Whether you’ve been following the mobile industry for two days or two decades, a few observations should be quite obvious to you, the first of which is how much Apple, and Steve Jobs more specifically, excel at keynote announcements in comparison to any other manufacturer. The second observation is that no matter how good a device Nokia can produce, they never seem to get it right when it comes down to introducing it to the press.
In an Utopian world, somewhere far far away, let’s suppose that you could combine Steve Jobs’ keynote prowess with Nokia’s N8 product, and see the stellar event that would have transpired.
Jobs is on stage, giddy like a 2 year-old boy who has just finished drawing his first house and is so proud he wants to show it to his mom. He really can’t wait to tell you about the magical product he will unveil. After the must-have latest stats are depicted to the audience, with amazing numbers and aesthetically flawless charts, he starts talking about photography. He mentions how people love keeping memories of everything that happens to them and around them, how photography is the modern equivalent of diaries, because of the truthfulness it keeps of every moment. Then he says that everyone is sick of having to carry around a separate digital camera because, no matter how good mobile phone cameras are, they still come short in terms of night photography, details, shooting far away objects, or even failing in capturing the true tones of a scene. “This ends now. We’re introducing the best camera to date. And it’s in a phone, the N8” he finally announces, while grinning from ear to ear as the applauds fuse from the audience. With the largest sensor in a phone and industry-leading Carl Zeiss wide-angle optics, Jobs places the N8 high above any other camera phone, any digital camera, and claims it is the same quality you get from DSLR cameras. He then adds, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, that it’s also the best video recorder to date, with HD video capture and ambient sound capture. The public is in a trance state.
Jobs then calls on Damian Dinning, the man behind the dream, to the stage to explain everything that went into the N8′s camera making, with sample images and full size zooming into the details being projected behind him to help him make his point. Closest to nature unprocessed images, Biggest sensor, Best wide-angle optics, Fastest Autofocus and face detection, Dinning doesn’t spare the superlatives. He stops for two minutes to explain the importance of the Xenon flash and Red-Eye Reduction, perhaps taking a photo of something on stage with his own N8 which is immediately projected on the screen. Damian then switches to the video aspect, explaining the HD video capture, the way the two microphones capture ambient sound, gives the example of being in a bar and taking a video of the music and the people’s voices as well as the active hyper-focal distance focus system that puts anything between 60cm to infinity in focus. He shows video samples of it all.
As Jobs comes back onto stage, he reiterates the previous points, especially the superlatives. He stops for a second and asks “but now that you have this huge personal image and video diary, what would you do with it?”. That’s when he introduces the HDMI output to give crystal clear images and videos on a TV, the Video and Image editing software with screenshot demos, and he also adds that HDMI-Out is also there to play all your movies as well as the new revolution in TV, WebTV, where you can watch your favorite channels on the go. Stellar video playback requires stellar audio playback and hence the N8 supports Dolby Digital Plus. Steve calls it the “smallest and best video player to date”.
Talking about playing, Jobs switches to music. He knows everyone would like to use their phones to listen to music in their cars, without having to bother with CDs and ads on radio stations. The N8 makes it all easy. Integrated inside is an FM transmitter that lets you play your favorite music in your car or on any other nearby radio, without any wires.
Jobs then calls on the Ovi Maps product manager to the stage to talk about what he calls an “awesome feature”. The manager starts with the problems of separate GPS units, they’re not portable, you can’t use them while walking, you can’t share your location, you have to pay for them and for the software sometimes. “Ovi Maps is free. Worldwide. For everyone.” He then goes on to explain that it requires no data, lets you download maps for any country and prepare your trips ahead, syncs with the Ovi Maps website, integrates tons of services to help you book hotels or find interesting things around you, lets you share your location with friends on Twitter or Facebook, and best of all it supports Drive as well as Walk navigation, with traffic and public transport as well.
Jobs comes back on stage, saying that Ovi Maps is “the most accurate portable GPS to ever be included in a phone, and best of all it’s free”. With Maps out of the way, he talks about how they managed to carve all of these features inside one package. He stops on the anodized Aluminium body: “scratch-resistant body and glass screen with an elegant feel in the hand” are his words. That’s when he plays the video of the hand freestyler Max Vlassenko spinning the N8.
But that’s not all. The N8 goes beyond every other smartphone on the market, he claims. “Pentaband” he almost screams. This baby works everywhere in the world and can access 3G networks everywhere. From the USA to Europe to Asia, travel to any country with 3G coverage and the N8 will pick it up. And if you thought that the road warrior features of FM Transmitter, Pentaband and Ovi Maps were the end of it, Jobs calls the N8 his computer. Since he has had it, he no longer needs to carry around a laptop anymore. Why? Because it has USB-OTG so anytime he wants to share presentations or files with others, he simply has to stick a USB key in the N8 and transfer his files over. “No need for a computer. But it gets better” he adds, as he talks about being able to connect it to a bluetooth mouse and keyboard simultaneously and work comfortably. “I plug it into a TV with HDMI, connect my keyboard and mouse, and I’m ready to work, anywhere, anytime, any hotel room, without needing a laptop”. He also adds that it comes with QuickOffice installed so you can view your office documents. Editing them requires a paid upgrade.
As Steve finishes his keynote, he rounds up the important aspects, again. He finishes off saying it’s the “smallest camera, video recorder and player, TV and computer to date, and it’s the best one at all of it. It’s a revolution in portable entertainment and computing, and you can have it as soon as next week“. He introduces a few product videos.
After a live performance from a live band, the keynote ends, and all media attendees rush to the floor to get their hands on the latest magical product.
See?
When you have so many strength points lined up in one product, points where you trump your competition by miles, you do NOT focus on aspects where you’re trailing behind, you do NOT mention the UI, the OS, Ovi Store, Multitouch, Ovi Music, sync’ing with the web, Nokia Messaging for email or IM, social integration with Twitter and Facebook. You tell stories, you explain to people why they need a certain new feature you’re introducing like WebTV or USB-OTG, and give them examples on how they can use it. You let all the other features, where you’re not top of the crop, appear as bonus points to your audience and users, not as main selling points. And most importantly, you do not make a web announcement with a blog post, a web page and a few YouTube videos then let the product rut in your drawers for months on end while giving limited access to some journalists every now and then and letting the excitement over it die a slow death. Even more drastically, you don’t announce another product (C7), somewhat similar, days before the N8 is shipped and ship it a week after the N8 ships.
This whole post idea stemmed from a post by James Burland who mentioned that the passionate Damian Dinning should have been invited on stage to talk about the N8′s camera during Anssi Vanjoki’s Nokia World keynote.
