But this?!

The last few weeks have been nothing but a hell hole for me, and I can only imagine it being thousands of folds worse for Nokia employees and managers. Their share is dripping, analysts and fans are out pointing fingers at Elop and Windows Phone demanding yet another strategic change, there are hundreds of rumors everyday about someone wanting to buy them out. I’m pretty sure tomorrow I will read a rumor about the Falafel stand near my house bidding for the Smartphone division of Nokia, and some idiots will spread that until it makes the headline of the New York Times!

It is ri.di.cu.lous.

Grab your nearest North American / Western Hemisphere analyst and smack him a few times. Tell him “nothing has happened yet, stop spreading the rumors”. It’s as if to show how knowledgeable they are, they search for the sleaziest possible thing to say about the company and publish it. Didn’t your momma teach you that kicking a man when he’s down is cowardly and irrespective? I refuse to take part in bullying a weakened boy, and so should you. What baffles me is how fast these spread, from fans and haters alike, as if bashing Nokia is the new cool thing to do. Not to say that some of the articles aren’t honest and legit, there are ones, but the majority is silly speculation that is only serving to drag the company lower.

You love Nokia? You want the best for them? Stop talking about them.

Give them a break. Forget they exist. Let them paddle through the mud of whatever hole they dragged themselves into, let them do it alone, they are big boys. Forget their current products, forget their promised software updates, forget the latest and cutest Qt application that has been released. None of this matters. Not now. Not in the big scheme of things, anyway. Overcome your urge to try to help them by promoting any of these because it will only serve to fuel the fire of the haters, “a new application for Symbian, wait, isn’t it dead?” “as if Anna can raise a dead corpse!” “yes the E6 is cool, but Symbian? oh noes!” And that in turn fuels the analysts. Which fuels the share drop. Which fuels more rumors and rumor denials. Which fuels more public hatred.

Just stop.

Have a break, have a KitKat. Seriously.

Just like there are 5 stages of mourning, there are 5 steps to understanding Nokia’s situation now. Make sure you go through them all:

• Symbian is gone, which is a shame, really, because as I have said numerous times before: “there is nothing inherently wrong with Symbian”. It needed a facelift, an ecosystem for developer enthusiasm, and some nifty modern functions like cloud integration and sharing and notifications. But by the time Nokia noticed that, Symbian already had a bad aura around it, not because of me or you who know it all too well, but because of those who tried it and expected it to be something else. There was no going back for Symbian.
• Qt doesn’t matter. Right now, if you pick a Symbian phone, you will find a Twitter application for it, a Facebook app, Read It Later, Google Reader, Dropbox, Gmail, LinkedIn, Foursquare… most of which are written in Qt. And they are surprisingly beautiful and blazingly fast. Except all of these are either made by independent developers or Nokia themselves, not the original company. THIS is why Symbian and Qt had to die. Because no one except the fans was willing to work on it. And the fans don’t have multi-million ventures to their name. And the multi-million ventures weren’t fans. Sad story.
• Nokia’s only strategic mistake was this: they noticed Symbian needed drastic changes too late. It wasn’t killing Symbian, nor the Microsoft alliance, nor the dismissal of Android, nor the hiring of Elop. Those all were decisions made because of the mistake. And the mistake was that.
• Windows Phone + Nokia is a brilliant vision: I will keep saying it. Windows Phone gives me the hope to think that I will purchase a Nokia branded device with my own money and be completely confident with my purchase. Not because of it being a third wheel to the Apples and Androids of the world, but because of it finally offering a continuum of mobility and convergence as I have always wanted it to be. And I say this as someone who feels like poking my eye with a fork every time I am compelled to use a Microsoft Windows computer.
• The profit share, market share, and mind share loss was expected, maybe not in the numbers we are seeing now (thank you again silly people), but it was expected. And it was “wanted”. For the new order to rise, the old order had to fall, and while we wait for the rise to take place, we are only seeing the fall. It’s a free fall, yes. And as with gravity, the more you fall, the faster you fall. It’s physics, and it’s poetically similar.

So yes, all of these, they are certainties. Nothing anyone says, nothing anyone does, will change any of them.

What the words and rumors can change is how fast and how well Nokia rebounds.

Keep on pushing them and they will push an unfinished product. Keep on asking them for another strategy change and you will reduce their credibility and end up with another “transition year”, God knows we’ve had enough of those! Keep on criticizing Elop and fueling rumors, and he will have to spend less time picking up the pieces and more time responding to the silliness abound.

Nokia is still Nokia.

