The Nokia 5800 is selling well and I believe it will continue to do very well because the Nokia name is very well known. But do you really think that if they priced it with the iPhone at $700-900 unlocked it would have a chance? I really doubt it. Nokia fans who know about S60 capabilities might, but seeing how that interface is worse than the S60v3 interface a true Nokia fan would rather stick with S60v3.

S60v5 is the glitz and glamor side of S60 only with less glamor than what it is trying so hard to be. It should appeal to the same mid-end first timer market the iPhone appeals to only at less than half the price. So it will be successful as the cheaper less glamorous product in the mid-end glamourphone market.

There is no doubt S60 is more capable than the iPhone by virtue of its OS than the iPhone could ever dream of being. I believe the number one issue is the iPhone’s piss poor memory management that kills it even when jailbroken.

Bluetooth Stack

I have no doubt the S60 Bluetooth stack is mature, but I still hear of problems with pairing with certain cars and certain other devices. That problem could easily be fixed with a better BT implementation by anyone now. It’s fair game to anyone including RIM, WinMo, Android, or Palm to improve on that BT stack to the point that it supports all major profiles in all devices. In WinMo as was discussed here you have the choice (by way of disabling certain profiles – not ideal I know) to select whether you want handsfree or headset profile. I realize it’s a little bit of a work around but the OS makes it possible by giving you better access to the components of the BT stack and the option to individually control each one.

With S60 you don’t have an option, you MUST use BT the way Nokia wants you to. I’m not even sure if currently you can pair a Nokia with a BMW car and have it read all the contacts off the phone allowing you to dial off the car’s UI instead of the phone itself.

Hardware Leadership

The hardware on Nokia’s side is getting eclipsed daily and my point is that the competition has caught up to the N95 which uses off the shelf hardware and so everyone has gotten the same generation of hardware with higher screen resolutions, and faster processors and video acceleration. Already some phones can support more video formats in higher resolutions.

I think Nokia is definitely lagging in terms of hardware and will continue to fall further behind over the next year. I do understand that S60 was the first to support in software that level of video capture and playback, and DVB, and GPS and all of the features in the N95. Which is why Nokia was first with a phone supporting all those features. It was their software that made them first. On the flip side it did take them about a year to get everything working to the level that those features were stable and useful. I think we enjoyed being ahead of the world for a good year after that and in many respects we still do. You can’t really find a device that has everything the N95 has in one device even today. However, it’s also telling how most S60 users have given up on the N95 and switched to the new E-series.

I think that is more telling about the features that people really want on their phones. We traded up to smaller, faster, more stable, better PIM including S60 devices while sacrificing many of the cutting edge multimedia functions of the Nseries. At least a good majority of us did. It shows how much we really valued those big features at the end of the day beyond being able to say what the phone can do in terms of big marketing numbers.

Mobile Innovation

I believe that innovation in mobile phones is happening on two fronts. One is to make better and easier to use UIs which serve as a vehicle to entice the first time smartphone buyer and help them use their first smartphones and the capabilities a smartphone can offer. I think Apple and Palm are innovating in that direction. It is the best strategy to use to attack the mid-end of the market by getting people who used to use a dumbphone to try a smartphone that doesn’t intimidate them.

The iPhone has opened up a whole world to many millions of people who were too intimidated to try a smart phone. Now you have people who would have been using a Razr from 3 years ago finding transit directions on Google Maps, using Exchange mail on their phones, using a phone browser, sending, uploading and GPS tagging photos. All sort of new stuff for the beginner. That’s a noble task no matter how our innate elitist tendencies want to dismiss it.

The iPhone IMHO is a glorified dumbphone that runs its own apps instead of J2ME apps and even then some dumbphones now can multitask J2ME apps now. Those iPhone apps are still very weak, but extremely powerful for the former Razr user nonetheless. Though I believe, that jailbroken they can do stuff like torrent and streaming audio. They will be getting Pandora, Slingplayer and Slacker apps soon. Not bad for the former Razr user. Of course no JoikuSpot capability or even copy and paste but it’s better than a Razr.

Openness

The other front of innovation is in pure openness and capability. I believe that’s the market Android is going for. It isn’t a pretty UI and it isn’t a less intimidating OS or phone than anything else out there. It just is going to win because it will implement all the major features S60 has implemented over the last 8 years but do it all in modern implementation that takes a new or even just different approach that fits more with current needs and trends. Being nascent and open to input from all quarters it will develop capability far more quickly and more relevant to how we use our phones today. It will do so via first party Google development and 3rd party user and commercial development.

