Someone get Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo to scream “services, services, services!” a la Steve Ballmer. At Nokia Showcase 2010, execs and designers made it clear that the company thinks its future lies with providing better services. “We want to provide an interesting experience to customers” said Jukka Hosio, Director Services Marketing, Location. “And it’s all about the services we offer through our phones.”

The focus was all on services for the media event, which saw regional media converge on Bangkok at Nokia’s expense. Now new phones were showcased; save for announcements of the N900 and the X6 finally hitting markets in Southeast Asia and the Pacific through official channels, practically no product names escaped the lips of Nokia execs and designers.

And the star attraction was navigation. Nokia wants to maximize its acquisition of Naviteq. The maker is offering Ovi Maps, a complete navigation solution, for free. Starting March 2010, it will come pre-installed on all Nokia phones equipped with GPS hardware, and is available to existing users as a download through nokia.com/maps. Nokia wants everyone to know that they’ve optimized their map app for the mobile experience, citing data consumption that’s 1/10 of Google Maps’.

What About the Hardware?

Through presentations and scheduled interviews, Nokia painted a pretty good picture of Ovi Maps—which included highlighting favorable reactions of the software from established publications like Gizmodo and CNET. But does this mean the maker will forget about the other important aspect of building a good mobile phone, the hardware?

Nokia has always released reasonably-priced phones complete with features. But its traditional reliance on underpowered hardware has hamstrung the end-user experience. Competing devices, even those that are more expensive while featuring less functionality, have stolen some thunder by being more responsive and powerful hardware-wise.

Quick tests of Ovi Maps on the N97 make the potential of the app clear. It not only allows navigation via driving, but walking as well. And with Naviteq painstakingly compiling map info through teams that scour the globe, the number of countries supported (currently 74) is set to grow. Unfortunately, the overall sluggishness of the app—on one of Nokia’s most powerful phones—made it a chore to use.

Getting Things Right

If the N900 is any indication, Nokia is at least aware of this problem. The Maemo-powered phone not only features comprehensive functionality, it’s powerful and extremely responsive. Nokia is also set to release Symbian^3, a new version of the software used to drive most of its phones. It promises a more responsive—if somewhat similar to competitors—user-interface.

While working on this however, Nokia also wants to offer more options to its customers. Aside from the potential opportunities made possible by mapping services, there are plans to offer a more customizable user-interface. Again similar to what’s already available from competitors, users will be able create multiple home screens and customize it in any way possible. To paraphrase Nikki Barton, Head of Digital Design, the plan is to keep things simple but make more versatility and complexity easily available to users who want them.

And what about the common criticism that Nokia’s wide range of models complicates things for developers, by requiring them to develop for different devices with different capabilities? Vice President of Sales in Southeast Asia Pacific Chris Parr assures that a “layer” will help abstract everything for programmers, so that what they develop will work properly on different Nokia phones. Maybe we can get Mr. Parr to scream “developers, developers, developers”? Both sound hard to pull off, but let’s see.

Let’s See Indeed!

In fact, let’s see how quickly Nokia can implement its plans and promises. It’s hard to change the limitations of hardware that’s already out on the market, so let’s see if future Nokia models have enough power to provide a more user-friendly experience and fulfill the company’s vision of appealing phones with relevant services.

Save for Ovi Maps—which they are rightfully highlighting as a competitive advantage—Nokia is clearly playing catch-up to its competitors. Even the promise of Symbian^3 is more a statement of fulfilling market expectations, instead of coming up with something genuinely new. But for the world smartphone leader, merely catching up is enough to retain its dominance.

Nokia has professed an all-inclusive and customer-friendly stance. They want to give their users a more responsive yet comprehensive experience, and they’ve endlessly highlighted how they are making it easier for developers to create apps for Nokia phones. But, will these statements lead to real results? And most importantly, how will the market respond?

Post from: The Gadget Blog

On Technograph, my review of the N97 mini was relatively short, as the phone provides practically the same experience as the N97—with one key shortcoming. To summarize: while the mini has less built-in memory than fits predecessor, it’s better constructed, is more responsive, and easier to type on. And let’s not forget that the N97 mini is cheaper than the original N97, and is more compact.

Unfortunately, the N97 mini’s battery is simply too weak for a high-end phone. It’s nowhere near the hilariously short battery lifespan of the original N95, but the 1200mAh BL-4D simply doesn’t provide enough juice to use the phone for an appreciable amount of time. The N97 mini will require daily recharging, especially for power users. 1200mAh is plenty to be sure, but it seems like the phone is less frugal with power.

This drawback is glaring enough that I’d actually like Nokia to come out with the N97 mini 2 as soon as possible, the top priority of this desired project figuring out how to cram the N97’s 1500mAh BP-4L battery into the mini’s handier form factor—while still keeping the complete feature set that made the N97 a winner in my book, and the slight tweaks that makes the N97 mini better than the original.

As for new N97 mini owners, keep your fingers crossed. Let’s hope this phone reaches critical mass, enough for third-party suppliers or Nokia itself to come out with an extended battery kit, complete with a bulging backplate necessary to cover such a power pack’s necessarily increased thickness.

In any case, the Nokia N97 mini is available from Buy.com and NewEgg.com:

From Buy.Com ($500)

NewEgg.com ($480)

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Oh, Nokia N97. I wanted to touch you from the first time I laid eyes on you. You seemed like everything I wanted in a handset. You’d be the phone that surmounted the shortcomings of every smartphone before it. You were to be the mobile masterpiece. At least, I thought you were.

I’ve had the Nokia N97 for roughly 3 weeks now. Usually, we push out our reviews after just a week or so with the device – but I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and review this one. Why? Because I thought I was missing something. There just had to be something I was overlooking – some setting, some application, just something that would earn this handset its pre-allotted spot in my pocket.

I wasn’t missing anything.