With its scarily good logistics management, infinite Asian and African popularity, incredibly awesome hardware builds, amazing camera optics (EDoF aside, what a joke!) and insanely good all-encompassing mapping software, Nokia is still Nokia. They have the means to get back, they have the will to get back, but you are only making it impossible for them to do it. Which brings me back to my first idea.

If you love Nokia, for the love of God, give them a break.

And now that it’s said, I will go back to my radio silence.

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Engadget reached out to Yong Zhang and discovered that his Android Publisher account has also been closed, a sign that Google is cracking down on these emulators, likely due to pressure from Sega, Nintendo, and others. To use these emulators, you often need to use illegal methods to find the ROM of the game that you’re wanting to play. To be honest, the gaming companies are totally in their rights to request these emulators be taken down. However, that’s not the problem.

The problem is that smartphone owners realize that the phone in their pocket is typically more powerful than the gaming console they used to have on their entertainment center in their livingroom. We’re a nostalgic people, and thus we want to use our phone’s power to enjoy some old-school video games. The problem is, the gaming companies like Sega, Nintendo, etc, haven’t recognize this, and haven’t built their own emulators for consumers to use.

Of course, Sega and Nintendo would rather you buy one of the current portable gaming systems and then stock up on games, but those don’t often have the old games that we grew up with available. I’ve been playing Boogerman on my T-Mobile G2 using Gensoid for several months now. It’s just like having a Sega Genesis console in my phone – I can even map the buttons on the G2′s hardware QWERTY keyboard so I don’t have to use onscreen controls.

I wonder how much revenue Nintendo could create if they built a business around emulating their old discontinued products? How much more could they endear consumers to their brands and characters like Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario if they made original, out of print games available on our smartphones?

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I have an HTC HD7 – a Windows Phone 7 device for T-Mobile’s network. It’s a decent phone, and the OS has some promise now that Nokia is behind it. Microsoft recently (through the carriers, natch) released a software update, nicknamed ‘NoDo’, for my HD7. What’s better, I even got a handy-dandy popup on my phone’s screen to let me know that the update is available. Awesome.

Unfortunately, the notification simply told me the update was available and that I would need to connect my phone to my PC in order to complete the update. Even worse, I also had to install Microsoft’s Zune media software on my laptop in order to stumble through this software update. Kid you not.

So, today’s smartphones are increasingly marketed as a PC replacement. In fact, when Steve Jobs announced the iPad 2 recently, he now-famously said we had entered into the ‘Post-PC’ era. That’s all well and good until you realize that his iPad (as well as the iPhone) has to be connected to a PC in order to be activated for the very first use. You also must connect your iDevice to a PC in order to update the software, which happens roughly every 6 months or so.

On Nokia’s recent Symbian-powered smartphones, such as the N8, you can actually update the firmware over the air, as it should be. Unfortunately, you can’t do *all* updates over the air. There are a number of extras – free games, etc – that are only available when you update the Nokia N8 through Nokia’s craptastic Ovi Suite application (the one that uses 150MB+ of RAM when IDLE!)

Even some Android-powered smartphones (at least the ones from the carriers) often require a PC in order to complete major updates, such as going from Android v2.1 to v2.2. It has been a while since I’ve used a BlackBerry, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they too, require at least minimal PC interaction from time to time.

As smartphones continue to take over the mobile world, I can’t help but wonder if they’re being limited on purpose? I mean, in a world of 4G networks from all corners, it’s really rather silly that the most powerful mobile devices on the planet must still be tethered to their grandparents (if you’ll allow the comparison) in order to improve their functionality.

Even if 4G isn’t the answer (and it probably isn’t), there are markets such as India, Africa, heck, even rural America, where an actual computer simply isn’t available, and a smartphone is someone’s only connection to the rest of the world. Can you seriously tell me that companies as big as Nokia, Microsoft, Apple, and Google can’t figure out how to download a software update and deliver it over the air to the same device? It’s completely absurd.

Don’t believe that there are technical limitations, either. If my smartphone can detect when I’m at work and automatically enable WiFi, connect to my work WiFi network, disable Bluetooth, send a text to my wife, and adjust the ringtone to a more ‘professional’ volume, all without my interaction, then surely it’s no problem for it to update itself without needing assistance.

For those of us with computers, imagine if you had to connect your Windows laptop to another Windows laptop every Tuesday to download all 15 security updates from Microsoft? Linux nerds, what if you had to hunt down another Ubuntu machine just to update your packages? It’s an absurd notion, just as it should be on smartphones, as well.

