Q&A With Nokia Nseries Product Manager

March 26th, 2009 • Mark Guim • Filed Under •

Today, I met with Ira Frimere, the product manager for the Nokia N97 and N86 for some Q&A at the Nokia White Plains offices. We initially planned for some hands-on videos, but due to miscommunication, I was not allowed to use the camcorder inside the building (a big dude and another guy in black suit approached me seconds after turning on the cam near the entrance). Nevertheless, Ira still gave me demos including unannounced features that I cannot mention. I’m not complaining, but this is unfortunate for our readers.

Luckily, I did not go home empty-handed. I gathered questions from readers and asked after the demo. Here are the questions that were sent to me from Twitter and HOFO.

Are the videos Nokia put on youtube with those slick CGI graphics anywhere near representative of the final software? @s_constantine

While these are simulations, they are indicative of the transition elements of the Nokia N97. There are some very exciting and new transition elements in the device that are showcased in the videos.

Will Nokia be bringing plugins to home screens on Nokia 5800 like they will have with Nokia N97? @skillster

There are no announced plans for this in the 5800 at this time.

When will Nokia start releasing phones with T-Mobile USA 3g on them? @antoine66

We have released the 6263 and 3555 with T-Mobile 3G. We are committed to our partnership with T-Mobile.

Does Nokia plan to use the N97 as a launch phone for their app store? @corvida

The N97 will be the first device to have the Ovi Store integrated with it.

What is the processor, how many cores, and what clock speed for N97? @andreinchile

Our public announced specs are available at http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/N97

Why resistive vs capacitive screen? @edumana

Consumer research showed people prefer a device they can type on while walking around in different usage scenarios. Resistive screens don’t require as great precision in interaction. It is also more flexible and robust than capacitive touch and can be used by people with wet hands, long nails, or even wearing gloves. Also, it enables stylus and handwriting recognition for US as well as Asian markets and gives additional options to 3rd party developers.

A good blog post about resistive & capacitive.

Are the homescreen widgets resizable? (ex. mail widget could take 2 slots) @idela

No, not at this time.

Why is loudspeaker volume different across the entire lineup? rogerpodacter@hofo

Throughout the individual lifecycle of designing and building a mobile device, tough product decisions need to be made prioritized by the primary goals of the product. These difficult product decisions can result in varying performance levels for various features. Fortunately there are many Nokia devices with great loud speakers, like the Nokia 5800 and the N97.

Features that used to be exclusive to the N-series have made their way down to E and numbered devices; Will the Nseries get back to doing things in the lineup that other Nokia devices do not do, or will it morph into something different, still high-end, but less differentiated? arjwright@hofo

The goal of our Nseries devices is provide the ultimate personal mobile computing experience. Features chosen for our NSeries devices must help us reach this goal, regardless of their exclusivity.

What was the reasoning behind the Internet Tablets being brought into Nseries devices, and would it be safe to assume future devices would follow the same trends? arjwright@hofo

Our N800 and N810 internet tablets offered the tech leader community a very fun and exciting new mobile platform to explore, for accessing the web and communicating with those you find most important in your life. Keep in mind that the goal of the Nseries, as mentioned earlier, is to provide the ultimate personal mobile computing experience and provide users with a unique experience. The openness that the tablets provided to the development community has resulted in some very impressive innovations (ex. puppy robot, star trek padd).

Being a high-end segment of Nokia’s lineup, has the recent economic woes tempered the creativity and execution of Nseries researchers and developers? arjwright@hofo

Tough economic times are usually signs that we need even more innovation and creativity than before—-While tough economic times force us to make tough choices, our drive and hunger toward creative and innovative products and services has only been increased as it is necessary to provide compelling devices and services to our consumers.

How can devices with such high price tags have so many quality control issues like wobbly sliders? sjhong@hofo

Nokia is very proud of its record in providing the highest of quality products to our consumers and will continue to maintain and improve upon our quality standards.

When will Nseries devices see 3D acceleration again? gundam@hofo

There are no plans to announce at this time

Final Thoughts

I was told I’d be invited to the Nokia offices again as we get closer to the release date for the Nokia N97 or Nokia N86. They promised the security guys won’t bother me next time. So… what are your thoughts to Nokia’s responses to your questions?

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  • Frank
    Nokia is full of BS, not even a month later after this interview:

    http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/17/n...

    I think a market leader should innovate and not just follow and emulate its smallest competitors.
  • Viipottaja
    This person is A product manager for THE N97. NOT THE product manager for ALL N Series.

    Seriously people, do you really expect a lowly product manager (every single phone model has one, so there are literally dozens of them in Nokia and you obviously cannot expect them to reply to questions that are not specific to the device they are working on. Business simply does not work that way.

    The most specific answer she (?) did provide was on the widgets, transitions, Ovi Store etc. which are speficic features of the product she manages. I was actually surprised she replied that 3D hardware acceleration at all. If I was her I would have said that something that is not disclosed.
  • He's also the PM for the N86. Not sure what other Nseries phones he is working on because those are the only 2 upcoming Nseries phones publicly announced so far.
  • should we add the Xenon vs LED flash...

    "studies and research have shown that people never understood why we use LED over Xenon and we're not smart enough to spend a couple more and add Xenon even though the difference in them is tremendous"

    but i will take the guys side on slider, i never had probs with the slider on N95 8GB and i used it normally, same with N85... why do people complain so much.. yea it losen's up quite abit but its not exactly life treatening

    on graphics card, their idio*ts .. implement a graphics card when hardly anyone uses it.. but when people actually realize its worth something.. they get rid of it???

