If They Only Knew Then What We Know Now: Back In Time With The N97

Something big?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Barcelona, Spain

Nokia unveils “something big”

Nearly a year later, we all now know that something big turned out to be the N97 and in hindsight, we can take a lot of good and a lot of bad from everything that transpired between Nokia World 2008 and today. I can still recall in the days leading up to Nokia World 08, Nokia unprecedentedly decided to gas up the hype machine and put up a ‘Countdown to Something Big’ clock on their homepage. Now I don’t know if this had the same effect on everyone but I woke up for work just a tad earlier than usual to find out what all the fuss was about (I know a few of you even stayed up until 2 or 3am Eastern Time to find out live) and I wasn’t disappointed whatsoever. After what they had done before last year’s Nokia World since the N95, Nokia had to get people talking beforehand and make sure the spotlight was focused solely on their new flagship device. When the device was revealed, not many could say anything bad about it without reaching (resistive touchscreen, off-center spacebar, 5MP camera, LED flash) and all hands on videos were prefaced with the disclaimer that the phone was running a very early version of the software. In the months that followed, we saw more videos and previews showing off the device and its features, sample photos from its camera and we continued to lust for it. We also got a firm release date, June 2009 (Notice that Nokia had a countdown to the announcement but not the release?) As we got closer to the release date, more of the technical specification were revealed (434MHz ARM11 CPU, 128MB of RAM, no graphics chip) and many of the interested parties were ready to make a decision on whether or not this device was for them. There was a huge divide between those who felt that this device was nothing more than an N95 with a touchscreen and those who felt that its other specs more than made up for an underpowered processor and embarrassingly low amount of RAM. When the device finally hit shelves, this debate had to take a backseat because it was the software that betrayed it. The phone arrived with so many bugs, hiccups and defects that it made you wonder whether in 7 months, Nokia bothered trying to get that pre-production firmware up to release-spec. With all that said, I’ve given some thought to what I would say to Nokia if I had a time machine and could travel back in time 1 year.

1. Don’t announce a device until it’s ready or close to ready

It’s nice to build up anticipation for a device and let people plan their next mobile device purchase (this can be important when your devices costs $700) but 7 months is entirely too long of a period to let pass between announcement and launch. Especially when we’re talking about your flagship device that looks like more or less a finished product except for the software and it’s not like they made any improvements on that pre-production software anyway (In fact, they actually made it worse in some ways. Theme effects anyone?). This is something that Nokia still hasn’t completely learned yet (E72) but they’re getting better at (N900). The fact remains that if you can’t release something within 3 months of officially announcing it, the device isn’t worth talking about in its current state.

2. What’s the point of having testing facilities if you don’t use them?

We’ve all seen the fancy videos that Nokia produced showing off their torture testing facilities and the absolute hell that they put their phones through before release. So tell me why these facilities never caught the fact that the lens cover on the N97’s camera was scratching the camera glass it was meant to protect? While we’re on the topic of testing, the issue that some N97 users have been experiencing with the GPS unable to maintain a lock because of interference between the GPS antenna and the phone’s internal components is inexcusable. All one needs to do is take a 15 minute drive with Ovi Maps running to realize that something is amiss. I seriously doubt that it is SUPPOSED to lose track of you and have to recalculate every 500 feet.

3. When we said we wanted another N95, we didn’t mean that literally

Anyone who considers themselves a Nokia mobile phone fan will agree that the N95 changed the game forever when it was first unveiled. It was the first device to pack every cutting edge mobile technology at the time into one attractive package. Since that moment, everyone has been waiting for Nokia’s second act and to bring another powerhouse flagship device to the market and at first glance, we all thought that the N97 was it. It even took S60 5th Edition to places we didn’t even think it was capable of going based off of what we saw on the 5800 XpressMusic. However, a couple months before release we learned that Nokia decided to use more or less the same guts as the N95 that we all loved so much. This might not have been a problem except that S60 5th Edition is a far different beast than S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and you might try and say that the 5800 XpressMusic has the same amount of RAM but doesn’t provide as frustrating of a multitasking experience as the N97 but recall  that the N97 is a bit of a mish-mash between S60v5 aka Symbian^1 and Symbian^2. This makes it Symbian^1.5 if you want to call it anything. Taking that (and the fact that it’s 2009 and not 2006) into consideration, Nokia should have given the phone a little more juice to power their Frankenstein UI. At the very least, 256MB of RAM should be a given. I don’t care if it’s a little laggy while I’m switching from app to app, just make sure there’s enough memory so that they don’t close in the background while I perform another task. Part of me wonders if the backlash directed towards the technical specs of the N97 would have been a lot less harsh if the phone was released in December 2008 instead of June 2009. People wouldn’t have already known about the 600MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM in the iPhone 3GS and an assortment of Blackberries that just waste those resources (I don’t see why you waste time and money putting that kind of tech into one device that doesn’t multi-task at all and a bunch of devices that multi-task like crap but I digress)

4. v20.x.xxx firmware should have actually been v10.x.xxx firmware

While I think it is great that the N97 has received 3 firmware updates in the 5 months since its release, I do believe that 2 of them should never have been needed. The update to v11.x.xxx came less than a month after the device was released to take care of some of the problems the phone was shipped with. Just the fact that this release came so quickly tells me that Nokia knew about the problems the phone had but shipped it out anyway (From what I understand, no global firmware update is getting done in 3 weeks. No way! Not happening!) rather than delaying the device another month. The update to v12.x.xxx came just over a month later and contained more bugfixes but nothing groundbreaking. Then came word of the update to v20.x.xxx, an update so significant that Nokia felt the need to have it on display at Nokia World, so significant that there were numerous hands-on videos of the firmware in action, so significant that we ran multiple posts about it on this very site. This is really the firmware that the phone should have come with. Yup! I said it. The changes made in v20 are significant but that’s only because the phone was so lacking to begin with. When you really take a cumulative look at what was added/changed/fixed with this update, you’ll notice that they are all things that the phone should have had the ability to do in the first place. Kinetic scrolling on all menus and lists, longpress for function keys, general stability. These things aren’t monumental, they’re basic accessibility functions and what does the fact that we had to go 5 months without them say about Nokia? Hell, what does it say about us?

I know it must sound strange hearing these words from me, one of the N97’s biggest fanatics but the more I think about it the angrier I get. In my hands, I have one of the most beautifully crafted mobile devices in recent history. So why does it shit the bed shortly after I turn it on?

So tell me, if H.G. Wells showed up at your doorstep and gave you the opportunity to go back in time, what would your advice for Nokia be surrounding the N97?

Related Articles:

• Can We Expect Another N97 Firmware Update By The End Of The Year?
• N97 Firmware Updated To Version 21
• Nokia N97 Firmware 2.0 Is Out! Update Now & Use These Tips

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