Unwired View's Nokia World 2009 Preview ...
>> NW09: Nokia World Preview
Part 1: Things officially (pre)announced
Unwired View
August 31, 2009
tinyurl.com
It’s just a couple of days left until the biggest Nokia event of the year – Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart.
I am really looking forward to it, and hope Nokia will have at least some of the devices it recently announced accessible for us to play with.
But before I start packing my bags for Stuttgart, I’d like to go through all the official announcements, leaks and rumors, to have a better idea of what to expect at Nokia World, and the questions to look answers for from all Nokia staff there.
So let’s go through what we know and what was already officially announced, highly believable leaks and rumors, and wild assed speculation floating around the net and also in my head.
Things Nokia pre-announced for Nokia World 09
Contrary to our experience with all previous Nokia Worlds, this year there were a shockingly high number of the official (pre) announcements of various devices and services to be launched, demoed in Stuttgart.
Was that because of Nokia’s inability to contain the leaks about stuff they’ve been prepping for NW09? Did they decide to generate early hype and forgo the surprise effect, especially with IFA Berlin product announcements starting the same day as Nokia’s show? Or do they have something even more interesting and exciting in store for us? I have no idea, but I guess we will have the answer in a couple of days.
Be it as it may, one thing’s for certain, even from the official announcements. Nokia is finished taking all those pot shots from geeky bloggers, analysts and tech media about how it lost it’s mojo and is fading into irrelevance, unable to produce anything interesting to the market and will soon be replaced by a combination of Apple/ RIM/Android stuff. And Nokia is coming out swinging.
Let’s take a look at the official announcements.
Nokia N900 Maemo 5 Mobile Computer
Nokia N900 is probably the most significant device announcement of Nokia World 09’. It not only introduces the new full touchscreen device that, by the accounts of the people who tried it, will give a run for the money to any high end touchscreen competitor out there.
It also launches the next generation Linux (not Linux based) platform/OS for mobile devices –Maemo – which, from what I’m hearing, is the first to really start bridging the gap between portable computers and mobile devices.
Nokia itself is touting “desktop experience” on mobile device. And, from what I hear, Maemo might be able to run native PC Linux applications with very little tweaking, which sounds very interesting to me. I’m not sure how that works, how much tweaking is required, but I’ll surely be finding that out. As well as what does it really mean when people say “Maemo is real Linux OS” vs something like Android, which “only is Linux based OS” .
So yes, despite tons of info that was already revealed about Nokia N900, I still have some questions. But most of all, I just want to get my hands on it and play with it for a while.
Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook
Nokia is trying to position it’s newly pre-announced Booklet 3G as something special from mobile world, created for Windows PC users. But unless there really are some new, genuinely surprising Nokia features in the new Booklet, let’s call a spade a spade.
Nokia Booklet 3G is a netbook. Nothing more. Nothing less. Well designed, highly specc’ed netbook, that comes with some standard Nokia PC software pre-installed.
From all the hints by Nokia execs and leaks from third parties, it seems that Nokia Booklet 3G is Nokia’s bid to cash in on the current netboook craze, using it’s extensive carrier relations and strong brand among consumers.
Even Nokia’s VP admitted that a netbooks from Nokia is a “tactical opportunity” in a new high demand market. And that this direction “is not strategic” to Nokia. I detailed my views on Nokia Booklet 3G here.
It would be interesting to get all the details about price, specs and Nokia service integration in Booklet 3G, at Nokia World. I will be looking to find out more about how much of Booklet 3G product is really Nokia, and how much of it is Wintel/Chinese ODM.
Also, I would like to get Nokia to comment on that “tactical, not strategic opportunity” approach to netbook market. But I’m not getting my hopes up on this one. It’s one thing for Nokia exec to comment about some hypotetical project, and another thing to dismiss it at launch.
Another interesting thing would be to find out how Nokia netbooks might look in a few years. The main reason of going with Wintel for Booklet 3G, is that it looks familiar and is able to run all the traditional PC applications.
But if Maemo is really bridging the gap between PC and mobile, PC Linux applications are easily ported to run on Maemo, and it becomes true desktop like experience for average user, isn’t there an inevitable clash between the Booklet and N900 type of devices?