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Image courtesy of BWR’s Flickr

Google Talk – A Textbook Example Of Seamless Integration

If you own an Android device and use Google Talk on it and on the web interface inside Gmail, you must have seen it, but you probably didn’t notice it. See, I am always online on Google Talk on my phone, but many times during the day, I open Gmail in my web browser and am signed in on Gtalk inside it. With any other service, I would expect double notifications, and a lack of conversation status synchronization between mobile and computer. However this is not the case.

Conversations carry fluidly between web and mobile: what I wrote, what was said back in answer, everything shows in both interfaces. And the beauty of it? I only get notified on the one I am currently using.

Say I am talking to a friend on Gtalk web, but I need to go to the kitchen prepare dinner. I leave my desk, pick up my phone, switch to GTalk and my full conversation is there. I type something. Gtalk knows I now moved to mobile. When I get an answer back, it does NOT notify me on the computer, but on the phone. I keep chatting a bit while preparing my soup, and as I leave it to stew, I go back to my computer. The conversation is there as well, and when I type something there, Gtalk knows I’m back on the web interface, so it stops notifying me of new messages on my phone and starts notifying me on the computer.

How awesome is that? No, really, how friggin awesome is THAT?

Seamless Integration – Future? Present? Somewhere In Between?

This kind of integration and simple transition between devices isn’t new, however. For many years now, we’ve had Push Sync working for email and contacts. Think about Gmail: you get alerted to a new email whenever you receive one, and if you read it on the computer, it gets marked as read on your phone, and vice versa. However, the notifications aren’t “aware” of your whereabouts so you will get notified on all devices, regardless of which one you’re using now. Another example is Chrome-to-phone and Firefox sync, that propose to sync websites and browsing data between your computer browser and your phone. You can also think of Android Market’s new Install function that starts an application download and installation on your phone, when you click a link on your web browser.

Integration has been here for a long time, but it hasn’t been seamless yet. There’s always been a limitation: either in having to manually press a “sync” button every few minutes to keep all devices updated of the current state of things, either in the fact that no service is aware of what you’re using and shifts your notifications to that, bypassing other devices that might also be connected but not currently in active usage state.

The Future Of Mobility

Google Talk’s example above is a great proof of how true seamless integration works. That’s the future, an ease of mobility independent of devices, that moves along with us, sleeps and wakes up along with us, always aware of where we are, what we’re actively using, and what are our priorities at this moment, and that adapts its behavior to this data and actively keeps all our gadgets linked together in harmony.

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Image Courtesy Of D.K & Wei

When On Earth Did That Happen?!

Sitting down and trying to go back in time to the first real cloud service I used, I guess it was Google Reader. I had tried some local RSS readers on my computer but I understood how that wouldn’t easily work with me doing some of my reading on the university’s public library computers. I moved to Google Reader and was instantly hooked. Any computer, any time, just type http://reader.google.com, sign in, and have all my news in front of me, perfectly picking up from where I stopped the last time. Then, two years ago, I was heavily commuting in Paris and my reading followed me with the mobile version of GReader on my Nokia E71. Then I was offered an iPod Touch and when I got Reeder, I shifted 60% of my RSS reading to it. I was mobile, I was free, and everything relied on a cloud service I could access from anywhere at any time.

The “Cloud” Promise

One of the reasons I have been looking for cloud-based services (even more lately) is cross-platform compatibility and availability. I use a Mac as my only computer, which limits me a bit in terms of software choice, and my mobile setup is what you can call broad. Although 90% of my mobile usage nowadays is on the HTC Desire Z, there are still situations when I resort to my Nokia N8 or my iPod Touch 4G. Between OS X, Android, iOS and Symbian, things get confusing, and I want to pick up a device and continue from where I stopped on another, the only thing I’m willing to concede on is pressing a “Sync” button, no cables, no long manual sync procedures, no proximity limitation. I want things to move fluidly and effortlessly accross devices and not be tied to anything. That’s what I have come to expect of mobility nowadays and I’m not taking anything less.

Right now, my contacts are all clean and grouped on Google Contacts, my calendar recently moved to Google Calendar, I write posts like this one on Evernote, my important files are on Dropbox, Springpad has the list of everything I own or would like to buy, my reading is divided between Read It Later and Google Reader, my music preferences and habits are on Last.Fm, my browsing bookmarks are on Opera Mini & Mobile, most of my online comments are managed by Disqus when possible, my exercise is logged to Google Health, my Bible reading is on YouVersion, my media uploads are handled by Pixelpipe, the storage divided between Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Audioboo and YouTube. I am also looking for the best cloud service for task management and study flash cards.

