Down The Rabbit Hole: Part VI - Free Your Mind

I have been busy, reading quite a lot about Nokia lately, however, in the meantime the world did not stand still. Just recently, right after the dust settled on the Google phone launch, Nokia rolled out its answer to the iPhone, the Nokia 5800.

Coming almost two years later, the 5800 may indeed exceed the iPhone in some qualities and it may be even more attractive in some markets, but this is just beyond the point. Which is that it represents absolutely no innovation whatsoever. Nothing can disguise this simple fact.

I also disagree that we are witnessing a major platform shift. If Apple would call the iPhone operating system OS X Mobile we would all have a flashback moment. While it is true that mobile browsing has been made really possible for the first time with the iPhone, and now with Android, it is far from representing a major change in computing overall. Don't get me wrong, it will become extremely popular but it will not intriduce a significant global change in the existing technological ecosystem.

Many sources refer to Nokia as number one cell phone company in the world, due to its market share. A company with such potential should not waste time lagging behind their new, unlikely, competitor trying to beat him on his own playing field. Not all users want the iPhone, or any smart phone for that matter. They need a phone, and not a multimedia device with phone function.

In next posts I will elaborate on some plans Nokia has for the future, but let me just say, they are indeed pretty futuristic. As if designing a good phone was so desperately boring and unnecessary. I beleive it is not boring, and is definitely very necessary. All you need to do is free your mind, however difficult this could be. This is what I expect from number one.

Down The Rabbit Hole : Part V - We'll need a search running...

So far we have been pointing out some shortcomings of latest Nokia products, and let me assure you we are nowhere near the end of that subject, starting from little annoyances like the inability to distinguish between the the times of several missed calls from the same number to major problems like the performance of the S60 models. It is time, however, to start figuring out where those ideas and decisions come from. Our goal is to get a little insight into the mind of this great company.

It so happens that these days, we have a unique opportunity to do just that. Turns out that Nokia had organized an even called "Nokia Open Lab", which purpose was inviting representatives of social media and bloggers to Helsinki and "provoking global discussion on a mobile future". An event took place between September 11th and 13th, this year, just a few days ago. As far as I understood, it was first even of this kind.

Beside the materials from the event itself which are available online and will undoubtedly allow us to shed some light on the Nokia thinking and ideas, it would also provide an updated list of people who were invited and thus are interested and participating in the process. Those people have blogs which should be nice to explore in order to achieve our goals. The event was also attended by one of the most important people in Nokia, certainly for our cause, Adam Greenfield who, accorging to Wikipedia is, "head of design direction for user interface and services".

A really good place to start searching for answers...

Down The Rabbit Hole : Part IV - Whoa, Deja vu

One of the things that have become painfully clear after the Apple iPhone release, is the absolute state of cluelessness, if there is such a word, in which other handset manufactirers have been blissfully stuck for years. Instead of leveraging vast experience collected from millions of worldwide users into a series of killer models, every other company ran to copy Apple's innovation without even thinking twice. Read here, did they actually say, with pride?

I have a theory on why Nokia got so out of touch with the users and it goes like this. When I have studied history in school, I have learned about the feudal hierarchy in the middle ages. True, it was in a communist country, and now they say it was all lies, but I do remember one lesson, in which they told us that the feudal hierarchy was so strict that the lord could only command his own vassals but not their vassals. They called it "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" rule.

Whether this is historically true or not is beyond the point, however, this is exactly what I think has happened here. Operators have become the customers Nokia cares about and it provides the features operators want, without any regard to the real actual end users. We could call it, "the client of my client is not my client" rule. Operators, by the way, are notorious for pushing whatever brings them more money, without any regard for anyone's needs.

How is that for an explanation?
(Hint: use the comments :)

Down The Rabbit Hole: Part III - Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.

What does everyone want in a cell phone. Forget money, size, tradeoffs and marketing. What are those features that would represent the base of a good phone. Well, I don't know about everyone, but here is my pick.

