Shots taken with the X7 (left), Samsung Focus (center) and the N8 (right)
A little while ago Nokia was kind enough to invite about a dozen of us out to Canmore, Alberta for an event called #NokiaUnfenced; a weekend of fun while showing off a couple of their current phones. Being a big fan of the Windows Phone platform (both as a Developer and a Consumer) I was thrilled to get the chance to see what all the excitement was around the recent decision of Nokia’s to go with the new platform. As such this won’t be so much of a review of the software currently running on their phones, but rather a review of the hardware . Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my hands on a device running WP (code named Sea Ray) what I did see paints an extremely attractive picture of what’s on the horizon. If you’d like a review of the software and hardware together, a few of the other fantastic people who were on the trip have you covered here, here, and here.
History of the decision
In early February of this year, Stephen Elop, the newly appointed CEO of Nokia, send his now famous memo to employees where he likens Nokia’s then strategy to a burning platform (the full text of the memo can be seen here.). Not long after that, Nokia announced that they would be phasing out Symbian as their OS of choice for smartphones and replacing it with Microsoft’s Windows Phone Offering. In the landmark deal between the two behemoths, Nokia would bring an expanded range of phones, the Ovi maps technology, and their Carrier billing agreements, while MS would be bringing the OS as well as the various Bing technologies.
So without further ado, here’s why I’m excited…
Great Camera
If you’re like me then a lot of your discussions around any smartphone tend to focus on apps. What’s the latest and greatest app for a platform, how many tens of thousands of apps are available, or which twitter client is currently my favourite are popular topics to argue at length about. But if you are like me, a very large portion of your actual usage is taking and showing off pictures.
For the most part, even though I’ve had a smartphone for the last 3-4 years and I’ve never been more than about 10 feet from it. Having said this, whenever I’m going to an event, be it my son’s hockey game or out to the park with my daughter, I’ll also bring a separate camera. While testing around with the X7 (or the N8) I’ve left the standalone camera at home. Almost all smartphone cameras these days are good enough for those spur of the moment, wow nobody’s going to believe this, shots, Nokia’s camera takes it from good enough to perfect for the job.
Going from the 5 megapixels on my Samsung Focus to the 8 megapixel in the X7 (or a ridiculous 12 megapixel for the N8) doesn’t quite tell you the whole story. What seems to be the biggest improvement is the lens they are using. The Carl Ziess really delivers a crisp picture with fantastic colours that will make even the shots from sub amateur photographers (the category I find myself in) looking great.
One other quick thing to note is that the time difference between when you press the button and when the picture is actually taken (I’m sure there is a technical term for this) is much better on the X7 than on the Focus. While for landscape shots this isn’t going to mean much, for action shots it’s nice to be able to actually catch the action rather than a half second afterwards.
Mapping Features
Up until that weekend, when I thought of mobile mapping solutions, I really only thought of two different offerings, Bing maps and Google maps. While I’m not entirely sure that I’m sold on the overall visual aspects, there are quite a few things that have me extremely excited about the possibilities of Ovi Maps coming to Windows Phone. The first thing I noticed was that there were a couple of places that Bing Maps couldn’t find that Ovi could (I’m wondering if the ranch was selected based on this, j/k ). The best feature Ovi has though is the ability to download the tiles for a given region, not having to download the tiles certainly helped in regions with spotty reception.
General Hardware feel
One of the biggest features that phone manufactures like to pull out is how light they have made their phones. While greatly reducing the weight of phones more than 10 years ago (think Zach Morris era ) was a great thing, it’s my belief that it’s gotten to the point that phones have gotten too light (apply ridiculous size of cell phones in Zoolander, to the weight of phones now). By reducing the weight as far as they have and by replacing parts of the case with flimsy plastic, many manufacturers have gone too far. The Nokia phones don’t have this problem. This isn’t to say that they are heavy bricks, but rather they have a weight that just feels right. One of the other guests at #NokiaUnfenced (who will remain nameless to protect them from the enevitable PETA backlash) summed it up with the line “A phone should have enough weight so that you could kill a small animal with it). While I certainly don’t agree with killing small animals, I completely agree with the statement.
No more “This is how it should have been at launch”
Another thing that Nokia will have going for it when they finally do release their Window Phone offerings, is that they have bypassed the, at times, incomplete initial release of the WP operating system. While I understand that Microsoft had to start from scratch when building WP, I can’t help but agree to a point with the crowd of people who are vocal about saying that the upcoming Mango release has the feature set that should have launched with the phone. Nokia won’t ever have to hear these complaints as they’ll be launching with the fully featured Mango OS.
Final thoughts
All in all, I’ve got to say that going in to the weekend I really didn’t know why everyone in the Windows Phone community was so excited about the Nokia deal. After the weekend I completely understand it. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that when Sea Ray is release your going to start seeing landfills full of iPhones and Android devices, but it’s certainly a large step in the right direction for the platform that could sorely use it. Personally I’ll be picking one of them up as soon as I can get my hands on one.
[...] in the Rockies recently with a bunch of phones (some of which weren’t even Nokias!), and has shared his views from the standpoint of a Windows [...]
Ovi Maps.
In case you didn’t quite catch this it doesn’t just download a single tile for a certain area and then save it for later. When done properly via side loading from a PC or on a proper internet connection it downloads and installs the map, at all zoom levels, for the entire country you desire. This also includes a goodly amount of POI information and when used as a navigation device in a car can also download and update routes based on traffic congestion. On my N8 I have the maps for the entire EU plus Norway and Switzerland.
I’m sure that you had a very great deal to take in and while you certainly seem to have noted with detail the real high points I think you’ve missed the real depths to which Ovi Maps goes. In fact, in it’s current incarnation I would rate it as good as any other navigation software out there, be it “free” (downloadable every time” or brought from a navigation specialist. And of course Ovi Maps is free as well.
I think you’re right that I may have missed some of the depth that Ovi Maps goes to. I’ll see if I can rectify that
They aren’t “tiles” for normal maps. All the maps are vector based and as mentioned can be side-loaded for an entire country. So zooming is smooth and no jaggies. Only satellite images are tiles and need to be downloaded.
I haven’t needed anything else for in-car voice navigation than Ovi maps for several years.
please develope stock trading apps using mango for ameritrade. You make it then Ill pick up a nokia mango phone also. I love my E7.
What specifically are you looking for in a Stock Trading app? I know there are a few already out there, maybe I could point you in the right direction.
[...] asked to join Nokia for a “getting to know you” style event called #NokiaUnfenced. His blog on Nokia’s approach to WP7 is worth reading, answering some of the questions about what Nokia is doing to get developers on [...]