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

The N800 together with Skype and WiFi makes a great "long distance telco route-around device". I have used my N800 to call people on their land lines in Belgium and California and Seattle from Vancouver over my WiFi at home (802.11b on an aging Airport) and it works fine!

The KRZR K1 video is decent CIF quality but it's two year old techology. The Nokia N70 videos were just as good quality back in 2005.

Check it out and judge for yourself:

KRZR K1 video of the Skyte (blip.tv bug, I rotated the original but the flash video below is not rotated: original KRZR K1 Skyte 3GP Video with correct orientation)

Click To Play

Not bad CIF quality. Not great either. About as good as the N70 which is now 2 years old. Not nearly as good as an Nokia N93

Compare and contrast with Richard's Nokia N70 video of the Skyte

Installed fring on the N80i last night and it works pretty well. Aside from one crash on initial install and the usual annoying Series 60 memory issues (Nokia please put more memory in your phones), it seems to work as advertised. I have tested Skype Chat and N80i to Skype calls via fring and they work. One noteworthy bug, fring doesn't work with Skype group chats (it seems to partially support but not fully support: you can see a group chat but you can't participate in the group chat)

From VoIP Watch: Fring Is Here:

QUOTE

Fring is a peer to peer communications program that lets mobile users talk for free between one another over WiFi, 3G or GPRS. What's really interesting is the folks at FRING have engineered a way to talk to Skype users as well as Google Talk users from within the the Fring client. This is interesting because Skype seems to have abandoned efforts for the time being to be in the mobile market. For months we've been hearing tha there was going to be a Symbian Skype client but at CES I heard this was far from close to happening, something that has Symbian fans scratching their heads.

UNQUOTE

[Cross posted from MoMo Van]

Mobile Monday Vancouver May 2006 last night at Take 5 was an eclectic potpourri of topics and very lively conversation. Here are my highlights:

Matthew Snyder of Nokia is a former big wig of Nokia Search but has now moved on to other cool projects in Nokia. His current job is in Helsinki but he's based in Vancouver! Talk about a commute. He was a lively and fascinating conversationalist. Matthew demoed the Nokia/Yahoo Search app on his N70 together with some cool Canadian local integration which has not yet been released but I can't wait until it does. And I hope Matthew will start blogging!

Jim Pick showed off his 2 (!) Nokia 770s that he picked up when he was living in Berkley. The 770 is an awesome WiFi mini tablet (would be better if Gizmo and Skype were bundled!). I really wish it was sold in Canada. Anyways Jim who recently moved back to Vancouver has worked on the ARM port of Linux, Xen Virtualization and the Kaffe Java virtual machine. Jim's a great addition to the mobile community. Welcome back Jim!

Carlo of Upside Wireless discussed their SMS related work with the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and plans for the IPIPI SMS engine

Duff Gardner of New Media BC's Mobile Muse project gave us the skinny about the upcoming mobile related talks at Vidfest (I wish there was a schedule for Vidfest 2006 that I could link to, but until then here's the Vidfest 2006 Speaker list) as well as some insight into the new World Centre for Digital Entertainment that New Media BC is working on.

Patrick Payne, ex of Mobile Operandi/Mophone/3GUPLOAD and Ericsson, was also a lively conversationalist. He spoke about the Wireless lab that will be part of the World Centre and the plans for taking MoMoVan to the next level after learning from the mother ship at the Mobile Monday Global Summit May 8th and May 9th, 2006 in Helsinki, Finland.

Speaking of the MoMo Summit, Steph Rieger (who along with Bryan has done 99% of the MoMoVan organizing, I just pontificate and blog :-) !) will be there with Patrick and is also hoping to learn from the MoMo Mothership. She and Bryan also discussed Flash Lite as well their ideas for a Bluetooth server.

I of course pontificated about the greatness of ShoZu (my ShoZu pics and videos) the N70 Nokia Blogger Relations program and how I was saving for my own N93 dream phone (3x optical zoom, 30fps video!)

John Goodall of LiteFeeds (a cool mobile RSS reader) made a brief appearance and then mysteriously left (work or family called I bet). Come back John!

Finally, we spent a long time discussing the next MoMoVan which will be Monday June 5th at a venue to be determined and what the next phase of MoMoVan looks like. If you are interested in helping shape and influence Mobile Monday Vancouver, it's never too late. Sign up for the Yahoo Grooup MoMoVan group and get your skin in the game! Looking for organizers, speakers, and sponsors! Looking forward to hearing from you!

See you in June!