Roland Tanglao's Weblog

I predict there will be a Nokia Vancouver event like this in 2 years or less. Doesn't have to be S60 (because nobody in Canada knows what S60 is) but let's highlight the hundreds of awesome researchers, engineers, marketers, developers, etc at Nokia Vancouver and expose them to the public and sell Nokia stuff as well as give out swag. I suggested this before and I'll keep suggesting it :-) !

FROM Ring Nokia: Evening with S60 Helsinki: June 14, 2007:

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Our "An Evening with S60" event first touched down in New York City, then Chicago, now we're trying to score a hat trick with Helsinki! So you're all very warming welcomed to our third "An Evening with S60" to be held at the Nokia Flagship in Helsinki, Thursday June 14, 2007 from 19.00 to 21.00 (they're shutting down the store an hour early for us). It's a night of networking, technology, and of course...fun!

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Stefan's a dreamer about mobile phones and apps just like me, except that he's much younger and more strident (in a good way!). Sometimes I think he's already secretly :-) working for Nokia. +1 to Stefan and keep the dreams and wonderful posts coming in 2007!

As for these 20 resolutions, most of them mirror the requests I made in my Nokia N999 post. In my excerpt below, I have deleted the ones that don't resonate with me and kept the ones that I agree with!

Bonus dreams: 1. a cool Nokia store in Vancouver at their R&D labs in Burnaby a suburb of Vancouver. Let's get real users who pay with their own money into the Burnaby lab! Show them the unlocked phones and they will come with their wallets open; especially the large population of Canadians of Chinese and South Asian heritage in the Vancouver area who are well aware of the cool Nokia phones that are available elsewhere but not in Canada. I know this is a dream because the carriers (specifically Rogers, Telus and Bell) will never let Nokia do this but it can't hurt to ask!

2. a standard tripod jack and microphone jack (as Steve Garfield requested)

3. The Burnaby lab's local profile is shall we say far too "stealth"-like in the community. Could we please have a public blog or two or three from Nokia Vancouver? I don't think it's too much to expect from a lab that developed the N91 and has hundreds of employees! Especially now that there are dozens of public blogs from other Nokia labs!

FROM Ring Nokia: 20 New Year's Resolutions I have for Nokia (read the whole thing):

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3. S60 needs to become componentized in order to offer the best experience for users. One shouldn’t need an entire firmware upgrade just to upgrade the music player application, or the web browser. The core of S60 should remain the core and all other peripheral applications should be made into components; similar to what Microsoft does with Windows XP embedded. I use Opera for Mobile because I’ll never be able to use the web browser you have locked in to S60v3FP1.
4. The PIM needs a retooling. Get all the design engineers a Treo 680 and make them use that as their exclusive device for a month. I’m not saying Palm is better than Symbian, what I am saying is that certain aspects of their operating system are done so well it’s amazing that no one has yet to emulate it.
5. 2.5 mm headphone jacks are useless, when was the last time you walked into a store and you saw them sell headphones with a 2.5 mm jack? If you’re going to sell a music phone then make sure it has a 3.5 mm jack. The 5300 was a disgrace. I want to meet the design team who decided to market a phone specifically tailored for music and not include a headphone jack.
6. Pop port has got to go away. Mini USB is the future, and so far a lot of the devices you seem to be cranking out as of recent have said interface. Continue this trend.
7. Relating to number 6: Mini USB should also take place of the charger. Why should we have to plug one cable in to charge and one cable in to sync? Look at the iPod if you want to know what I’m talking about.

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9. A team needs to be created to begin porting VLC over to Symbian as well as for the Internet Tablet. Real Player is absolute nonsense and can’t handle nearly as many file formats as VLC can. Not to mention VLC will stream any file format. While you’re at it, start adding SMB support so I can access my files over my network!
10. Begin a marketing blitz in America to show consumers the advantages of going unlocked.
11. Sony Ericson phones use XEON based camera flash technology while you’re still using LED’s. It’s about time you switched, people can tell a difference in the quality.
12. Call Canon or Nikon and license their CMOS sensors to put into your Camera Phones. You guys rock at making phones, time to admit that you can’t make the best optics engines and call in the pros.

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14. I expect you to release a lot more phones with a full blown QWERTY keyboard running your latest version of S60.
15. The Nokia N95 is the first of many cell phones to come with a discrete graphics processor. Take advantage of this and create a slick 3D operating system that will wow people. The whole icons in a grid thing has been done since the 20th century. Time to move on.

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18. Announce an international warranty so people can feel comfortable importing a Nokia phone from Europe yet having it be serviceable in the United States.
19. Every device you sell that contains S60 should be able to view and edit office documents and read PDF’s regardless of being an E or N series product.

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I spoke too soon in Part 7 of this review. The beta version of ShoZu started crashing shortly after I posted part 7. Aaargh. All is not lost. I am making my way to the Nokia lab in Burnaby tomorrow morning where my N91 firmware will be upgraded from V1.00.028.13 29.03.06 RM-43 to the latest version V1.10.030 05-05-06 RM-43 or later (thanks to Andy Abramson for arranging this because this would not have happened through official channels since the N91 is not sold in Canada!). Apparently the latest version fixes the ShoZu crashing problem as well as the theme reset problem and other various issues. Fingers crossed!