The Released to Manufacturing status (RTM) of any operating system is the second most important and definitive timepoint in getting devices to market. It would seem that just last night Windows Phone 8 achieved just that status. What this means is that Microsoft halted addition of new features to the OS a number of months ago and have spent the last few months improving performance and polishing the user experience. OEM’s on the other hand now have the final version of the OS to stuff on their devices, only needing to do minor modifications to and add unique experiences to their builds of the software before shipping to carriers and end users.

Given this latest development, it would seem that a release date of November 2nd may either be right on the money or just a little early. Windows Phone Mango RTM-ed on July 26th 2011  and officially launched/rolled out to customers on September 27th of the same year. This was exactly a two month window for device maker modifications, carrier testing and other preparations before we got our grubby mitts on it.

That said, there are rumours of carriers around the world already putting the device through their testing procedures and we may see it up for pre-order by Mid-October or even at the launch of Windows 8  on October 26th.

Source: coolrick

Via WPCentral

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, much less written anything for public consumption but I felt like last week’s events needed a bit of first person perspective.

Last Wednesday evening, (New York time of course), Nokia held a launch party/general access and admissions event for their newly announced Lumia series devices. Held in what is probably best described as a 5 storey art gallery, the ambiance  of the event was quite frankly top notch. Getting to and eventually into the event was a rather trouble free experience and provided a quite telling surprise, there was actually a line to get in! Sure, Windows Phone has been growing steadily in popularity over the past few months, undoubtedly exacerbated by the first round of Nokia hardware, but to see a line for a Nokia and Microsoft joint event about mobiles was rather interesting to say the least.

Walking out of the elevators into the main room was a busy showfloor with close to 30 Nokia employees showing off the latest and greatest features of the new devices and some of the accessories that will be available when the 920 and 820 officially launch sometime in “Q4″ of this year. I pressed multiple employees for a more specific timepoint, including Microsoft employees concerning the full rollout of Windows Phone 8 and got naff, though from all indications, it’s less a matter of software readiness and more of carrier support, developer support and avoiding a failed launch (whether this is such a launch remains to be seen).

The partners that Nokia mentioned during the morning’s keynote, “The Coffee Been & Tea Leaf” and ”Virgin Atlantic”  both were well represented with their own large swathes of the gallery and an abundance of wireless chargers of both styles and many colours. More impressive to me was Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s integration of the charging stations into their table surfaces, with the only indication being a pattern of landing lights on the table. If more widespread adoption of wireless charging is to occur, partnerships like this are going to be an absolute necessity. Of course, much hinges on the success of Nokia and Microsoft, but that’s a conversation for another day.

The Hardware:

On first glimpse, you’d be forgiven for thinking the 920 was a Lumia 900 given the reuse of the polycarbonate unibody design that has become so iconic and so Nokia. That said, upon closer inspection, the modifications make become much, much more pronounced. Many complained when Apple reused the iPhone 4′s design with the more recent 4S  and rightfully so, nobody wants their brand new devices to look exactly like the old devices, as a result Nokia may come in for rather harsh criticism on that front even if there are obvious differences to the observant eye. In any case, let’s start with the dimensions.

On paper the 920 comes in at 2.5mm longer, 1.3mm wider and just a hair’s breadth under 1mm thinner than it’s predecessor. What does all that mean? Quite frankly, nothing. Even with the addition of a larger screen and all manner of gizmos under the hood, the 920 looks and feels virtually identical in terms of footprint to the 900.

Family Portrait

Note the use of the word virtually, as the modifications made to the screen curvature, mildly altered body shape and the movement of the capacitive buttons all went together well to improve the ergonomics and weighting of the device. I’m sure I’m not alone in having the experience of nearly dropping my device altogether  because of hardware keys being much too close to the bottom of the device in order to accomodate much larger screens. As a result I believe that the placing of the keys on the Lumia 920 is for the best, bezel-haters be damned. The rest of the device shows similar precedence of function over “perceived aesthetics”, with the back of the device curving even more noticeably than before, thus adding to the thickness of the device while fitting the hand even more than it’s visual “size” would lend itself to.

There have been a number of complaints about the changes from a matte finish to a glossy finish on the Lumia 920 and I’ll be happy to allay those right now. On the Yellow and Red devices, anything other than a glossy finish would be less than pleasing on the eye and in any case, the black and grey variants have been spared. Sadly there was not even a whiff of cyan among the Nokia or Microsoft employees. That said, don’t be surprised if you happen to  see a Surface and Cyan Lumia 920 bundle in time for Christmas.

The display is the second most noticeable change on the device. The 4.5 inch 1280×768 pixel IPS display really does live up to the hype, even when not in motion. Sharp, vivid are quite honestly not enough to describe my impressions of the display. As I’m currently running a Galaxy Nexus next to my Lumia 900 I can quite honestly say that the Lumia 920′s display is a fair distance above the competition and even more so above the Lumia 900′s which while only 800×480 pixels, was not as bad as it’s resolution would suggest. Did I mention that it’s qualifies as a “retina display” in Apple parlance?  All jokes aside though, it was much better in person than I’d imagined and it works just as well without gloves, something I’ll invariably appreciate come winter.

With my previous excursions in Windows Phone (and Android) I’ve found that while AMOLED screens are absolutely gorgeous to look at, their power consumption rates, even when attempting to stick to predominantly dark backgrounds, text, themes and the like the devices are still susceptible to massive battery drain when browsing the web or watching videos. Though, it’s hard to blame the manufacturers for the design of the web and applications, it’s saddened me that combining the deep blacks and contrast of OLED’s with the longevity of LCD’s was a pipe dream until very recently. The HTC One X bucked that trend in brilliant style and it seems that the majority of  component manufacturers have finally figured out how to build wonderful and power efficient devices en masse.  This newest generation of SLCD and IPS displays is testament to that, and as a result,  the Lumia 920 receives a healthy bump up in display quality. Does this at all mean it will be best in class? That depends on too many factors to matter, at least nobody will be able to tell you that it’s anything less than brilliant.

 Software

To say that Microsoft and Nokia are being paranoid about Windows Phone features leaking out or any non-NDA-ed personnel using the devices is quite frankly the understatement of the century. There’s worse security and less lock-down in a prison! Apart from what the two companies have shown both in June and now, there’s barely a whiff of anything and that’s with an SDK (preview version) that’s already been seeded to the AAA developers and OEM’s best able to put the best apps on the marketplace. That said, the software, Windows Phone 8 has a number of both minor and major changes to the UI and underlying OS.

For starters, Nokia Maps is now ubiquitous within the OS, allowing for a less disjointed and “cobbled together” feeling mapping solution. In actual use, it seemed, at least from my experience, a lot snappier than the version present on the Lumia 900 and just as functional, and likely will be a tad more so with time in large part aided by the updated hardware. The tiles are the most obvious change to the look and feel of the OS and it must be said a welcome and long-overdue addition to the platform. In person, they’re much more attractive than the many images online would lead you to believe and I can only hope that developers have been given even more access to live tiles and underlying API’s to further improve the experience.

