and mitigate”. Moreover they say, with regards to Symbian^1 / Symbian^1 family hardware platform, that “we stretched for too long, something which should not have been stretched”.
Nokia have learnt from the experience. The lessons learnt have been applied to both Symbian^3 generally and individual Symbian^3 products. The timescales for changes of this type are between major point releases of the platform (i.e. not between different devices within a point release). Nokia say, “we have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect”.

Video – Anssi Vanjoki – part 1

Comment

Over the years I’ve spoken to many Nokia executives, but this was an unusual interview. Having such a frank discussion about a device and its relative merits in in terms of consumer experience is almost unheard of. Think of other personalities and companies in the mobile industry – can you imagine them going on the record with such a statement? It certainly demonstrates Nokia willingness to listen and their belief that they will not mistake such mistakes again. It also constitutes a considerable endorsement for Symbian^3.

At the end of the session I asked Anssi Vanjoki how confident he was that the processes were in place to ensure a similar occurrence did not happen again. “Extremely sure”, he said, “check back with me next Januray and you will see”.

We’ve got further parts of this interview to come including a section of how Symbian and MeeGo fit together in Nokia’s software strategy, a future vision for mobile computers / devices, the importance of open standards and the three types of competitors for Nokia.

Transcript

A rough transcript of the video is provided below:

Anssi Vanjoki [Nokia]:

So we’ll start with the N97 and I’ll give you some current stuff on what we are doing there. The N97 has been a tremendous success for us when it comes to how many we have shipped and how much money we did collect, but it has been a tremendous disappointment in terms of the experience quality for the consumers and something we did not anticipate. It happens every now and then in a big company, like Nokia, even if you have the most stringent quality control mechanisms. Something slips, and you notice one thing, [it] leads to another thing, you fix that, and actually you make things worse and so forth… and this has been an unbelievable cycle of things for us that has taken far too long to repair and mitigate.

But now I can tell you that it is over. Now we have a software that is properly tested not only by our engineers and labs, but [also by] normal people out in the marketplace.

We actually launched this, before we let it to any other market, in a market that is very easy to control and is very distant: we launched it in Norway! So the Norwegians have had the software in their hands before anyone else, and now we have all the feedback for it. Both for what it does for the product – so how much better N97 comes. As well as for the firmware over the air delivery to those people who have bought the product and who had been wondering ‘how did Nokia release anything like this’.

So finally we are at the place where I can put my sleepless nights behind me and say that the agonising experience is over. So your readers and other readers of other places will now see that we are able to repair the situation we have caused and moving forward what a tremendous experience for learning this has been. We have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect.

Rafe Blandford [All About Symbian]:

The obvious question, with the N97 it was a combination of hardware and software. Have you made any changes to the quality control process to make sure this does not happen again?

Anssi Vanjoki:

Yes, actually, it is exactly like you say – it is quality control process. These things are not quality control at the end of manufacturing; they are quality control measures that are taken at the outset of setting up a program to deliver this whole thing.

And that is exactly the learning we have taken and that has gone into Symbian^3 as well as the products that are coming based on Symbian^3.

Rafe Blandford:

And do you feel that the timescale to doing that sort of thing is between the major point releases of the underlying platform?

Anssi Vanjoki:

Absolutely, that’s where you need to do it. Because, you know, what we did in terms of the software that was there for N97, we stretched for too long, something which should not have been stretched. And when you stretch from every single corner, the thing does not hold together any more. And therefore even the patching of this was much more laborious that what we ever thought.

Baptiste Martin [Symbian France]:

Regarding the N97, most of the users do not understand why they did not get any answer from Nokia. When you are an early buyer, you spend a lot of money on this device, and you get no answer…

Anssi Vanjoki:

Like I said, that was a surprise to us. It was not expected. When you are taken by surprise you usually say er… er… er… er…er. And now, painstakingly slowly, we are in position where we can both answer and remedy the problem.

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The Fairest Fight (Update): Samsung i8910 HD vs Google Nexus One vs Nokia N97

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:30:11 +0000

A month ago, I pitched the (then) brand new Google Nexus One against the Symbian-powered Samsung i8910 HD, a very close match in terms of form factor and specifications, concluding along similar lines – there was little to choose between them. But with the advancement of the original Nokia N97, a i8910 HD comtemporary, with its new v21 firmware and with hardware issues now largely fixed, I wondered how the N97 would fare when gently pushed into the same hardware-accelerated playground….

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10 Reasons why Ovi Maps on the Nokia N97 is ‘Brilliant’

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:30:05 +0000

Ah, so it’s not just me then. Respected über-blogger Jay Montano (far from an N97 fanboy, he’s a Maemo 5 user these days) has compiled an interesting and highly illustrated list of ten reasons why Ovi Maps 3.3 utterly rocks on the N97. A good read over your afternoon coffee. (Note that the software itself works on a range of phones, mind you. Do buzz me if you spot Ovi Maps v3.3 (free nav) becoming available for more than the initial eight or so devices.)

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The Nokia N97 Story: Choosing Classic or Mini?

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:15:03 +0000

With the release of the new (v21 or v11, depending on the device) firmware for the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, both smartphones suddenly got distinctly more appealing, running more applications at once and with their software finally becoming ‘fit for purpose’. So you like the unique, patented, hybrid form factor? So do I. But the big question is: which one should you buy? In this feature I look at every single difference between the two phones, commenting where needed and…. I try to pick an overall winner.

“There. All caught up? Of course, you are, the N97 and N97 mini have been hugely high profile devices. The former, in particular, has rightly snagged much bad press for buggy software and hardware at release. Yes, I said hardware – specifically a noisy GPS antenna that (even after replacement) still doesn’t get close to some older S60 phones and a badly designed camera glass protective shutter (the re-design of which does fix the problem).”

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User Review: My Non-Tech Girls View Of The N97 Mini

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:00:07 +0000

After years of using Sony Ericsson I decide it was time to go back to Nokia for my next phone. I finally got my hands on a N97 after months of drooling over it on the internet, only to be so disappointed with it I sold it after just 2 weeks of using it.

Its downfall was the plastic feel, bad keyboard layout and awful memory management not to mention the out the box software. For me this put a massive dent in my confidence with Nokia and swayed me back towards looking at Sony Ericsson again for my next phone.

Then I heard about the N97 Mini and people reporting it was so much better than the N97, but I wasn’t convinced so when I got the chance to trial the N97 Mini courtesy of wom… .. .

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Optimising (and rationalising) RAM on the Nokia N97

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:30:03 +0000

Steve Litchfield explores the world of RAM on the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, demonstrates that you can still multitask well over a dozen applications at once, discusses what Nokia got wrong and gives some pointers as to what you can do to keep things on the rails…

“The problem with RAM (Random Access Memory, along with the processor, the physical engine that runs a smartphone operating system) on S60 5th Edition devices like the Nokia N97, N97 mini, X6 and even the 5800, is that when Nokia’s design teams specified the hardware, a 128MB RAM chip was though to be enough. Yes, the N95 had had problems with a 64MB chip, but the ceiling had now been raised to 128MB for the N95 8GB and, after all, wasn’t S60 5th Edition largely the same OS? Surely the same chip would be enough?”

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