Are You Oblivious To It?

It’s safe to say I have embraced the cloud in my everyday life. I realize I am not the only one in this situation. Me, Ricky, and you as a reader of MobileRnR, we live on the edge of technology, always wanting to try and embrace the newest trends. However, trying to explain an adoption as wide as this to my friends and family baffles them. I know people with their contacts still on their SIM card, yes, with the one phone number per contact limitation! Wow. And when something goes wrong on their phone, they panic and sweat. No wonder Nokia wants to remind them to backup their data before upgrading a firmware.

Testing The Limits Of The “Cloud”

The first limit of cloud-based data is making local backups. I got bit once by this, when Vox closed and I lost my first blog, where Dotsisx was born, so right now I try to make local backups whenever I find it possible. I don’t do it as often or for as many services as I would like, but should something go wrong, I have the stuff that matters.

The second limitation is bandwidth. In countries with (pseudo) unlimited mobile plans and fast and unlimited broadband services, this issue makes no sense. But where I live, it is impossible to embrace Spotify for my daily music, or upload all my videos and photos online, or stream movies and TV episodes. I download, I buy DVDs, I keep all of these locally and I transfer via cables to my other devices. I would like it to be otherwise but so far it isn’t.

The third limitation: sensitive data. Am I ready to trust my passwords to LastPass? Or will I stick with SPB Wallet? Where do I draw the line on embracing the cloud and where do I take a leap of faith? I honestly don’t know yet.

The Name Is Irrelevant, The Beauty Is In The Execution

About two years ago, when I started hearing the term “The Cloud”, I would instantly cringe. Despite the wonderful promise of having everything out there for you to access at your convenience, despite having adopted it in my daily life, I still do cringe and I didn’t really know why until a few days ago. The “Cloud” might be a concept, an idea, a marketing term, one of those monikers branding people throw left and right to feel relevant, or anything you want to describe it as or call it, it does not matter.

The reality that matters is that these services have infiltrated our daily lives in such a manner and with such simplicity that we’re only going to go deeper and deeper into them. Is “the cloud” worth talking about? Maybe yes, maybe no, the beauty of it is that none of us think about it but we adopt it and enjoy it. And in my opinion, it should stay that way: an unsung hero of modern and future technologies.

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One of these dreams that we are coming to know a bit more these days has to do with QR codes. These 2D barcodes have information encoded within them which, in using an external lens such as a mobile phone camera, can be interpreted and some kind of action can happen. In Japan, and many other places, QR codes became nearly common fare in many high population urban settings because of the the abilities already being seen in the mobile cameras of those times. Indeed, in 2005, we could barely imagine 3 megapixel cameras – let alone have a 1MPx one to use, and in Japan, they were experimenting with 5 (high-end models were already at 3). With the extra pixels, and the need for machines to assist the recognition of information, QR Codes (moreso Datamatrix codes) became the popular means extending reality.

In 2006, Kamera Jiten (Camera Dictionary) was released sparking not only imaginations, but showing that it wasn’t just possible for mobiles to open the door into worlds where machines speak, but that the inter-pass of language from one culture to another was now bridged. In a very real sense, Datamatrix/QR Codes and Kamera Jiten initiated mobile users in Japan to augmented reality (AR).

Since then, we’ve heard and seen trickles of similar technologies from Japan and other regions.  I can remember in 2007 Arcade Reality for Palm OS being announced and people literally floored that such a compelling and different experience could be done on a (old and clunky) Palm Treo. Indeed, the imaginations of what was possible when a camera and some sensors came together were well ahead of what many had even fathomed outside of movies. And yes, there was the iPhone (and the Nokia N95) displaying that even more was possible with the addition of accelerometers and electronic compasses added to this magic wand. In a very interesting sense, some developers were starting to crack the code towards bending reality by adding a layer on top of what was real.