If there is, my bet is that Nokia Wintel product line would be a rather shortlived phenomenon, with Maemo based netbook type devices (10”+ screen, normal QWERTY keyboard, etc;) taking their place in the next 3-5 years. I doubt that anyone at Nokia would be very open on these issues, but I’ll see what I can wheedle out between the lines.
Nokia 5230 Cheap Touchscreen Handset
Well, nothing much to talk about here. At the price of 149 EUR before taxes, Nokia XM 5530 is the cheapest full touch screen smartphone in the market.
Nokia continues it’s assault on a cheap touchscreen smartphone category with, for now, the only touch smartphone priced at 150 EUR. Given the fact that it also has the only full touch smartphones at below 280 EUR (5800 XM) and below EUR 200 (5530 XM) price points, Nokia’s cheap touch handset line-up looks pretty strong. It also does not seem to have any competition at the moment.
On the other other hand, at those prices, how many people care whether your full touch is a smartphone or a dumb phone? It’s all about coolness, touch UI and usability. And with the phones like Star, Preston and Corby, plus Touchwiz UI, that now is open for developers, Samsung seems to be as ready as they come to stand up to Finns.
So it would be interesting to see what Nokia has up it’s sleeve for a slugging mach in a cheap touch phone arena
Nokia Money
While not generating as much attention as e.g. N900, Nokia Money is potentially the biggest thing that Nokia is launching at Nokia World 09’.
IntoMobile’s Stefan has a very good take on why Nokia getting into financial service biz can be big, really big. If you want to know it too, get over there and read this post ...
intomobile.com
I myself haven’t really thought much about it yet, so #nw09 [Twitter] will be a good place to find out what Nokia is really up to with this thing.
That’s about it with the official info from Nokia.
Part 2: Trustworthy Leaks, Rumors and Wild Speculations
Unwired View
September 1, 2009
tinyurl.com
In the first part of Nokia World 09’ preview we talked about the things Nokia has already officially pre-announced for the event. There were surprisingly many of them.
And then we have rumors. There were great many of them too, this past month. So many, in fact, that it looks like Nokia did not have a choice, but to go and pre-announce some rumored devices as real products. Without waiting for the start of Nokia World.
So are the things Nokia already announced all, that we will see in Stuttgart?
No. Not even close. If at least part of the rumors floating around come true, there’s much more interesting stuff to come at Nokia World on Wednesday and Tuesday.
Let’s look into them and see which ones are believable and which ones are not.
Rumors and leaks I believe are true
While they say that there is a kernel of truth to every rumor, these days this is certainly not the case. Many of them are just prank’s made because of too much idle time on someone’s hands, others are fabrications and linkbaiting stunts, even more of them – just a wishful thinking of company fanboys.
Still, it’s our job to sift through them and use our experience to figure out which ones can be true and which ones are not. I’ll try to do that for Nokia World 09’ preview, and will start from the most believable ones.
Nokia N97 Mini
Well, this one has bean leaked so many times, from so many different places and in so many ways, that I’m 99% (Nokia can always change their mind no matter what) sure that Nokia N97 Mini announcement at Nokia World is imminent.
Nokia N97 Mini is basically the same, if a bit smaller and cheaper version as the original N97.
In the development process, Nokia N97 Mini lost the D-pad on QWERTY keyboard and about 1 cm in length, got a smaller, 3.2” display, only 8GB of built-in memory and should be about 100 Euro cheaper then it’s progenitor.
After an extensive preview of Nokia N97 Mini appeared on the net, a lot of people were pretty quick to dismiss the new handset out of hand. With an argument that goes something like this: “Nokia N97 already was a crappy phone with a crappy keyboard. Now you made the keyboard even even crappier, reduced display size and reduced available memory? Someone should be fired over this!”
Well, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Nokia N97 Mini. Most of the complaints I heard about it, come from the buggy firmware and too little available app memory.
And, even with these problems, plus a pretty steep price, the original Nokia N97 has been selling quite well. 500K units sold in the first month of sales, is nothing to sneeze at for a device in 600 Euro price range.
If, after a year of trying, Nokia is finally able to make the N97 Mini firmware work right, solves app memory issues and offers consumer a pretty similar to N97, but cheaper handset, Nokia N97 Mini might have some surprises for us this holiday season.
I’ll be looking into these things at Nokia world and report back what I find.