I doubt there will be anything lacking in Android over the next year. I know they are still far behind today in many basic things like Bluetooth stack and basic framework but they are moving very fast and stand to very easily pass Nokia with the more current thinking they are using to design the OS and to design easy expandability for the platform.

All I know is that between these two schools the battle has started where Android will never have a poor UI but at least a decent one and the Palm and iPhone will slowly become more open. I think Apple particularly had a very cautious launch and added many restrictions to present a mainly standardized face so as to not allow 3rd party apps to weaken the experience of the phone. They very carefully started to add features, make it more stable and relax restrictions. They will never be as open as S60 I have no doubt of that, but they recently announced an official way to tether will be coming (jailbreaking it already allows that) and they allowed 3rd party browsers. I would hate to have to use that phone for all its other restrictions and lacks but it is trying to compete by becoming less closed over time.

Similarly I believe the Palm will allow binary access in time. They are also being careful to not let too much run outside its WebOS system so as to give a solid consistent experience to early adopters who are essential for word of mouth. They would be fools to select such a beast of a hardware platform and not allow in the due course of time. Also they have been clear that the Pre is only the first hardware device of many that will feature the Platform.

Updating 8GB memory to 16GB is something anyone can do by simply putting more dense chips. Everyone company adds storage since its the easiest thing to do. As long as I can have enough media to keep me entertained for 20-30 hours that’s all I need. I’ll care again when we see enough memory to store my entire library of music at 100+GB, until then it’ll always be a compromise of selecting what to put on the phone whether it is 8GB, 16GB, 32GB or 64GB.

I think both schools of approach will keep the other from getting too far behind. The UI school tries not to get too far behind in capability and the capability school tries not to get too far behind in UI.

S60 Interface

Right now S60 in non-touch is very capable and has a good UI for a non touch interface, but seeing how everything is moving to touch I don’t expect much development to be done to the non-touch side of Nokia. I suspect we may never see a non-touch flagship again. The S60v5 product while it does well in being open in theory, it does not fair so well in practice with Symbian signed and lack of developer interest. All with a very poor UI for a pointer-less phone.

It’s so confused that while they designed some elements for finger touch they still included a stylus. Oddly enough targeting a beginner low-end, mid-end market Apple has attracted more developer attention with a small fraction of the installed base of S60 just by making the UI so appealing that many developers got interested. So I think the UI and capability go hand in hand in today’s competitive market.

Still, I think Nokia has such a huge installed base and a capable OS that they can get away with a poor UI, price it right and still get away with it. The 5800 will sell very well based on price and name recognition. It is getting nice new development support from certain quarters like from Shape services, WorldMate and others but I doubt those developers are going to keep making new products for the non-touch line and innovation will fall behind there. In the due course of time we’ll all be quietly migrated over to S60v5 and touch screen devices and that terrible pointer-less UI.

I suppose one could argue that Nokia is attempting the same approach as Android with a more open, capable OS but less emphasis on UI. That’s a valid approach. But it still isn’t as open as Android and frankly its attempt at buttonless, pointerless UI is very poor and certainly not any better than Android in that respect. So in terms of what we will see from this second school of capability over UI I still think Android will soon have S60 beat. It obviously hasn’t happened yet as I know Android still fails to support some basic features like certain basic Bluetooth profiles, but these new platforms are getting those features fast and in many respects better implemented than the older (but well implemented for their time) Nokia implementations.

Final Thoughts

I believe that short of a complete metamorphosis in Symbian Foundation OS will not be able to keep up with Android. I’m less of a fan boy and more of someone who wants to keep up with the product that gives me the most forward looking prospects while doing all the things I need to do on a daily basis. It may very well be that I will keep my Nokia E66 or get an E75 to keep around while I explore Android, but should the Android phone I choose offer me a decent PIM with the ability to add meetings, access meetings, contact information, call people, SMS and reply, access certain school intranet sites through proxy as fast as the E66 does then why should I keep it around?

I have a feeling that Android may very well allow me to do my daily tasks as well as S60 or even better while giving me more software to try and to boot it certainly it seems better to navigate than S60v5. Scrolling in a submenu is just the weirdest concept to me on a phone that purportedly was designed to be controlled using your fingers. Yet there is a stylus. I don’t get it.