In the past years, it’s been the Wii and XBox Kinect. The Wii was the “everyman’s call” to interacting in space. The controller, and the types of games playfully demonstrated that just because there was a screen and something on it, you didn’t have to be a (mostly) passive, button pushing participant. The Kinect amped this by 100x and turned your body into a controller, effectively shoving you into a virtual reality for the duration of your game. These (and other experiments done with AR and VR technologies) began to make me question what is the next big thing after mobile. It took a hard and enjoyable reading of You Are Not a Gadget and The 2011 Mobile Almanac, but I think that I get it…

…it’s not that mobile won’t be a participant in what’s to come, but that our needs for community and communication require more than faster processors and additional cameras. We interact with what’s relevant to us differently now, mobile is normal. Web is (mostly) normal. These technologies are now in a phase of making their own refinements and smaller innovations. Beyond these, it looks more like a blended reality. One where our mobile (in whatever form a physical device needs to be in order to call it mobile) is a wand opening to us the music and wonder of life around us. It’s a wand that opens us to the data that’s there, and hides us from being encroached by the data that’s there but that we don’t want/need to interface with.

This idea of blended realities means also that we aren’t limited by environment, or hardware, or even former behaviors. Look at the iPad. I keep perspective nearby that seems to be playing itself out quite well: the iPad is a blank canvas. That’s not true of many other types of computing. With others, there’s a set use, a set feature, and even a defined experience. Look at the iPad, the quality of its software and market platform effectively make it a $500 blank computing canvas. And you can turn that into anything that makes you entertained, productive, or educated. And this is done not by appending it with accessories. Your fingers and imagination are designed to be its input and processing surfaces. From there (and the minds of developers who enable experiences), one can and should go beyond just consuming information – they become immersed in crafting their own story within it.

As I sat to pen this, I was reminded of one of my favorite Disney movies: Fantasia. Great artwork, storyline, music, and of course its main character. But then there was also his hat. With that magic hat that Mickey wasn’t supposed to play with, he could be and pull reality to literally do what he wanted. It started good, but then it got out of control and there was the need of someone more skilled to come along and show him how it was done. I see the same thing with AR and VR technologies. We have a wand (mobile) and an enabler (applications, cameras, developers, platforms), but its not quite come together yet. I believe that we are close though, and that something magical will happen with humanity when it does. In the meantime, we’ll have these creative, and sometimes wild, experiments that will happen – provoking us to think further, act better, and care for one another and this planet with a more sensitive ear to what we can lose in an instant.

I look at the amazing warning system that was put in place for earthquake and tsunami warnings for the Japanese. Absolutely amazing that the technology and the taught (and respected) behaviors allowed for people to not just heed the warnings, but already have many preparations in place to at least give a chance for minimal casualties and resource shortages. They effectively blended their reality with their technology – and give this couch-sociologist reason to believe that they’ll not only come out of this situation better than ever, but that their version of living with and around technology will be a better blend of what’s dreamt about than has ever been seen before. I wonder how long it would be then before the rest of the world catches up*.

*Its said (almost non-jokingly) that Japan and South Korea are a half-decade ahead of the rest of the world in respect to consumer and mobile tech.

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Only a few months ago, Nokia shocked the world by announcing that Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (aka OPK) would be stepping down as CEO and a Canadian from Microsoft, Stephen Elop, would be taking his place. That in of itself was a huge move. Then, not long afterwards, Elop announced a new partnership with Microsoft, where Nokia will begin to use Microsoft’s Windows Phone on its new smartphones, pushing Symbian closer to the museum shelf. Nokia Pure is yet another step towards revitalizing a company that many think of as the ‘old man of mobile.’

I should clearly state that I am not a typography nerd. I don’t understand why there is a movie about Helvetica, nor do I really get how you can study fonts and such as endlessly as some people do. However, I can appreciate the simple aesthetics of a font. Indeed, when I started Symbian-Guru.com, my friend James Burland (the godfather of Symbian-Guru and creator of the logo) used ITC Bauhaus as the font in my new logo. I subsequently purchased the font and find that it looks stunning as the system font on both Symbian and Android (I haven’t tried on any other platforms).

When you look at Nokia Sans next to a photo of Nokia Pure, you can see a subtle improvement. It’s much more pleasing to the eye, and not as harsh as Nokia Sans.

As Mr. Elop continues to make changes within his new company, I think we’ll see many more changes like Nokia Pure. It’s a subtle but welcome change that’s designed to make the company’s products look refreshed. I can only hope that Nokia begins rolling this font out to all of their devices both new and old through firmware updates.

What do you think of the new Nokia Pure typography?

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I’m preparing to fly to Orlando this week for CTIA with my new job at RadioShack. I’ve done this before – I typically charge all my gadgets and make sure that I have a few ways to keep in touch with my wife while I’m gone. We usually just use voice calls, but over the years we have tried to use some video calling solutions, too. Several years ago, it was the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, with its popout camera and support for video calling in Gtalk. My wife was able to use a funky plugin, and the whole thing didn’t really work consistently.