Lenses was the other major aspect of the OS demo-ed for me and I must say it exemplifies everything that Windows Phone does right. Why should I have to open separate apps for Instagram, Pinterest and many other photo and photo-sharing apps in order to take a photo on the fly and upload it seamlessly? Lenses is a way of plugging apps directly into the viewfinder such that at the touch of an on-screen button (or two), pictures can be taken and immediately linked to and/or uploaded using these separate apps. In the demo it worked quite fluidly and left me quite impressed. Cinemascape, the Lenses “lens” created by Nokia, also dubbed “the GIF-maker” was also on show and demonstrated a small hint of the magic to continue coming out of Nokia in the imaging department now that they’ve completed their acquisition of Scalado.

Pureview??

We’ve seen the hullabaloo concerning faked images and video, we’ve also seen vindication and proof positive that it is and will be better than the majority of the competition (still waiting on the verdict on the iPhone 5) but does it live up to the Pureview moniker so painfully established by the 808 Pureview. In a single word, yes. I, like most, was skeptical that images like that could be produced by anything short of a DSLR and so did a few others, including Apple at their recent release of the iPhone 5. So you can imagine the look of utter shock on my face when OIS was demoed both on stills and video with nary a blip and image quality so far above the competition that I asked for a second demo (and a third). The first time, I thought it was a fake, the second time my mouth fell open and upon the third demo, it more or less hit the floor and stayed there. It’s good, so good in fact that I’m still trying to wrap my head around how Nokia have managed to eke that much out of that little 1/3.2″ sensor. My pitiful attempts at besting the 920 are posted below.

The technology and whitepaper have been fleshed out in far too many places to warrant me going it over again but I’ll say this, Xenon flash wouldn’t have worked well. Xenon flash has the wonderful ability to seemingly freeze time in place when taking pictures. Alas, that’s a function of the behaviour of the sensor in conjunction with the flash that allows this. A well timed burst of the Xenon flash allows the device to use a very fast shutter time while still allowing the sensor to capture enough light to make something of a decent image. This fast shutter speed is what “freezes time” as it’s colloquially known. Unfortunately, Xenon flashes fit into mobile phones are very much limited for power and moreso at even worse off at range. What this means, is that unless the subject is very close, or the flash very powerful, objects far away are going to be just as impossible to see as they were without a flash. This is where OIS becomes so important. To take better images, at range, with lower levels of light, the sensor needs to stay open for longer thus exposing the image to the possibility of blur. Counteracting this blur allows for more light, more light = bright pictures. On the Lumia 920 it works well and I can’t wait to see how much it shows up the competition come launch.

Major positives:

The demo staff were knowledgeable, enthusiastic and very well spoken, able to answer as many questions as I could throw at them and even more willing to show me the cool things the devices could, of which there were many, in spite of the draconian limitations on the software that could be shown.

Cool integration of technologies that have been spread far and wide but never yet shoved all into the same device

Great hardware and hints at very good software to back it up.

Major sour points:

No launch date. Even one as distant as November would be enough to put people off getting a new phone if they knew when to expect it. Sure there have been many rumours, though none corroborated by Nokia, but I can see and understand why there have been delays. The software not being ready yet are just a part of the entire story (more on that in another piece).

No SDK release to majority of developers. From the horses mouth and indeed many other sources, we know that certain privileged developers have had access to the SDK for a number of weeks, possibly months, but the vast majority of developers haven’t yet had access to the SDK to allow them the generate the applications the platform needs to have in order to prise away the users of Android and iOS devices. That said, today’s news shows a degree of promise on that front.

Will it be enough?

Time will tell, but I’m a bit more than cautiously optimistic that this wave may be enough to drag Nokia out of the doldrums like a bat out of hell and give both Apple and Samsung a real run for their money. Do I think it’s their last chance? No, but it’s getting damn tight.

Don’t screw this up Nokia. Gallery at the end.

The IDC recently released their figures for smartphone shipments for Q2 2011 and it’s rather obvious that Nokia has had its lunch eaten without so much as putting up a fight. Apple, formerly the undisputed leader in terms of profits from their smartphone sales moved into the #1 spot with Samsung clinching the #2 spot. Both individual achievements are astonishing when looking at their previous years’ figures but it’s Samsung’s in particular that has been mind-blowing with 421% growth year-on-year coming at the expense of Nokia and RIM of course. The sort of growth Samsung has seen in the past year is nothing short of staggering but it should have been expected what with their very successful Galaxy line last year and their massive success in capturing the US market along with HTC.

The success of these two manufacturers (HTC and Samsung) is down to a single entity and it’s forays into the smartphone market, Google. Before the emergence of Android as a truly viable platform in 2009, HTC and Samsung were also rans in the smartphone  space, Samsung making forays into Symbian & Windows Mobile with little real success and HTC being almost a non-existent brand but manufacturing devices for carriers as an ODM; yet now these two are the premier brands in the Android space and by proxy the general smartphone market all thanks to Google.

How is it that these OEM’s have managed to release so many different devices, so quickly and iterate and improve upon the technologies in them in such a rapid fashion as to leave the others in the market, Palm, Nokia, RIM all gasping for air? A large part of that has to do with cost. Samsung, who were part of the Symbian foundation jumped ship as soon as they realized that for little actual developer input and monetary outlay they could get a fully functional OS, cloud, mapping and applications support which they wouldn’t need to maintain and a lack of hefty licensing fees that came with their Symbian and Windows Mobile forays. It was perfect for them. HTC, similarly realising the opportunity jumped on the bandwagon, hard and Google were only happy to have them and their enthusiasm for the budding platform. The cost savings to OEM’s meant they could increase the quality and quantity of their devices significantly while incurring no extra cost compared to other platforms.

It was a win for both parties, Google would gain a growing foothold in what seemed like a very profitable market and OEM’s would increase their margins. On top of all of this Google could go around blowing their trumpet about being an Open Source platform, the antithesis to Apple’s locked down and controlled experience. Android had variety, it was free, it was ‘cool’ and it certainly didn’t hurt that Android was growing into something “good” too.

Eventually there came trouble. In 2010 Android was growing in popularity and sales at a phenomenal pace, “halo” devices were being released by every manufacturer on what seemed like a 6 month cadence, performance and features went through the roof and as Google’s OS grew in ubiquity, so did the heaviness of their hand. The Skyhook debacle and the delays of a few Motorola devices and the GPS bugs that plagued the initial releases of the Galaxy S family in summer of 2010 are testament to that.  For reasons that Google provided and attempted to justify later as was seen in a series of emails between the Motorola CEO, Skyhook representatives and high level Google employees, using the Skyhook service for Geolocation on Android devices wouldn’t be allowed, even if it provided faster locks and lower power to do so because it interfered with Google’s ability to collect adequate location data. Now I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with trying to protect ones interests as far as your services and reputation are concerned but blocking the launch of a device because it uses a competitor’s services which just so happen to be rather good reeks of anticompetitive practice.