1. Large buttons - both numeric and functional. Though it is true that we dial less since the invention of a phone book, we still type lots of messages, hence large usable keys are important. I personally prefer two separate buttons, for calling and and for hanging up. There should be no unnecessary buttons on the phone, like connect to the internet button or something like that. Buttons should be strictly rectangular and should fit an average human finger tip. In my opinion, one dimensional navigation is more than enough, but if you really have to use two dimension, the Nokia five way selection button is the best existing solution.

2. Phone book, with synchronization, backup and search. You have a phone right? If it would diasppear today, how many numbers would you loose? If you answer is larger then zero, then your phone is not good enough. We have bluetooth, we have cellular data connection, how hard could it be to create a decent backup with all that stuff. Another question. Do you have to remember whether your friend John Howard appears as John Howard or as Howard John? If you do, then your phone book does not have a decent search and amazingly most Nokia phones do not have this simple feature.

3. SMS, with T9, storage and search. People are real nasty, when it gets to devices. They assume that devices should make their life easier, and they also get used to good things very quickly. Which is why, no one would ever delete an SMS message from his cell phone until the phone explicitly asks the user to do so. All well and good, but the modern phones have lots of memory and they do not complain even when the number of SMS messages on the device gets to thousands. What they start to do instead is misbehave. One of my friends, had a Nokia E65 which would take more than 30 seconds to open an SMS under this scenario.

4. Battery, battery, battery - if I have to charge my phone more then twice a week, you failed. Wait, but what if I am talking all the time? OK, let's not talk about the absolute time, but rather about the features that would help me preserve it. Don't give me a screen saver, just shut the screen at the first hint of idle time and during phone calls. Battery life is so important in a phone that I would choose it over the cameras, music players and fancy 3G features.

5. One normal ringtone, with vibration option and the ability to instantly turn it off - you would be surprised how difficult it is sometimes to pick up a decent ringtone, because as much as I love Beethoven, putting his sonata on my phone is out of question.

6. Good reception and great audio quality - as one would put it, what good is a phone if you are unable to speak?

Don't get me wrong, this is not the complete list, but this is the minmum. Don't sell a phone that does not have even one of these. Please.

Oh, and if you have other minimum requirements, you think everyone should want, well, that's what the comments are for.

Down The Rabbit Hole: Part II - You've been living in a dream world

One of the problems with Nokia is that they look too much into the future. Look here, here and here to see what I am talking about. This is all bloody marvelous. Really. But today I have to stand in the middle of the room, holding a Nokia cellphone in one hand and my land line phone in other hand when I want to call one of my buddies from the landline.

How is that for the future. How come Nokia does not make an adapter allowing to connect the phone to the land line using bluetooth or any other technology. How come, there is absolutely no synchronization between the Nokia cellphones and any cordless land line phones, not even via computer. Land lines are still very popular and usually cheaper than the cell phones, so how come when I get home I have to put down one phone and pick up another one. Not so futuristic at all.

Down The Rabbit Hole: Part I - I want my phone call

At some point in the middle of 2000, I had to switch an operator, and at that point, unfortunately, I could not stay with my beloved 6110, as it was operator locked, so I had to change. Having decided to go for a cost effective solution, I picked the 3210, a nice, solid phone which was quite affordable at the time. Immediately, I have noticed that the phone was much slower to respond than the old 6110, making the phone book more annoying to use. It also included animations, for example, after sending a message, or adding a contact, that were slow and could not have been disabled from the phone settings. However, the phone was small and had no bulging antenna, had a T9, and was generally nice, once you got accustomed to the different location of the alarm clock menu.

After a year and a half with the 3210, I was yearning for an upgrade and I have decided not to compromise and got myself, or more precisely convinced my mom to get me, a 6310i which was rather expensive for the plan we had.

Now, 6310i is an epic phone. Epic. No other word would describe it better. It had enormous battery life, was blazing fast, had great interface and large buttons. It was slightly better than its older brother the 6210 which was also a great phone. It came in two color schemes, the awesome gray and the awful black and gold. You would pick the awesome gray and live happily ever after. End of story.