Xseries, Cseries and Nokia Naming Scheme Change
We’ve first heard about Nokia Xseries and Cseries when Finnish trademark and patent office revealed that Nokia took out the trademark for these names.
Since then, they’ve been confirmed from several sources, with the official announcement pegged for Nokia World. And it looks that these new series will be part of the major revamp of the way Nokia names it’s phones, we told you about a month ago.
The goal of the revamp of naming schemes of Nokia phones, is to make it easy for consumer to understand which phone does what. And to help him easily identify the upgrade path – i.e to know which phone is the successor of the handset he used and loved these past few years.
Every device will be fitted into one of the series. Each series will get it’s own set of minimal specs, so you can be sure of what you are getting when you buy a certain device. Index numbers after the series letter will denote the class of the device, from low to the high end.
Nokia is keeping Nseries and Eseries pretty much as they are right now and adding least two more – C and X series. Whether that’s it or there’s more, I have no idea.
Xseries are replacing the Xpress line of Nokia entertainment/media phones. The minimal specs for Xseries of devices should include 3.5 mm headphone jack, possibility to connect remote controller, hot-swap memory cards, built-in FM radio and some other stuff that is necessity for the entertainment device.
The minimal specs for Eseries are – Wi-Fi, good e-mail/messaging client, extended synchronization functionality, data encryption, etc; – the stuff a business device can not function without.
The minimal specs for the series will be reviewed and updated every few years.
Ovi Nokia Video Store
Yes, official Nokia Video Store is coming to OVI, just as we told you in April.And it will most likely be announced at Nokia World this week.
More info, and even the possible look of Nokia video store interface has later been leaked in a promo video of some new Nokia touchscreen phone.
No more details about Nokia video store are available for now. But we can look at Nokia Music service for clues of how video offering will work.
More new devices
This has also been confirmed by multiple sources. The devices that have been pre-announced, or had their details leaked before Nokia World, are not all of what we’ll see launched in Stuttgart.
There should be 3 more touchscreen handsets announced in Germany this week, some less firm rumors, bordering on outright speculation also mention some sort of device with extended imaging capabilities.
Anyway, with Xseries and Cseries on the way, and none of the leaked or announced handsets sporting X or C letter in front of them, there’s bound to some new handsets to launch yet.
Although the new Nokia 5230 might end up adding an X somewhere to it’s name. Notice, how carefully Nokia was not using the old XM moniker anywhere in the official PR of 5230. Even though the phone is part of “Comes with Music” offering, and would clearly have been the part of XM line-up a few months ago.
None of these new rumored devices had any details leaked yet, so, Nokia definitely has some surprises in store for us.
Wild Rumors and Speculations
And, of course, what good is a major event from popular company without a flurry of unsubstantiated rumors and wild speculation from company fanboys.
Nokia World 09’ is no exception. Here’s some more interesting of them:
* 12 megapixel imaging phone. Most likely, just a wishful thinking. Nokia just started shipping N86 8MP, the new announcement will strongly and negatively impact it’s sales. I’m pretty sure Nokia is working on a 12 megapixel N86 successor. But I don’t expect that we’ll be seing it before Mobile World Congress 2010, if then.
* 8 megapixel full touchscreen multimedia smartphone. I’ll give this rumor 50% chance of being true. You know, like in it’s 50% chance that it is true, and 50% chance that it isn’t… Frankly, I have no idea. There were some talk about such a device in some places, but nothing I can really trust. Though a high end, full touch multimedia device certainly makes sense for Nokia, complementing it’s low priced full touch offerings.
* Touchscreen device with capacitive display. Well, leaks from several trustworthy sources have indicated that Nokia is working on capacitive touch offering. So I believe that such a device is coming eventually. Whether it will make it to Nokia World, and whether it is one of those 3 full touch handsets we talked about earlier? I have no clue.
* Nokia 5900 Xpress Music. Maybe, maybe not. But even if it is announced, it will not be called Xpress Music. It will be part of the new Xseries.
PS. Just as I was about to hit the “Publish” button, Eldar tweeted this:
Tommorow will be some really cool anouncement on Nokia World :) Think you will be astonished
Another confirmation, that Nokia managed to keep at least one big thing secret, to surprise us at #NW09. Can’t wait to see what it is :) ###
- Eric - |