Legal documents pored over by Nilay Patel over at ThisIsMyNext (soon to be The Verge) paint an increasingly dark picture of the situation inside the making of Google-powered devices. In essence, in order to launch your device with Google applications and services, you have to receive certification of your  device and any modifications to Android from Google. Understandable to reduce fragmentation but the issue with Android certification is the fluidity of it all. The head honchos at Google can quite literally veto the release of any Android device on the grounds of refused certification. Whilst there are certainly clear guidelines involved, that degree of uncertainty allows Google to literally bludgeon and herd OEM’s to their whims. An untenable situation to say the least.

When you look at the recent legal fallout and  the success we’ve been seeing in these lawsuits, it’s growing abundantly clear that Android uses or used intellectual property belonging to other companies. The thing is, Google isn’t selling Android, it simply makes it available. Those that use Android, the OEM’s that have brought record profits and revenues to both themselves and Google alike have been held liable for all the legal fallout and financial burden associate with these lawsuits. Increases in the success of Android will only serve to worsen these issues. And if recent blog posts are to believed, Google is certainly concerned. If Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Motorola and a whole hosts of others who’re having their technologies and patents infringed and are suing or cross-licensing for a cut of every Android device shipped, when added to the cost of licensing Android applications, the costs of a “free” and “open” OS really outweigh other options.

This certainly opens the door for other projects such as WebOS, MeeGo and even Windows Phone as possibly cheaper and less legally questionable as Android. What do you think of recent developments around Android and how do you feel about intellectual property in the mobile landscape? Sound off below.

Editor’s Note: Android has recently been deemed the least open of mobile open source platforms, now let’s all act surprised.

Sources:

This is my next

Arstechnica

I’ll preface this “review” by saying the following. This is NOT final code and there will likely be significant changes and additions to both the aesthetics and performance of the Operating System when the final build is released to OEM’s. Further, the hardware improvement likely to accompany this update, in particular the newer 45nm chipsets should improve user experience significantly. The build used for the majority of this review was Build 7661. Comments marked with “update” were reviewed using build 7712 and the final release to manufacturing build is 7720.

The installation process:

Because the update that I’m currently using is more of a mod as opposed to a pre-vetted press device, my experience may be marginally different than other (p)reviewers of Mango. The installation process, in spite of this “mod” was rather straightforward but by no means short. Before updating, the entire contents of my memory card (yes it works in my device) and the ROM were backed up, all 13 gigs of it. While certainly appreciated, it was a painfully long wait for backup followed by a significant wait for the update to install (on the order of 50-70 minutes for both tasks to be completed).

First impressions:

When the device first boots up you’ll be VERY hard pressed to notice any differences between the old version of the OS and the newer version; thankfully all of that changes with a simple swipe to the left.

The first thing you notice is the placement of letters in the applications list these are meant to give users an easier time identifying where in the list they are. Whilst scrolling, it’s important to note that the current letter that you’re in is present at the top of the screen. Also, in the event that you have a ridiculously long list, a simple tap on a letter will bring up a jump-list, allowing you to jump to a specific letter. In addition there’s a new search button added to the mix in the event your number of apps exceeds your tolerance for scrolling.

The live tile area as of right now isn’t being used to the extent that developers both first party and otherwise are expected to be using it come fall this year. However, the tiles that ARE available are significantly more responsive, reliable and update more frequently as well as providing loads more useful glance-and-go information. Hopefully with the added developer back-ends we’ll see many interesting uses of live tiles (although, developers seem to be well ahead on that front).

New additions:

One of Mango’s main selling points is the addition of nearly 500 new features and a great many API’s to allow developers to tap into and deliver these features to the waiting masses (definitely not that many people to be perfectly honest).

Search

First up is the most accessible addition and that relates to search. The three main additions are “Local Scout” which is pretty much a faster and better-integrated version of Lonely Planet found on Ovi Maps; Bing Music which is like Shazam except surprisingly faster (both in load time and in song identification), Image searching (finally!) and Bing Vision which is an integrated version of Google Goggles (can’t wait to put this to good use when I travel to Europe) .

Local Scout:

I’ve been living in the same city for the past 4 years and I still haven’t seen most of the supposedly “good” places nearby. Local scout is broken into 4 main “pivots”:-

· Eat and drink

· See + do

· Shop

· Highlights

Local scout creates a list of 20 items, attractions and/or businesses and arranges them by distance (closest is #1 logically). It also collates ratings, price information and addresses for these places. All of which can be navigated to using the turn-by-turn navigation bundled with the OS- more on that later. Local scout though is certainly a much appreciated addition to the OS and I can see myself using it with increasing regularity, especially while travelling.

Bing Music is pretty much like Shazam, tell it to listen to music and it’ll identify the song then you can be on your merry way.

There are of course hooks that tie into the Zune Music Store, though I can’t imagine many of you actually using it. It does the job and does it well, while managing to stay out of your way. Shazam certainly just lost a few customers.

Image search is pretty much like the images tab on Google searches. Nothing special here but nice to finally see it bundled in AND easily accessible (the same can’t be said of other operating systems).

Bing Vision as mentioned earlier is a lot like Google Goggles. Unlike Goggles it doesn’t inhabit a separate space from the regular search feature and while its success or failure in reading text, bar codes and QR codes is very much dependent on the user and the camera in play, the accessibility of the feature will lead to invariably greater use in the future.

Of course, being an internet-dependent service in the case of translation, Bar code and QR code look-ups it will be interesting to see how this technology and other similar ones improve and develop in the future. Did I mention the translate feature ?

Multitasking:

Another one of the big additions in Mango is multi-tasking. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work for 3^rd Party apps, at least until developers recompile their applications for Windows Phone 7.1 (aka Mango) instead of Windows Phone 7.0. As such, the BEST multitasking experience is limited to built-in applications. That said, all indications point towards minimal work at best on the part of developers which will ensure a good experience for end-users.

The multitasking UI is called up by a long-press on the “back” key. Unlike WebOS and Symbian, Windows Phone only shows the 5 most recent applications used with this UI. This is NOT to say that these are the only apps paused or running in the background etc. but a conscious design choice to avoid mindless scrolling, especially when there’s no MeeGo-esque pinch to zoom gesture to view more running applications.

Strangely enough (and this relates to Microsoft’s regular user first approach) there’s no visible way to control dismiss an application that’s visible in this task switching UI. Applications CAN be closed by pressing back to repeatedly move through the backstack though it is far from an elegant solution. I can only imagine that Microsoft gave little thought to users that might wish to dismiss applications from this view.

Many applications however, are allowed to run certain tasks whilst in the background. Microsoft has thankfully given users the ability to manage how and when applications can run these tasks, albeit the requisite menu is somewhat buried in the device. Nice to see that they still have some consideration for the more tech-savvy among us.