After few happy years with the 6310i I have been given a phone by the company I worked for, it was the 6630. If you would put those two phones side by side and wipe the logos, you never believe that it was made by the same company. Weird shape, smaller and weirdly positioned buttons, a camera sticking from the back of the phone, as if it was added at the last minute. Very inconvenient to use. It was 3G, but as it lacked the front camera it was completely useless for video calls (I will get to those later), unless you used a contraption called 'Nokia video call stand'. Whatever.

If you read a review of this phone on the net you would think you are buying a camera, or some kind of smart organizer or a media player, anything but the phone. It was wide and not convenient to hold or to type, it had bad audio, and in most cases required a headset for convenient operation. Since the headphones that came with the kit were a bad joke, you were tempted to buy a blue tooth set that would kill the already weak battery. It was a disaster. Rumor had it that our company was given those phones by the operator who could not move them otherwise and at a great discount.

Now here comes the question, why would the company that is capable of creating an engineering marvel of 6310i would ever release a product like the 6630. What went wrong in those few years between them. So many things have changed, the technology, the UI, the operating system, which of the factors contributed to this fall. I will try to talk about some of this, so stay tuned.

Down the Rabbit Hole - What Happened to Nokia?

When 'The Matrix' hit the screens in the summer of 1999, it had one of the greatest product placements ever - the very sleek and sexy Nokia phone. The phone was featured in the key moments of the movie and had a cool, spring loaded sliding cover, which made answering a call look like lots of fun. On the surface, it appeared to be the Nokia 8110, a top range model of that time.

By then I have already been a devoted Nokia user for a couple of years. I have owned the old 6110, which I liked very much. It was an executive class model at the time, very convenient and with great battery life. But the 'Matrix Phone' was so cool that I have decided to look it up. After a while I found it in one of the local operators offering and few hours later I was holding one in my hand. To my big surprise, the spring was nowhere to be found, the sliding cover was to be moved manually. I was very disappointed. Needless to say I did not buy the phone. Later I heard from my friend who had connections in the operator that those phones had bad audio problems. The model flopped, at least in our local market.

Later I have learned that Nokia did release a spring loaded model, a 7110, but it was not till the end of that year and I have never seen it anywhere, surely none of my friends, all big Matrix fans, owned one.

It was the first, but surely not the last time, I have raised an eyebrow, about the ways of Nokia, however they have continued to make good, solid models, until some point in time, few years ago, when something changed, and Nokia lost their way completely and entirely. This series of posts will try to investigate what happened to this great company and why.

No Excuse

A few days ago, I watched the Steve Jobs keynote introducing the iPhone. As always, it was an impeccable presentation, delivered with the usual quality and style. The iPhone is simply amazing. I have watched the whole event twice and I have enjoyed it like a good movie. It was just awesome.

However, this blog is not about Apple or iPhone, it is about usability. So let us for a moment forget about most of the features iPhone has. Let us forget about the beautiful multi touch display and the wide screen videos. Lets us put aside the full browser and the email, and even widgets. Let's just concentrate on the phone. Just the phone with the most basic stuff. Even without the camera.

Just the phone.

It has occurred to me that there is something strange going on. I mean, Apple, after all is not a cell phone company. Well, of course they have great designers and innovative thinking, but they are not Nokia or Samsung or Motorola.

Yet, amazingly, all of those companies that have the expertise and experience in building phones for nearly two decades have failed to produce something matching the iPhone usability, not even by a large margin.

There is no new technology there. The magnificent scrolling can be done without the multi touch display. Same for the soft keyboard, which has existed for years on all PDAs. The convenient address book with all the details available at a glance as well as the easy interface for putting someone on hold - not to mention the conference call, all of these are not new. A sensor that turns off the display when I hold the phone to my ear is not impossible to imagine either.

The SMS conversation feature, which allows you to see previous messages from the same person in a same thread, is especially painful. After all, instant messaging services were around for a long time now, and technically it is very simple to implement.

It is very strange that such great companies as Nokia and Motorola failed to compete in their own field with an outsider such as Apple even in the most basic of the features of a most basic phone. The usability gap between the iPhone and the existing offering of phones (not just smart phones) is really huge.

They really have no excuse.