This started off on a rather curious note, with Marko informing us that Nokia is doing more than anyone else to promote social change by allowing access to technology in the developing world. He noted the many millions of clocks and cameras that people have been able to obtain through owning a Nokia handset and lauded this democratization of technology that the Finnish mobile maker is apparently leading. While the company's line of ultra-affordable phones is indeed valuable in global economic terms, this was a bit of an underwhelming boast for gadget geeks like us and perhaps indicative of how Nokia feels about its current crop of top-tier devices. Most of what was to follow looked toward the future, that's for sure.
Roadmap
Nokia's future roadmap is drawn around a tripartite portfolio -- you'll have S40-class f... f... featurephones (No, bad blogger! It's a smartphone!), Symbian^3 and ^4 smartphones deluxe, and MeeGo-based godzilla smartphones. We can't guarantee those particular words were used in the meeting, but the portfolio "has to be smart right across." That means a plurality of things, firstly it means that the low-end devices will not be deprived of new features, like location-aware and social networking services, but it also means "UI style innovation," which you may decode as refreshments to the grid- and list-based means by which we're used to navigating our phones today.
MeeGo seems to be viewed as the platform with the greatest potential for innovation, given its larger screen, and there were some hints that those screens are only going to expand. Further probing around Nokia tablets or netbooks was unceremoniously dismissed and it really looks like the company will be knuckling down on sorting what Marko described as "truly mobile ... not luggable" hardware. One other thing he highlighted was that touchscreen interfaces nowadays require the user to constantly look at them, whereas it's in Nokia's DNA to produce devices that can be used easily with one hand or by the blind, and he left us with a big fat mystery to ponder about how that might be achieved with vast touchscreen devices. Haptic feedback (anyone heard from Haptikos lately? We're getting worried) was not ruled out, but it seemed like Nokia might try out some audio-based interface concepts and see where things might go.
N8, Symbian^3 and beyond
"Simplicity and polish ... really doing less things, but better -- particularly in software." |
We had to also poke and prod on a couple of pet peeves of our own, starting with the integrated battery in the N8. If you're going to take cues from the iPhone, that's really not the one we'd advocate following, but Marko was categorical that the overall design concept took precedence in that case. He seemed to imply that the N8 just wouldn't have been as good, structurally and aesthetically, if it had to have a door for battery access. Then we asked about the move to capacitive touchscreens in Nokia's latest handsets, and while Marko wouldn't be drawn (old pro that he is) into expressing a preference for a particular type of touchscreen technology, he did agree that user interfaces cannot successfully be designed for both capacitive and resistive displays. Thus, in spite of some well known reluctance on Nokia's part, it does seem like the foreseeable future of Nokia touchscreens will be coming at us in capacitive form. We thought you'd wanna know, wherever you may stand on this issue.
On the topic of Nokia's lack of mindshare on American shores, Marko expressed his hope (or was it intent?) that Nokia will surge back into users' consciousness, particularly on the back of the N8 and a renewed focus on competing at the high end. Oh, and about that potential QWERTY slider variant of the N8? No hardware was confirmed, but the company is committed to offering multiple form factors, and other hints about lower-tier Symbian^3 devices would point to a pretty healthy likelihood of its emergence. So that's that, Nokia's still designing, the world's still spinning, and we've still got more questions than answers about the new OS and user experience. Wouldn't want it any other way though, would ya?