I won’t cover the specifics of Windows Phone’s multitasking implementation here (especially when I’ve covered it here before) but suffice it to say that it should serve most people adequately. That said, power-users who want to read webpages while simultaneously viewing turn by turn navigation directions while also watching a video should probably look elsewhere.

Windows Live aka MSN chat and Facebook chat:

Yes Microsoft recently acquired Skype and that’s all the rage but alas it won’t be making its way to this version of Windows Phone in integrated form. Setting up both Windows Live and Facebook chat is pretty much automatic albeit if you possess multiple hotmail or windows live addresses, only the primary one will work with chat (at the current time at least). Connecting facebook chat requires going to your messenger account on your PC and linking the two before actually utilizing chat. Thankfully the process is barely 3 clicks but it’s still not nearly as smooth a setup as I was expecting. Once done though, chatting with facebook contacts or live contacts is quite a breeze. For better or worse, all threads that are started with your contacts, be they online or offline are housed in the same area.

Threads are grouped together by contact name however, meaning if you have a conversation via text, live or Facebook, you won’t see 3 separate threads in the main threads area. That said, you won’t see online conversations and texts conversations in one chronological thread. Instead they’re kept separated from one another AND there are ever present notifications to indicate which service you’re using at any point in time. I’ve had the service turned on permanently for a few days and I’ve noticed little to no noticeable hit on battery life (probably due to the push notifications used instead of a persistent connection). Frugal data users will also be happy about that little setup.

When a message is sent, there’s no clear indication until you’re in the application itself that the message is a chat or text either via the home-screen or toast notification. Would be nice to know which is received but in the grand scheme of things it matters little I suppose.

In any case, I have little to complain about with regards to this implementation in either form or function and it’s a nice little addition. I’m interested to see how Twitter and eventually Skype fit into the equation but I can’t imagine them being any worse off for it.

Update

Upon updating to build 7712 I was met allowed to add my twitter account to the people hub. Much like MeeGo-Harmattan on the N9, your twitter timeline is readily available for your perusal. Like the events area on the N9, the What’s new section of the “people” hub shows updates from all your social networks and similarly can be easily filtered by twitter only, Facebook only, windows live only or all accounts.

Twitter is decently well integrated, providing notifications in the “Me” tile of mentions, Facebook updates and the like and allow for fast replies to tweets, comments or wall posts. With regards to twitter, it’s not quite a full suite of functionality; retweets and conversation threads are there but direct messages and “reply all” didn’t quite make the cut. In any case it’s a worthwhile and useful addition to the platform though highly unlikely to replace dedicated twitter applications at least in the short term

NB. LinkedIn is also available but I have little use for it at the current time

Turn by turn navigation

Whilst previously available in a myriad of additional applications, built-in turn by turn navigation finally arrives on Windows Phone 7 courtesy of Mango. Having tried it out a few times, it works. Whilst it doesn’t give as much granularity of control as Nokia Maps does with regards to taking only side roads, avoiding toll roads and the like it functions well enough for regular use.

It doesn’t quite update your location as much as I would like (which I’m sure will be hammered out for final builds) but the general interface and ideas are solid. You’re provided with the exact directions, i.e. which turn to take and distance to that turn, informative traffic information and upcoming directions in text and slightly graphical form at the bottom of the screen and a map at the top highlighting the route and current position.

The zoom level of the maps displayed is user controllable (via pinch to zoom of course) but generally varies to give a better idea of distances involved in your journey, closer zoom when turns are nearby, further out zoom when the turns are far away. A nice little touch is the presence of the aforementioned local scout icon just in case.

All in all a welcome and functional addition (powered by Navteq).

Miscellaneous additions

Office and cloud storage

Office integrates better with cloud based storage (though they all seem Microsoft based). I do hope for sugarsync/dropbox access in the near future though. Microsoft also provide 25GB of cloud storage via their Skydrive service and it is seamlessly integrated everywhere in the OS. Pictures, videos, documents can all be automatically uploaded to the cloud and vice versa. There’s even music access.

For even MORE cloud storage, there’s the Windows Home Server Phone connector that allows you to, as it says on the label, connect to your home server from your mobile device. Access there is only limited by your server’s capacity and your mobile bandwidth.

Music and media

The music player has seen a bit of an overhaul to the interface as well. It’s now much more easy to navigate and understand with more vertical scrolling as opposed to horizontal scrolling. There’s the “history” pivot in chronological order of course that scrolls vertically, the “new” pivot, the “apps” pivot where all media related applications (such as possibly Divx if it’s allowed) would accrete and the “Zune” pivot. Nothing earth-shattering but as they say, it’s the little things.

There’s now on-device podcast management, search and downloads and users can decide whether podcast download over 3G, Wi-Fi, or both.

The now playing screen also got a bit of a UI overhaul with all controls readily visible, cutting down on possible confusion for users. There’s repeat, shuffle and rating buttons and the list of upcoming songs is also at hand.

Tapping on the truncated list below the album art brings up the full list which thankfully fades away after being unused for ~15 seconds. Swiping in either direction with a finger on the album art functions as “forward” and “back” buttons and the album art allows you to see what you’re likely to be playing before you remove your fingers.

Tapping on the name of the Album drops you right into the respective artist’s section where you can view their albums, songs, bio(!) and a list of related artists.

You may have noticed a small “play” button with multiple sectors of a circle put to one side this is the smartDJ feature. This lets the music player create a playlist of songs based on a user chosen song or album. It works reasonably well within your own music library and with the most popular songs and artists but the real magic happens when you tie it to a Zune Pass account. When turned on in the settings, it allows Smart DJ to include songs in your little playlist from the entire Zune Music catalog and in reasonably high quality I might add. The small “broadcast” looking icon indicates that the song is being streamed. Streaming works equally well over 3G and Wi-Fi though slower 3G speeds and worse service do result in longer buffering times which are nigh non-existent on faster connections.

Music controls and album art are visible on the lockscreen for ease of use and aesthetic purposes but unfortunately, there’s no way to jump directly to the music player from the lockscreen. That said, a quick press of any volume key from any application allows access to all the playback controls AND the ability to jump directly into the music app by tapping on the song playing at that point in time.

The only downs in this whole setup are the missing equalizer and audio-altering options and somewhat convoluted playlist creation process. Playlists can be created by selecting a song or album and adding it to the “Now Playing” list. Tapping on the list allows you to save that list as a playlist.

As if you needed convincing, I’ll say this, coupled with a Zune Pass account, the music situation on Windows Phone 7 is easily the best implementation I’ve EVER used. If you need more information on what Zune Pass is, check out this post. If the service isn’t available in your region I’d still say that it’s one of the best implementations currently in terms of functionality, ease of use and simple aesthetic pleasure. I squeal at the thought of a Nokia device with an FM transmitter coupled with this thing.

Performance

The most succinct way of describing performance, even in this beta build, is quick, period. There is rarely a point where I’m waiting for the device to do something and those few points almost always relate to network access and downloading data and even then the device stays remarkably quick, unlike some other devices I’ve used. Transitions are fast and stay out of your way, never stuttering or keeping you from doing the things you want to do, even the loading/busy indicators are tastefully done throughout the OS.

