Hey Nokia, Me Go Now?
So Nokia has released a brand new handset. Here’s their “Design story”: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxUymqLGG-M&w=500&h=417]
Firstly, there is just something about this video that makes it feel like a cheesy parody of an Apple product video on a late night sketch comedy show.
In terms of the phone itself, there are two really big things that bug me:
No buttons? Whatever.
So the big selling point of this phone is that it has no physical buttons; the need for a button has been replaced with a series of swipe gestures. In the video, Nokia’s SVP of design, Marko Ahtisaari (pictured above) mentions two functional benefits of having no buttons: “This all screen phone makes more room for apps to shine and is incredibly easy to use”
Really? You’re going to put all your eggs in that basket? Really?
Let’s talk about “more room for apps to shine” – the N9 will have a screen size of 3.9 inches. Existing devices already on the market have larger screen sizes like the HTC Desire HD which has a 4.3 inch screen. And physical buttons. Maybe Marko was talking about screen resolution? The N9 will boast a resolution of 480x854, which is far inferior to the iPhone 4’s 640x960 resolution – again, iPhones have physical buttons. So removing the buttons isn’t exactly going to break any app shining records.
In terms of being “incredibly easy to use”, the argument seems to be that swiping on the edge of the screen is easier than pressing a home button. To hear Marko speaking so proudly of the swipe gesture it feels like we may actually be watching a really bad actor instead of the SVP of design for the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer. Surely Marko is not trying to convince us that the swipe gesture is revolutionary – mate, we have used other touchscreen devices and they pretty much all use a swipe gesture somewhere. Heck, I think even my microwave increases cooking temperature when you swipe it. Personally I think pressing a home button is just as easy to use (if not easier) than swiping on the edge of the screen. I have no formal research to back this up so it’s just my opinon, but I would bet that if you put an iPhone and an N9 in front of someone who has never used a mobile device before, they will figure out the iPhone home button before figuring out how to swipe to get home on the Nokia.
So we can pretty definitively say that having no buttons has no bearing on giving room for apps to shine or ease of use. I actually don’t mind if it has no buttons, it’s a few extra usage behaviours for people to have to learn, but on the whole it’s not a massive departure from every other smartphone out there. From the video, the interface seems to be a pretty straightforward mashup of iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 interface elements, so there aren’t likely to be any massive surprises from this “me too” approach.
So why are Nokia making such a big deal about this phone?
This brings me to my next point…
“N9” is Finnish for “Let’s make our money back”
Let’s review the facts:
- The Nokia N9 runs on MeeGo OS
- MeeGo was a joint venture between Nokia and Intel, started in Feb 2010
- Nokia withdrew from the project earlier this year
- They have now signed an agreement with Microsoft for all future Nokia smartphones to run on Windows Phone 7
Nokia invested heavily in the MeeGo experiment and obviously didn’t find what they were looking for, so pulled out. That’s fine, sometimes these things don’t work out. They obviously don’t believe in the platform, and they obviously think WP7 is better. So why release a one-time only MeeGo handset?
Nokia spent a lot of time and money on MeeGo, and to see zero return would be a massive blow. So they’ve rushed out a product, are hyping the hell out of it (“look, no buttons!”) to recoup costs. This is a wise business decision for their balance sheet, but it’s not good for consumers and probably not good for long term brand perception – one would have to expect some form of consumer backlash when the product fails to live up to the super-hype and when the company stops supporting it as soon as their shiny new WP7 products hit the market.
Even with missteps like this, Nokia still sell more mobile handsets worldwide than any other manufacturer, but they just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to smartphones; choice of OS seems to have been a major problem, first with Symbian and now Meego. Hopefully they can get it right when they move to Microsoft’s platform.
Please Nokia, for now just stick to selling millions of cheap low-end handsets to people in third world countries. Wake us up when the N10 running Windows Phone 7 arrives – and feel free to leave the cheesy design video at the door.