    What about N-gage. yea its crazy to believe you would ever need a graphics card for 3d games...

    HAHAHA you should have just asked about the N-gage and no graphics card in every question..

    later homies, keep chillin
  • should we add the Xenon vs LED flash...

    "studies and research have shown that people never understood why we use LED over Xenon and we're not smart enough to spend a couple more and add Xenon even though the difference in them is tremendous"

    but i will take the guys side on slider, i never had probs with the slider on N95 8GB and i used it normally, same with N85... why do people complain so much.. yea it losen's up quite abit but not its exactly life treatening

    on graphics card, their idio*ts .. implement a graphics card when hardly anyone uses it.. but when people actually realize its worth something.. they get rid of it???

    What about N-gage. yea its crazy to believe you would ever need a graphics card for 3d games...

    HAHAHA you should have just asked about the N-gage and no graphics card in every question..

    later homies, keep chillin
  • I read this just few hours ago and its amazing to see and talk with great people from nokiA!..
  • Vee
    seriously, what can we expect right, that first time phone maker told nobody about there specs or design, there stores didn't even train on it till day of. So we've got what info they want us to know well have to wait
  • I have to agree, I hate the responses they gave you. You asked very pertinent, clear questions, and they gave you indirect, dodgy, overly cautious answers. It's clear they're only pretending to engage with you or your readers, when in reality they're holding you at arm's length and providing boilerplate press release fluff.

    I felt the same way a couple of weeks ago when you asked a Nokia rep some good questions and received the same awful type of responses. The only companies who do that sort of thing are companies who take a hostile view of their customers--companies who think their customers are dangerous and need to be properly managed.

    Just answer the questions, Nokia! Do you really think doing that will send your stock diving? If you do, then don't pretend to answer them at all and just stay silent. Don't insult the early adopters who follow news about your company so closely.

    /rant
  • I don't understand the idea behind removal of 3D graphics accelerator from all the latest Nokia N series phones.
    My N82 is much better than the newer N series models as it has got a better hardware with 3D graphics accelerator & camera than any of the current N series model.
  • clay
    Gosh, I hope that paid for your gas money. They could have mailed that one in. Pat responses that in no way answered your questions. You should have pressed them. Pure fluff.
  • ming387
    This is not an informative interview at all, more to just be polite to the curious Nokia fans.

    You mentioned unannounced features... Are you talkng about the processor? You don't have to say what it is, but it would be great if you can point us to it. =)

    I think the processor will be extremely powerful since the N97 is designed to be multi-tasking all the time. The widget homescreen is set to constantly process live information from the internet/wlan, gps and cell network. Most of the current Nokia processors are not up to the task that the N97 is designed to do.
  • We didn't talk about processors... we talked about features, applications, widgets, and devices. The main device I paid attention to was the Nokia N97. It was still proto. Some areas were pretty responsive, while others weren't. I really like it so far.
  • Thank you Mark for the questions!

    I am not sure anyway if resistive is better than capacitive, the answer, although logical, is not good enough to decide which one is better. I guess it is a 50/50 thing.
  • Frank
    - The N97 transitions will look nothing like the CGI we have seen in videos, lack of hardware accelleration is part of the problem. As you can read his answer to that question was "the transision in the CGI are INDICATIVE of the final product"..I would say expect no transitions at all or near all.

    - The argument about Resistive-capacitive screen makes me laugh, so why have Apple and Google/HTC invested in capacitive? The right answer should be, "we made a wrong judgement where touch panels were going, and we wrote S60 around resistive". I haven't seen somebody asking for handwriting recognition since the PDA times.

    Symbian is going nowhere, and they know that, they pubicly stated that the only community behind symbian is the one they pay for. They need to adopt Android or come out with something different like Palm webOS or Apple mobileOSX.
  • Thanks a lot for passing along the questions. Unfortunately he did not answer many of them.

    If a customer has a problem with the build quality the least he wants to hear is that Nokia is very proud of the great build quality (!?!)

    Also I agree with jebac if Nokia does not speak about processor and clock speed then it means it will be nothing revolutionary unfortunately ;(
  • Yes, pretending there aren't build quality issues is poor form on Nokia's part. I was more than a little disappointed to see such a political, dodgy answer from Nokia on this question in particular.
  • tony
    That is the worst interview ever. this person should be a politician. They managed to completely avoid nearly every question. Very disappointing, I'm off to buy an iphone.
  • Those answers are the same as if from a White House Press Secretary, dodgy.
  • http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/N97

    Exactly, in the above link, there is no mention of CPU. There are alot of confusion on which ARM CPU the N97 will get. Im hoping its over 600
  • nokia today announced the secret: ARM 11 434 MHz single core. I was sure to buy a n97 but with todays announcement they lost me and many many others see the active discussion on: http://www.symbian-freak.com/forum/viewtopic.ph...
  • Honestly, I didn't want to ask that question because I already knew what the answer would be. I don't care about processor, arm, cpu, blahblah, etc. What's important to me is if it'll be responsive when I actually use it.
  • jebac
    the link for the hardware specs doesn't give out clock speed or cores. Why are they so adamant in not telling the speeds? is it a low clock speed?

    also, how can a flagship not have 3D acceleration???
  • Adrien Flammen
    I think that most of the answers were evasive, like the quality and specs. Dunno, but Nokia is losing it's charm. I feel myself tending to buy an iPhone, Palm or other brand S60 phone to replace my N95 8GB if Nokia keep going on this direction. I can remember years back when N series was the meccha of cellphones, and now N97 is just "cool... looks good"
    They really need to change to get back on the lead, or nokia will follow palm's fate in the handheld market.
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