Battery life for the device I’m using is decent enough that I never really worry about running out of juice during the course of a normal day though I can’t say that it’s “brilliant” but it is good enough for me. This however is not a fault of the OS itself but rather the display it’s using. A 4inch S-AMOLED display tends to suck juice like there’s no tomorrow. Doesn’t help that Samsung’s idea of a “low” power setting is what many devices would call 60% brightness and full power is simply blinding, literally.

Other

Changes to the mail app mean that users can “link” one or more mail inboxes together making them visible and accessible at the same time. Further to this is the addition of conversation threads where the mail-box automatically and intelligently links emails from a single user or under a single heading together.

I haven’t had any issues with this so far and it makes keeping track of email conversations that much easier. In essence if you have 4 different email addresses, multiple personal ones and a work one or multiple work ones and a personal one, you can group them together, name them “work” and “personal” and receive separate notifications and have separate inboxes for the two. Again, nothing earth-shattering but it’s a nice little touch.

Contact groups is another minor addition to the people hub, allowing users to create contact groups for quick and easy mass communication. This can be done through text, email or Facebook and I’m certain it’s a feature that some will find great use for. Microsoft has also done a nice little thing in creating a default “family” group which is populated by individuals with the same last name as you “supposedly” based on your phone contacts. Let’s hope you don’t have a lot of friends with the same last name eh?

Contact history is another nice and oft-forgotten feature in Mango, showing quite literally a history of communications and threads with any chosen contact in chronological order. Calls, texts and Facebook are all included here with breaks between threads based on length of time since last communication, form of communication used in the intervening time etc.

The camera can also automatically save user created settings and launches with them if the user so chooses (finally!)

Voice search and commands are somewhat improved now and allows users to literally operate the entire device by voice alone. Want to launch an app? You can do that. Want to search for something? You can definitely do that. Want to make a call and have speaker phone turned on when it connects? Yup, that works too. Want to text a friend? It’ll do that for you without you even opening the messaging app.

Coupled with the rather accurate and surprisingly fast (at least in English) speech to text engine you really don’t need to look at the device much at all to perform some of the most common tasks.

IE9

Supposedly it was meant to bring the browser up to par with the best on the market with HTML5 support and an improved rendering engine. To be fair in terms of performance I can’t quite argue with their claims in terms of rendering speed and accuracy compared to the previous version, the current version scores 95/100 on the Acid 3 test, 141 + 5 bonus points on the HTML5 test which measures how many of the HTML5 specifications the browser meets but says nothing of performance and completing the Sunspider 0.9.1 Javascript Benchmark test in 9631.7 ms almost a 500% improvement in Javascript performance.

Unfortunately this is still some ways behind the majority of Webkit-based browsers on the market, even those using the same SOC. All in all it’s still good enough for most people, mind there’s a rather obvious lack of Flash.

That said, in day to day usage, I want the old version back, just for the UI really. The old version provided 1-tap access to your bookmarks and tab-switcher whereas the current version does away with the icons and hides them in a menu. If you’re reading this Microsoft, bring the old UI back, yesterday; even if it means less visible browsing area, ease of access to the things we want is big deal. That said, each browser window does show up as a separate “app” (much like MeeGo) in the app-switching UI making it just a smidgen easier

What’s missing

I’m sure a few of you have very specific needs that your current or future devices absolutely have to meet in order for you to hand over your funds and fair do’s to you. There are even some that object to supporting the Windows Phone move on the simple grounds of disliking the company, others still on the grounds of “openness” and use those things as negatives when speaking in regards to the Nokia Windows Phone decision but none of those are concerns to me so I will not be considering them as “negatives” or things that are missing from the device of operating system.

Now that that’s cleared up there are a fair few annoyances and missing things that are OS specific, some of which I hinted at in my first review and further here.

Notifications:

Maybe Microsoft feel that live-tiles are/should be enough but it’s rather annoying not having to my notifications without having to go to the homescreen every time. Yes there are toast notifications but these are transient and permanent notifications often take up valuable screen real estate.

Further to this, one cannot directly access notifications from the lockscreen without swiping up then scrolling then finding the right email inbox/texting app/calendar etc. It’s certainly not impossible to implement, especially as both MeeGo-Harmattan and iOS5 do this in pretty damn decent fashion.

Similarly the system tray with battery indicators, network status and a few other things isn’t always visible in the applications that you’re using. Sure one could argue that seeing such things isn’t necessary all the time and they certainly take up useful real estate but making them more accessible is certainly preferred.

Roll better notifications and system tray into the improved volume control setup (which is both a transient UI element AND readily accessible) and users will thank you.

USB mass storage mode:

While the implementation of this feature would very much depend on OEM’s writing the right drivers etc for this, make it an option please, even if it means creating a minor partition in the NAND memory and only allocating that to non-.xap/.exe files. It’s quite a useful feature on Android and Symbian devices and will complement the cloud storage and data accessible everywhere approach you’re currently taking with Skydrive et al.

Video out/Mirroring:

We ALL know it can be done, we’ve seen you guys do it in demos while on stage, make it happen for us. And while we’re on the subject, getting screen caps on this OS is bloody hard. Can’t imagine that making a little utility for us that doesn’t necessitate installing the SDK and/or taking pictures of the screen with other devices or hacks

Multitasking UI and paradigm

I would very much like if I could see more than 5 of my most recent applications at any one time in the app-switching UI, even if the default is set to 5 for most users, the option to see more would be appreciated. Further to this dismissing which apps show up in this view requires having to jump into the app and tapping the back button idly ‘til the app reaches the default screen and THEN closing it.

Themes:

Self explanatory really

Conclusion: I have eaten the forbidden fruit (Mango) and strangely enough I like it, very much I might add. As an OS with a lineage barely a year from launch and ~18months from its initial announcement at MWC 2010 it’s come on by leaps and bounds to be honest. Is it good enough for me? In spite of it’s limitations I’d have to say unequivocally yes. Is it an OS that I’d recommend to my friends and relatives? In the Mango iteration, absolutely and without hesitation, something I haven’t been able to say about Symbian in quite a few years sadly.

As a standalone OS it works and works well but when connected to the full suite of services it really comes alive and is truly a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the current Marketplace for applications (not that many locales so far), lack of language support for some rather large regions and services like Zune Pass not being available everywhere your experience with Windows Phone can vary wildly.

It is for this very reason that Windows Phones by Nokia will only be launching in very specific regions and only those regions for the time being. The areas that support the full suite of services will get these devices first and all other markets getting the N9 and other Symbian devices.

That made it hard for me to give Mango an accurate numerical rating as the experiences may vary significantly and my rating will not hold true for many prospective buyers. If you’re in a region with full support for all the features offered with the OS and utilise them with the OS, Mango is just shy of a 9/10 whereas not utilising these features and being outside of the fully supported regions would leave it as more of a 7/10 product.