We also tried tablet-to-tablet video calls using various services, but it was all very ‘meh’ and had to be carefully coordinated. It’s now 2011 and we finally have some better options. Of course there is Apple’s Facetime, but that’s very device restricted – both parties have to have an iPhone or iPad, or an Apple computer. For this trip, I’m going to be testing out Qik’s video calling feature for Android. I’ll be using the Samsung Galaxy Tab on Sprint’s network while my wife will be using her T-Mobile MyTouch 4G.

The best part of Qik is that it integrates with the phone’s system. Calls come in as if they were normal voice calls. This is key because it means my wife doesn’t have to remember to login to anything, it just works. The other key is that we didn’t need to sign up for any special rate plan or add-on to get this capability – as it should be. Of course, it will be interesting to see how the quality is over two different 3G networks, too.

Mobile video calling is nothing new, really. However, mobile video calling that’s well integrated into the phone’s system and doesn’t require some funky data add-on is an entirely new ballgame. It’s been interesting to see how well Apple’s Facetime has been accepted by consumers, and I wonder how many new Android users have experimented with Qik.

I am anxious to see what the key uses of video calling will be once it loses its novelty. The first few times you video chat with someone, it is definitely cool. However, it also quickly becomes apparent that there are situations where video calling is not practical. Thus far, at least in Qik, I do not see an easy way to accept an incoming video call without automatically activating the camera. Hopefully soon we will be able to easily transition to a voice call seamlessly.

Another area that I am anxious to see is the social aspect. Like voice calls, there will soon be an evolution in the socially acceptability of accepting a video call, say at a meal or on a date. Will it be polite to pass the device around to everyone in the room, or will it be considered rude to force them on camera? I imagine my daughter will likely be more comfortable with a video call than a text message or email, even.

Have you used video calling to keep in touch with friends or family? What do you think will be the watershed moment when video calling becomes the norm?

(BTW, I composed this entire post on the Galaxy Tab – no computer used. Kinda cool.)

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Impeccable Engineering

The moment I held the E7 in my hand, there was this familiar tingle of a Nokia-made design that I knew all too well. It felt great, well “great” is an understatement, really. Then I flipped open the keyboard and gasped. This is how slider keyboards are supposed to be built. That small moment between the keyboard closed and open is like being in the presence of something grand: impeccable engineering. It could not get any better and I knew that the E7 stems from the same league of greatness as the legendary E71.

I glanced at my Desire Z with its weird hinge design and I admit, for a brief moment, I doubted my purchase. As solid as the hinge on mine is, it just doesn’t cut it as you still have to be very careful while carrying it. In comparison, owners of the E7 will never have to worry about that. The E7 reaches that utopic state of sturdiness while still being a big handset with a large touchscreen: something not many devices can pride themselves in achieving.

Then I turned the E7 on and the moment the homescreen came into view, with it’s awesome dark blue wallpaper, I understood what “Clear Black Display” meant: just wonderful colors, even more wonderful than my Nokia N8. By comparison, the Desire Z’s S-LCD is OK. It’s not bad but it just doesn’t have the impressive effect of CBD with dark colors. It also fails miserably in sunlight, a letdown in sunny Lebanon.

The Qwerty annoyed me at first because of the placement of some of the keys, but I eventually got used to it. One aspect however, was always flawless: the keys design. They are well spaced, nicely shaped and sized, and the tactile feedback and travel when pushing them is amazingly smooth.

See, I took my time explaining my first moments with the E7 because that’s how far the good impressions lasted. As soon as I turned it on and started trying to set up my Nokia Ovi Account, things went downhill, alarmingly fast.

Painful Setup

The first Nokia E7 unit I received gave me one of the most excruciating experiences with a Nokia or Symbian device, ever. 3 (yes that’s three) Restore procedures in less than 4 hours were necessary to get it to a working state and even then, it was losing battery bars faster than gambling money disappears in Las Vegas and the QWERTY keyboard wasn’t lighting up at all, making the device unusable in any remotely dark environment. The replacement unit had none of these flaws, but suffice it to say, by the second Restore process on the first unit, I was holding my Desire Z and swearing never to doubt its purchase again.

Symbian, Oh Ye Flawed Wonder!

