Nokia has to do something soon. Don't think it's quite as urgent as "must introduce something this week" as Scoble describes but the window is closing for Nokia to re-capture the "high-end today but quickly becoming profitable mainstream" mind share that they have lost.

What do I want? Here's my N999 "multimedia-creator phone" vision updated for Dec 2008 (not in order of priority):

1. screen the size of the 5800 Tube
2. S60 simplified and fixed as Rui describes
3. 5 megapixel camera with cover and Xenon flash with 3x optical zoom and 640x480 30fps video (basically re-use the awesome N82 camera hardware and software)
4. Quad band GSM and 3G (i.e. works on Rogers and AT&T in North America AND European 3G out of the box just like the N85, no funky North American model)
5. Built in ShoZu (with 10MB limit removed for 3G and WiFi, make the limit 50MB for 3G and WiFi) - killer app for photographers and videobloggers
6. Bult-in Qik (killer app for videobloggers!)
7. Awesome web browser (Nokia's Web Kit browser was great in 2006, it is now far behind Apple's)
8. Lots of available RAM (as much as the N95 8GB please!), 8GB storage on built-in card
9. Built in Nokia viNes to take advantage of Nokia's great GPS hardware (killer GPS app!)

Here's what I don't need:

1. QWERTY keyboard
2. Email (Email is dead to me; I continue to use it reluctantly for work)
3. Touch (would be nice, but not convinced Nokia has the software chops for this; I am not interested in S60 transmogrified with touch, I would prefer touch to be part of a totally revamped user interface that's NOT S60.)
4. Micro SD card slot
5. Calendar (would be nice but that's what my laptop is for :-) !)
6. IM (Twitter is IM enough for me and I am fine with using it in the browser)
7. VOIP is dead to me except for Skype
8. MMS - I am not convinced I need it, I can always use ShoZu email photos :-) but I was wrong about SMS (so maybe I am wrong about MMS)

Would be nice:

1. Built in S60 Python so I can hack around and do some Geo hacks (and with reasonable security model to let mash up creators create some insanely great mashups) - Sorry widsets, Nokia WRT and flash lite don't cut it for me, but I am willing to be convinced of course!
2. Built-in Skype (the one on the N800 is fab and yes I know it's on a different operating system but Nokia has some awesome developers, c'mon and get with it :-) )
3. USB charging
4. Over the air firmware updates

QUOTE [From Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Nokia’s touchiest week «]

Translation: this is the week that Nokia either shines or moves to the B list of the cell phone market. Yeah, you won’t know how this week turned out for a year or two, but there is no bigger week for Nokia.

Now, can you count Nokia out yet? No way. It has the biggest slice of the cell phone marketshare pie. Its devices are much better engineered than Apple’s are (GPS on Nokia is better, so are the antennas, the cameras, and bluetooth radios that Nokia uses). But engineering does NOT equal a great experience. Yeah, my Nokia does not drop phone calls in places in Silicon Valley that my iPhone does, but generally I reach for the iPhone when I want to make a call or surf the web. Why?

Nokia is behind in experience. The executives here from Nokia that I’ve talked to know that. They know this is Nokia’s touchiest week and one where they either deliver a much better device or they are going to face a very tough 2009 globally.

END QUOTE

I've been sick and reading fiction books (I finished The Ash Garden before I slept at 8p.m. last night, recommended!) and not tech stuff but I had a dream last night that Nokia introduced the N999 blogaphone in 2007 with:

• 5 megapixel still camera with GPS and with a real xenon flash with lens and camera provided in partnership with Canon or Nikon and DVD quality video with a dedicated public/private button as I discussed in my blog post about ShoZu everywhere and the shoot-publish-respond workflow
• a full QWERTY keyboard like the E61 or an almost QWERTY keyboard like the Blackberry Pearl
• standard USB including power, standard headphone jacks and video out ports
• quadband GSM, UMTS, HSDPA and WiFi
• built in ShoZu technology that automatically over whatever the cheapest bandwidth the user has configured (which by default is WiFi, but those who are lucky enough to live in an area with affordable 3G could configure that too) uploads videos and photos with suspend and resume via the Atom publishing protocol to any website that supports this including flickr and blip.tv (blip doesn't support this today but I know they would in a heartbeat if they were the default for videos like flickr is with today's Gallery app)
• out of the box support for syncing with Mac OS X and Windows
• enough onboard RAM (which is about double the amount of RAM in the N93 I wager) to surf flickr.com/photos/roland :-) , run the podcasting client, run ShoZu in the background and the other apps mobile content power creators and consumers use
• 4 Gig of built in storage plus a micro SD slot for people like me who would put in even more storage, anything less than 2GB doesn't cut it for 5 Megapixel stills and DVD quality video
• costs less than $US 1000

I know I am dreaming (I have no insider knowledge about Nokia or anybody else in the mobile world's plans for blogaphone-like devices) and the N999 ain't coming soon but it is doable and I'd buy one in a heartbeat with my own money. This certainly ain't the Apple iPhone. Too power user and due to it's 'frankenphone'-like nature too cumbersome and harder to learn but I bet others want it.

Regardless, for me 2007 will be the year of the blogaphone for power users. Why pack a laptop when you can get all your multimedia consumption and creation done with a device like the N95? The N95 + bluetooth keyboard looks to be an early contender for 2007 blogaphone of the year!

[Assuming the pictures are better than an N93 and there's enough RAM to run the Series 60 browser, ShoZu, the wireless keyboard app and the camera app simultaneously which may prove to be an unwarranted assumption!]