That said, I can honestly tip my hat to Microsoft for building something competitive, easy to use and user-centric in such a short period of time. Will Nokia succeed with this avenue? Who knows,but I’ll say this much, if it doesn’t it’s not because it wasn’t good enough.

Final Score: 8/10

I’ll also be taking questions in the comments, some of which will be added to the this post

Pictures from around the OS

UI Model:

The UI model exists in two z-planes with the application view and the lockscreen occupying one z-plane and the home area occupying the other, lower z-plane.

The lockscreen is always the first screen presented to the user when they unlock the device, either through the power button or the magical double tap gesture and is dismissed by either activating on of the notifications by swiping it, or by swiping the entire screen from the edge of the display to the center.

The Swipe!

The swipe gesture as we’ve all been told is the entire idea! It is the over-riding aspect of the user interface and is the one around which the UI was designed. Swipe from the lockscreen to get to the home area, swipe from one area of the home area such as notifications to get to the applications grid, another swipe to get to the multitasking view.

Nokia have also added the “quick-launch swipe” which after a short swipe up from the bottom of the display, a set of 4 application shortcuts (of your choosing) will be readily available. Even better is that there is supposedly an option to close applications using a swipe from the top of the screen  all the way down. If true, those are VERY nice and VERY intuitive touches.

Although this is not completely confirmed, the touch-surface on the N9 and as a result, the touchscreen controller in the device might use “first-pixel” sensitivity in order to facilitate the swipe gesture (it’s relatively common knowledge that capacitive touchscreens have nigh-dreadful sensitivity at the edges of the display.

Unless Nokia have significantly extended the display past the active area of the display (likely) or have used specialized technology (aforementioned) the swipe gesture would not be possible.

The Lockscreen and Home Area:

The lock screen, nothing overly exciting about it really. Much like the lockscreen on Windows Phone 7 and iOS shows the time and any notifications, the date and anything else of import. Unlike Windows Phone (to my chagrin) and much like iOS5, The N9 UI displays detailed information on notifications and allows users to go directly from the lockscreen to address the notification of their choice. It’s something so obvious that I simply cannot understand why it hasn’t been done as well before.

A general swipe from the lockscreen, not on any specific notification brings you to either the Home area or the last accessed application.

Home!

The Home area is broken into three main sections, a looped-panorama  if you will  (much like the Maemo 5 homescreens just vertically oriented instead of horizontally). Unlike the Maemo 5 screens however, the idea of free-form widgets holding tons of information is deprecated for the simplicity of an Applications view, an Events view and a “live” grid of your open applications.

Events:

The events area is supposedly where all your notifications and social networking updates will be aggregated. There are both good and bad points to this. Good that I can easily find and view my twitter feed. Bad that the important parts of my twitter feed and Facebook feeds will be buried in an immense scrolling list with no easy jump feature nor a mention that we’ll be able to prioritise the important people in either feed. Will know more about it when I get the chance to test it out but can only see this being used for a cursory glance at the newest information as opposed to a place where I spend much of my time.

The good/great  bit is that tapping on any notification or feed update will take you directly into the application from which the feed was generated. Even better is the fact that all the accounts used to aggregate the information for this events view can all be managed from one centralised settings location. (THANK YOUR RESPECTIVE DEITY!!)

Applications view:

Nothing overly special here, a reorganisable list of your installed applications is what we get, though the ability to create bookmarks and place them in this list, complete with the requisite favicon is a very nice touch indeed. Applications are placed in this list in terms of how recently they’ve been installed, new apps to the bottom, older apps closer to the top. Though you’re free to move em as much as you wanna via a long press on any icon. That long press brings up an “edit” view replete with little “x” marks in the corners of applications which  will uninstall the application or in the case of a bookmark, just remove the shortcut.

Multitasking:

This area is probably where the closest resemblance to good old Maemo 5 lies.  While you won’t be playing and viewing any videos in this view like some people would do on Maemo 5 (just to brag really), the applications in this view are more or less fully active here. The best example of this being demonstrate is a compass application that updates as the device is turned. Pretty nice that we don’t have to worry about apps not resuming in timely fashion or running when we want ‘em to but let’s hope devs are judicious in when and how these are run. The battery in the N9 ain’t huge guys (Please go easy on it!). Let’s hope that things like the camera won’t be kept/left running indefinitely, (can you say dead battery?), some of us forget to shut these things down in the heat of the moment. Unlike pretty much every implementation of  ”cards” or “live-views” the N9 allows us to switch between the larger view of a smaller number of applications or a smaller view of more applications, all accessible by a pinch-to-zoom gesture . Nice touch eh?

Apps can also be closed via a long press with the option to close applications one by one or close all. Nokia really appealing to the power/tech-savvy users with all of this.

Status Bar:

Occupying the top 45 pixels on the display in all but full screen applications (mostly media-related ones for obvious reasons) is the Android-esque status bar. Much like Maemo 5 it gives access to quick toggles for bluetooth and WiFi, the ability to change ring-type (vibrate etc), media volume, your Facebook and other cloud services status and information on pending downloads and all the other fun stuff we’ve come to expect at the very tops of our screens. No information on whether things like battery percentages and estimated active usage time will make the cut before release but those are things I’d hope to see make it. In any case, it’s a worthwhile “feature” to include in this next iteration.

Wrap-up:

MeeGo-Harmattan is one of the most colourful, beautiful and most functional (from all indications of course) Operating Systems I’ve ever laid eyes on. It is truly the spiritual successor to Maemo 5 and lives up to and exceeds expectations (not just ours) and it’s painful to think how much better life could have been if this could have been completed by end of 2010. None of us here would know much about or care for Windows Phone 7, though both it and MeeGo-Harmattan do share some of the same design philosophies (head-up, user-centric, unique design, different interaction paradigm, emphasis on swipe gesture).

There’s so much I’ve left out already, including the keyboards(language switches on the fly!) , application updating (without going into the Ovi Store app I might add), the Maemo 5-esque integration with cloud services (Flickr, Gtalk, SIP, Picasa, Facebook with chat, MfE the whole lot) and tons of other little touches that are described in the developer documentation but suffice it to say that there’s going to be lot of talk around this device when it launches and clearly a bit more of a disruption of the current dichotomy dominating the mobile landscape.

I beg, nay, BESEECH Nokia to give serious consideration as to the feasibility of keeping this platform around even if it means minimal devices per year. Windows Phone can be your Android, Nokia; ubiquitous, popular with devs and users but not quite as open as pure Linux or as capable due to intrinsic limitations of the software environments of both. MeeGo-Harmattan (even if you develop it yourselves) could be the antithesis to Apple’s approach yet equally (if not more so) beautiful, user-friendly AND functional.

1 device a year Nokia, replete with a major OS update every 12 months with small bug-fixes in between and you’ll be making a lot of people happy, myself included.