I have been a Symbian power user for over 4 years and I know all the ins and outs of the system. I may even know them a bit too well, as I almost never question the logic behind some of the weirdest quirks. Having used Android mainly for 2 months opened my eyes to these, as I started noticing a lot more annoyances than I usually do. For example, why do we have to set up the access point for the Ovi Store in the Web Browser? Why don’t my Facebook and Twitter friends sync natively with my Contacts? Why can’t I easily turn WiFi or Data off even if an application is using the connection? Why does the arrow down move fields in the Web browser or in any application but not in the Ovi Store’s sign in page? Where are all the useful widgets, like connectivity toggles, bandwidth consumption meters, weather, currency changes…?

Quirks aside, Symbian currently remains one of the most robust OSes. With less RAM and processor speed, the E7 never hiccups while my Desire Z does at times. Android is a hungry OS and any upping in specs gives a noticeable improvement, while Symbian chirps happily with very basic hardware. Ovi Maps still outshines Google Maps by inexorably long strides in Lebanon, and Symbian’s data consumption is the lowest I have seen on any OS to date. Plus, when you know how to set up your Symbian device, there’s a good chance you will end up with a handset you can enjoy.

The E7, Or The Communicator That Failed Its Purpose

I have discussed my problem with the Nokia E7′s purpose at length during The Phones Show Chat last week, episode 78 (segment 35:20 to 42:10), but I will state these issues again:

• The E7 and communicators in general have always attracted professionals. Were are the professional applications for Symbian, like for lawyers, engineers, designers, doctors, pharmacists…?
• Devices with Qwertys are always regarded as adequate for highly productive people. What does the E7 have to show, in terms of productivity solutions? A passable email client that still has glitches with Gmail, a ridiculous Calendar and Contacts applications that sync miserably with Ovi, and… that’s it. Where are the Tasks and To Do apps that sync with desktop clients, where is the decent multiple Calendar with color coding and better categories? How about Dropbox, Evernote, Springpad, `/8*Google Reader? And why is there still not even a half decent eBook platform supporting Symbian?
• The E7′s camera lacks AutoFocus, making it useless for professionals who want to take a close up image of a document or a business card. This feature obviously exists in the Nokia N8 and the HTC Desire Z.
• The only selling point for the E7 is the Qwerty. How will that fair when you realize that the competition is offering a lot of Qwerty devices, like the HTC Desire Z, the Motorola Milestone 2, LG Optimus Q, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro?
• The E7 doesn’t have any software advantages over the N8 that I can find. Eseries have long had a few features to differentiate them from Nseries, like the ability to edit QuickOffice documents for free, out of the box. However, with the latest firmware update to the N8, this feature was added to all N8 devices, making it a moot point for the E7.

Lately, Nokia has been focusing on showing the oodles of new games in the Ovi Store that have taken advantage of the graphics processors in Symbian^3 devices. Big Whoop! E7 buyers won’t regard gaming as a major activity, nor HDMI-out and multimedia capabilities, two aspects where Symbian and the Ovi Store really excel now.

By comparison, N8 buyers will look for exactly those two features and these are the customers who will be satisfied. In addition, the major selling point for the N8, its camera, is still unequaled in the competition, giving it an edge for anyone interested in quality mobile photography. So Qwerty aside, everything the E7 does, the N8 can do and that while adding a wonderful camera on top, a microSD card slot and FM transmitter, being cheaper, more pocketable and less prone to damage because of its one piece design.

Just A Sexy Brick

The E7 is a wonderfully engineered device, and if I was looking for a metallic brick to caress and stare lovingly at all day long, it would perfectly fit the bill. However, when I decided to plunge down several hundred dollars, I was looking for a device that would help me stay productive while on the move as well as access services and applications for my profession without the need for a computer. That, my friends, would be the device that makes me “really feel that I have everything I need in my pocket“, my beloved HTC Desire Z.

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And test the waters I did, with a Samsung Galaxy 5 (not S). The Galaxy 5 is quite similar to the iconic Samsung Corby devices, except it runs Android Eclair 2.1. Everything was quite limited, with memory for applications being always painfully low no matter how much I removed of them, a useless 2MP camera, no GPS and a slow processor. A few weeks ago, I sold the Galaxy 5 and purchased an HTC Desire Z, my first fully featured Android device. Two months later, I look back at the expectations I had from the ecosystem and compare them to the reality.

Image courtesy of Corbis Images

Android Promise Fulfilled – Great UI and Functions

Even when I had the small and limited Galaxy 5, I noticed that unless I needed a decent camera, I would never need to carry anything else besides it. With the Nokia N8 and C7, I always, invariably, check and get my iPod Touch 4G before walking out the door as it has all my medical references and as a pharmacist, I never know when I might need more information regarding a question I was just asked. With the Galaxy 5 and the Desire Z, I never do that. As a matter of fact, my iPod Touch has been quite neglected lately and my N8 has been relegated to Maps and Camera functions only.