If you haven’t seen already the videos of the N9 in action, not only is there clearly something wrong with you, but you should probably hit up our nigh-hundred of other posts on the device!

Sources:

Developer.Nokia.com

MichaelxHell

The more astute among you may notice that the “MeeGo” mentioned in the title is placed in quotes. That’s something I’ll get to a little later but first let’s address a few important points from my last editorial. Many of you mentioned that Nokia had a great ecosystem before the deal with Microsoft and that joining a dying ecosystem with no marketshare made no sense. Fair, Microsoft’s marketshare is on the decline but so is Nokia’s, along with decreasing profits and outlook, “strong” ecosystem or not. Others commented that Nokia had already embarked on a relationship with Intel in order to create the open-source OS called MeeGo which would be used across a myriad of consumer electronics devices. That’s nice and all, but we’ve yet to see any deliverable product from that there venture. Further to the point, the “MeeGo” we see now is not even MeeGo in the literal sense!!! The MeeGo running on the N9 is from all indications Harmattan at the core with a MeeGo-ish UI and API compatibility slapped on. Might be a big part of the reason why media and assets from Nokia CONSTANTLY mention Harmattan when describing the OS. Given that Harmattan is, more or less proprietary with the use of upstream components, the open-source nuts should probably quit criticising other “closed” ecosystems so much.

Further to this,Intel specifically promised mobile-ready chips by the end of 2010, amongst other things that I’m sure Nokia were promised or assured of prior to signing this agreement. We’re now halfway through 2011 and we’ve yet to see anything of the sort. If anything, ARM is starting to creep into the lower spectrum of Intel’s space and with greater support for ARM architecture by the largest OS on the market, they may begin to cede parts of their market they’d rather not lose.

So let’s set this straight, the N9 ain’t running the Open Source, Intel co-developed MeeGo for handsets and the only reason the MeeGo branding can be used in the first place is because of the “similarities” between the Harmattan API and the MeeGo API. Furthermore, Harmattan uses a very substantial UI framwork layer called MeeGo Touch whereas the MeeGo being developed with Intel does NOT and instead relies on Qt Quick for the UI framework.

PS. The UI that’s running on top of the N9 isn’t open source either by the way.

So now that that’s out of the way, we get to the meat of the matter. If MeeGo Harmattan isn’t really MeeGo as some of ‘us’ would like to think and the two use more or less incompatible UI frameworks then further development on this “MeeGo”-Harmattan, especially when future versions of the Open Source, Intel co-developed MeeGo don’t use this framework don’t make any sense. Cue Stephen Elop’s comments mirroring this exact point. In essence Harmattan  won’t be developed much further than the current state.

The craziest thing though is that MeeGo itself isn’t important! The things that supposedly make MeeGo the best thing since sliced bread (it’s certainly the best thing out of Finland since Linux — I kid!!) are the same things that make the UI, UX, Applications and designs and performance platform-INDEPENDENT. The best things, the most important things about the MeeGo experience are all possible due to Qt! The same cross-platform development and UI framework is the reason all of this is impressive in the first place.

In essence the MeeGo experience isn’t all really due to MeeGo (though the Linux kernel probably plays a sizeable role) but due to the capabilities of Qt and good design. Which is all more or less portable to platforms of Nokia’s choice! What’s even more awesome is that not only will Qt continue to support Symbian (for the short time it will exist post 2012) but it will move on to support Nokia’s largest platform.  And there have been rumblings that there are big things on the Horizon on that front.

I guess the key takeaway (this is definitely aimed at the TL;DR folks) is that whether or not MeeGo succeeds, while relevant is not the be all and end all. Whether Qt succeeds on the other hand, is the crux of Nokia’s strategies moving forward. I’ll leave you with Attila Csipa’s tweet

“Repeat after me: the N9′s ecosystem is #Qt. It’s not one of the kind. It’s the kind that can share software with 100M+ devices”

Now a lot of people took offense to my post about MeeGo, with quite a few saying that I was a Microsoft shill, Windows Phone fanboy, hated open source, a goon, know nothing about Open Source and quite a few other things that by and large demonstrated that they completely missed the point.

Let me make this clear, as a standalone device, in terms of what I’ve seen of the User eXperience and the hardware, I’d be hard-pressed to find a compelling reason to avoid the N9.

I haven’t been more impressed by a Nokia since the N95 and certainly not as impressed by a Nokia-made user experience since I first laid eyes on Maemo but I’m concerned about putting my very skint supply of money on the line for a device that will not give me what I want.

Stephen Elop’s spiel on ecosystems goes a lot deeper than application stores, something that is quickly (and incorrectly) becoming the colloquial definition of an ecosystem. Let’s take a  quick look at mobile landscape now, Apple dominating the revenues and Google dominating the numbers, Nokia on their own trying to keep up with Google and simultaneously ceding revenue to Apple. As a for-profit company, that is bad, very bad, especially as margins continue to decrease. So why is it that Nokia can’t succeed where Google and Apple both have? It’s tied almost certainly to having unique selling points and a solid ecosystem. The significance of each is this, unique selling points draw customers to your devices and platform, a solid ecosystem and in some cases, vendor lock-in reduces churn (the constant moving of customers to and from your platform). Apple’s unique selling point when they first launched was the capacitive touchscreen and large (for the time screen) coupled with a user interface made for fingers and not styli. There was little else at the time and nearly everything else about the device was mediocre. They then started courting developers and getting people locked into their “ecosystem” storing, purchasing and managing their music both on device and on their PC’s using iTunes (which was the only way to get music etc on the device) and the lock-in was complete; for a time.

Seeing what Apple had done, all and sundry rushed to produce their own copy of the iPhone and while quite a few were more impressive hardware-wise none had unique selling points and none had a way to reduce churn. They all failed in one way or another. Apple subsequently added an application store, a great developer platform and added yet another unique selling point to their portfolio. Further, by using their own development environment, developers and consumers alike were even more locked in. No churn for Apple, just growth. Since then, the ball has just been gaining velocity as it sped downhill.

Google took a somewhat different approach, by claiming to be open and free to hardware manufacturers down on their luck, they managed to garner a boatload of support even though their initial offering was pitiful at best. They then built an ecosystem with component and SOC manufacturers where all Google would have to do is fix the looks and functionality in their little virtual machine environment and the SOC manufacturers would adapt it for the myriad of different chipsets that would be used by the myriad of Android manufacturers. This kept costs even lower for would-be  Android manufacturers and spurred even greater adoption of the platform. Coupled with better integration of burgeoning Google services and Google’s own proprietary (and very much ad-supported) developer offerings, they’d achieved more or less their own form of lock-in. As they continued to improve their user experience they fed growth while reducing churn.

NB: It should be noted that while Android source is free, access to mapping,mail, and market access is CERTAINLY not and must be licensed upon meeting certain fluid criteria laid out by the Android head honcho over at Google

RIM on the other hand had little to lock consumers in but BBM and a pitiful application platform while user experience literally rotted away. Sure they’ve had growth but relatively speaking, massive churn.