Android Promise Fulfilled – Apps, Lots Of Them

The Android Market, while riddled with a horrible search algorithm, many similar applications and tons upon tons of useless utilities or live wallpapers, is like a gold mine when you know what you’re looking for. Within a few days, I had found everything I needed for a complete day-to-day productivity. From NewsRob to WhatsApp, passing by Audioboo, Facebook, Bump, Nimbuzz, Skype, Documents To Go, Dropbox, WordPress, Springpad, Aldiko, Disqus, Paperdroid, Cardiotrainer, aCurrency, Folder Organizer, JuiceDefender, IMDb, iSyncr, VitalPlayer, Pixelpipe, Camera360 and many more, all the utilities, social applications, services, multimedia helpers, everything was a mere download away. And medical applications, goodness me, medical applications: Medscape, Epocrates, iTriage, and the full catalog of Skyscape, Lexi, and Unbound Medicine to mention a few.

Honestly, aside from my two-months-long search for a decent Twitter client, that ended in me loving the official Twitter for Android when it got overhauled recently, I have had no trouble finding anything I want or need on the Market in a few minutes. There are still 3 apps I use on my iPod Touch that I’m really looking forward to, Wunderlist, IntoNow and SPB Wallet, and they are all promised to come soon to Android.

Android Promise Fulfilled – Personalization

One of the cool things about Android is that you can pick any homescreen you want, any keyboard, any phone dialler, any contacts phone book, any web browser… and set them as default. With the Galaxy 5, I changed the keyboard to Gingerbread as the built-in one was horrid. Right now, with the Desire Z, I have tried many different options, but I keep coming back to all the default options with Sense, except for the browser where I juggle between the default Android browser and Opera.

I have also recently started discovering the joys of rooting, and plan on trying a couple of custom ROMS for fun later on. This is one of the strengths of Android, allowing you to personalize almost every aspect of the experience.

One More Android Promise – True And Convenient Mobile Computing

The more I use Android, the more I realize its strength: it’s currently the only platform capable of feasibly AND conveniently replacing a computer. Symbian’s strength is in its convergence aspect, letting you take amazing pictures, have accurate navigation, record great video… iOS is more about the experience, about enjoying every single thing that you do, however the lack of bluetooth sharing, a true file system, easy communication between different applications, all of that gets in the way of actually getting things done. Both Symbian and iOS are capable of feasibly replacing a computer, but the convenience just isn’t there, and trust me I have done my best to find it for years.

Android as I expected, sort of sits in the middle, with many of the open features of Symbian and many of the UI improvements of iOS. But it’s not just a middle man there. Two features I have found to be unequaled and indispensable for a true mobile computing solution come natively in Android: Notifications and Share.

• Thanks to Notifications, any application running or not in the background, can tell me when there is a new occurring event, like a new Email, Twitter mention or message, Facebook message, if I have a task to get done, when the next episode of my favorite TV show will air, if it’s time for my next workout with Cardiotrainer, … Notifications become more than just an alert, they’re also a call to action of sorts, and the integration with different applications is beyond anything I have seen on a mobile device or a computer, the closest thing being Growl on Mac OS.
• As for Share, the beauty of it is in its sheer simplicity. See a job offer on Twitter that one of your friends on WhatsApp might be interested in? Share it in a click. See a web page that you’d like to save to Read It Later? One click. How about uploading that picture to Pixelpipe? Click. Sending a file to Evernote, Dropbox? Click. Utter utter simplicity. And tons of benefits no matter how you spin it around. Ever since I’ve started really using Share, I’ve had trouble thinking why something like this wasn’t implemented in computers decades ago. Copy/Paste? That requires to: open app 1, select, copy, open app 2, navigate to where you want, paste. Too 1990′ish. Share is the future. This sort of brilliant integration between applications is what is achingly missing from Symbian and iOS. Apps are no longer separate islands that you navigate in and out of, but they work together to provide a fully consistent experience. I. LOVE. IT.

As you can see, Android has met my expectations and surpassed them in many ways. It’s still not perfect, and most of that stems from the hardware side, with manufacturers focusing on “faster, better, more” instead of adding layers to create new paradigms and possibilities. But the core of the experience is there, and, all things considered, this is the first time in 4 years of mobile enthusiasm and evangelism that I really feel that I have everything I need in my pocket.

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