Symbian had frugality, price advantages and a relatively solid core but with little unique selling points outside of Nokia’s own hardware, it was left in a rather tough spot and we’re seeing the obvious effects of that churn.

One other aspect that I neglected to mention outright is the role of carriers in facilitating or hampering the growth and churn of specific software platforms. This is something I’ve covered in another editorial.

So let’s do a quick summary shall we. In order to be really successful in the current mobile landscape you need the following:-

1. A unique selling point either in terms of hardware or software running on a specific platform

2. A good user experience that is facilitated by:-

3. A good developer environment that allows extension of the devices capabilities

4. Support from component manufacturers for your software platform of choice

5. Support from mobile operators (I vomit a little in my mouth at the thought)

6. Rapid improvement and innovation of your platform of choice or other methods of enticing users to stay with your platform (BBM, Application stores, Google services all good examples of this)

Strangely enough, this seemingly unrelated points are the key pillars of a good mobile ecosystem. Hate it or love it, that’s the way the industry has been for the past 2-3 years. Sound familiar? From all we’ve seen in the past few years any one of these pillars being absent has/will result in abject failure. While I have my own thoughts on whether certain decisions were correct as things stand, I’ll judge in 12 month’s time

If there’s one thing that Nokia has always played a big role in, it’s promoting the practice of buying unsubsidized devices and paying lower (sometimes much lower) monthly prices to your mobile carrier. In the United States (where I’m based) this practice is practically non-existent not just because it’s not a widely publicised avenue of mobile purchase and usage, but because the nigh-evil carriers here don’t offer lowered pricing plans even when you bring your own device. This practice is apparently spreading into developed and developing countries with increasing prevalence, giving carriers even more power in terms of which devices operate on their networks. This leaves newcomers at a bit of a disadvantage compared to the incumbents or more powerful competitors in the space.

We’ve all heard reports of certain Nokia devices being pulled from potential shelves at the whims of the carriers, or certain tethering applications being torn from application marketplaces, carrier representatives actively pushing customers away from devices running a specific OS, even when customers specifically ask for and justify their purchasing desires and much more. The obvious takeaway is that mobile operators no longer operate as utilities, offering the best packages, services and value for money in attempts to differentiate. No, mobile operators are the gate-keepers to the castle and us consumers are the treasure that the manufacturers wish to access. The thing is, the operators can do nothing without the manufacturers and vice versa but the operators have been taking a decidedly heavier hand to matters in recent years.

If a device offers a feature that competes with the operators in any reasonable way, it is scrapped or hampered, if the device gives users the opportunity to remove or work around the crappy software operators try to bundle like GPS navigation etc. (I say crappy because the implementation is invariably terrible) that ability is hindered. If users wish to download applications from a source that operators don’t get a cut from, the situation becomes rather similar for consumers this is terrible, in essence there’s only one body or group that decides what you use, how you use it & when you use it rather than consumer choice. It’s madness I tell you. Nokia have had a tendency in the past to more or less flip-off the operators and giving the users the choice as to whether they used a certain feature or not. Symbian to an extent with it’s side-loading prowess and developer community and Maemo with the (encouraged!) hacking prowess of it’s fans are definitely notable examples of just such a tendency. Recent trends however have served to stymie that practice. More and more phones, especially in developed countries are beginning to be sold subsidized by operators and the operators are growing increasingly powerful in determining whether a device is successful or not.

Google and operators both in the US, Europe and  increasingly in other large smartphone markets have really bedded in with one another especially with the previously weaker OEM’s more willing to make functionality concessions at the behest of operators. The end result is a shafted Nokia with few competitive products and no OEM’s to support them. Worse still, even when they do get decent products out of the gate, who’s to say that operators will even provide their support with decent pricing, tariffs and or marketing support.

One key takeaway from the partnership with Microsoft and a point reiterated time and again by  Elop, Ballmer and a number of other members of the Windows Phone “consortium” is that they’re in very close contact with operators who are all having a big say in what flies and what doesn’t. While that may be good for Nokia’s bottom line, I hold a general mistrust and disdain for the way mobile operators handle business and I can’t imagine their interference being much good for us end users.

In any case I’ll be keeping a very close eye on the renewed relationship between Nokia and the mobile operators as Nokia transition to their new path. What do you think, does Nokia’s increasingly good relations with carriers bode well for us end-users?

According to a crudely translated (darn you Google translate) press release by the carrier “3″, Sweden will be getting their hands on the N9 as far away as September 23rd. Here’s to hoping it’s released in its unlocked form and out with other carriers about a month or so prior eh Nokia? And how about sending one my way for good measure

Via MyNewsDesk

A new season?

After seeing MeeGo, and knowing full well that Windows Phone will eventually occupy the niche that Symbian (especially Symbian^3) inhabits coupled with the fact that S40 is now being given the Qt goodness, one has to wonder what Symbian’s place in the grand scheme of things is. Stephen Elop stated proudly at Nokia Connection that 10 new Symbian devices would be coming in the next year (I’d imagine that they’re all Symbian^3) and while that will likely increase the target market for developers coding in Qt S40 could serve that purpose just as well. Symbian Belle doesn’t even have an arrival date and anyone likely interested in that would certainly be eyeing and weighing up one those new-fangled N9′s.

So MeeGo for the high-end and enthusiasts means Symbian no longer fits there, S40 is slowly creeping up into the lower-midrange space and with Qt integration on the way it’ll not be long before they take over the realm that S^1 used to control and a region low-cost Android’s are invading leaving just the upper mid-range. Sadly, Symbian no longer dominates this area as more and more users switch to the iOS and Android ecosystems and hardware manufacturers continue to step their efforts up on that front. It also doesn’t help that as a mid-range, non-bleeding-edge solution Windows Phone will bring 80% of the functionality of Symbian with  150% the user experience and an increasingly worthwhile ecosystem.

My Perfect Scenario for Nokia (consumer perspective)

In my perfect little world, Nokia would put resources behind MeeGo as a skunkworks/concept car type of development to showcase the best and brightest of the technologies and ideas at Nokia. This would give Nokia a name, an identity as producing the best available hardware and software and certainly directing where the mobile industry goes just as Apple helped direct the touchscreen paradigm. Other manufacturers may adopt technologies that Nokia pioneers if it’s done well enough leading to benefits for Nokia in the long run re: patents and royalties. A device based on MeeGo or in a similar vein of development would be released once a year.

In addition, Symbian development would continue to the Belle stage but there would not be another Symbian device announced or demo-ed after Q3 2012 (even that is being generous IMO). Support would likely continue in a rudimentary fashion but it’d be more or less EOL-ed.

Windows Phone would move into the middle -to – upper range of what is now Symbian territory at least for the next 2-3 years while Nokia builds their next big thing to conquer what will likely be a very different market.

S40 will keep doing it’s little thing in emerging markets and as a start for a vertically integrated Nokia solution.

What do you think? Sound off in the poll and comments below.