Nic posted a tweet the other day which just irked me.

He was responding to a post I published about how Gizmodo covered the N97, not because I disagreed with Gizmodo’s criticisms but because I objected to how Gizmodo covered the topic. From my perspective the Gizmodo post could have been about any brand or product and I still would have objected. It just so happens I saw the Gizmodo post because I have been reading reviews of the N97, most of which have been pretty critical of the device (and most of which I agree with).

I had a brief sms conversation with Nic after I saw his tweet and the one issue which came up was credibility and coming across too strong(ly?) when I write about stuff on my blog, Nokia stuff in particular. The same issue came up earlier today when Rich responded to a silly tweet I posted:

By way of introduction

There are a couple things I’d like to get out of the way here quickly:

• First, the only companies paying me for my blogging are Google and Afrigator and even then my earnings are negligible (I am expecting my first cheque from Afrigator for about R400 or so for a couple months’ ads);
• Contrary to popular belief, I am not employed or otherwise contracted by Nokia (I have a business which I am building);
• I have received a couple benefits writing about Nokia and its products which most people don’t receive (you can read about them on my Disclosures page) but that isn’t why I write so much about Nokia – I do it because I am actually a fan and have been for over a decade;
• I am not a journalist and don’t purport to be one;
• There are no strings attached when it comes to Nokia. In fact, Nokia people have demonstrated themselves to be very much aware of the risk of unduly influencing bloggers and have gone to some effort to avoid doing that.

Where was I? Oh yes, passion …

I outlined my approach to my blog in my previous post on this subject:

I write about things I am passionate about. I believe that this passion means I am incapable of being unbiased about what I write about and I instead focus on being authentic in my posts. I write what I feel, think and believe rather than what I am told to write. That has become my measure of success as a blogger. In doing so I also attract criticism for being too focussed on particular brands or topics. Does this undermine my credibility? I don’t really know and I would rather be as transparent as I can be about my influences and leave it up to my readers to decide how much weight, if any, to give to what I write.

Seeing that the criticism I face is about how much I write and what I have to say about Nokia, I’ll start there. I have always had a Nokia phone. My first phone was a Nokia 2110i back in the late 1990s and I can probably tell you which Nokia phones I have owned since then. There has always been one brand for me (at least until the iPhone opened the door to an alternative). There are about 123 posts on this blog where I mention Nokia (ok, 124 if you include this one) and about 35 of those posts were published from about December 2008 when I first had access to someone at Nokia SA (specifically, Mathia Nalappan, Nokia SA’s General Manager). One of my earliest Nokia posts was published on 25 January 2005 when I wrote about my Nokia 6600 and thoughts about what my next Nokia phone would be.

As you can see, I’ve been writing about Nokia for a while now and that was all about my passion for Nokia phones and the brand. There have been times when I was pretty critical of Nokia (in particular my much reviled Nokia N73 ME) and times when I have been very complimentary. What has changed in recent months is that I have been given access to review units, Nokia people and I even got to fly to Dubai (I have heard that this was pretty controversial and pissed a lot of people off) where I met a number of people from Nokia MEA and HQ and had insights into Nokia’s culture and methodologies which just inspired even more passion about Nokia. This extra exposure to Nokia has been fantastic. I am a gadget nut (phones especially) and being able to test out new phones has been a real highlight for me. Being able to interface with Nokia people in various roles has been even more exciting. I learned about Nokia’s commitment to social media (probably a strong factor behind the decision to send me to Dubai), its customers, its design philosophy and how it sees its devices as components of the social Web. More access + Nokia people who take the time to listen to me = more passion for Nokia and its products.

Passion is also the driving force of social media itself. It is the stuff that case studies are made of and the glue that binds communities that spring up around products, brands, ideas and more. People have always evangelised stuff they really like and criticised the stuff they don’t. They have used word of mouth to spread the word. This is what we all do every day when we share our passions for the stuff we care about. I certainly do.

Let’s talk about me again

Social media is another of my passions. I use social media every day and have difficulty imagining/remembering a time when I couldn’t express myself the way I do. I can be pretty intense when I am really excited about something and I put that down to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I mentioned earlier that I am not a journalist and don’t claim to be one. I say this because there seems to be an expectation that bloggers behave like journalists. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy. Blogs are a way to express yourself and while there are many excellent journalists who use blogs as effective tools (Simon Dingle and Duncan McLeod are two journos who I respect tremendously and who blog in addition to their other work), there are also many people who use a blog as a way to have their say. I am one of the latter group of bloggers. I write about the stuff I care enough about to set aside a couple hours per post to write about. I don’t claim to be unbiased at all. Rather I believe that my passion for what I write about makes me inherently biased and I don’t make any apologies for that. I do my best to be accurate when I report facts but you tend to get a lot of wild opinion from me too. Ultimately it is up to you to decide for yourself if what I write has any value to you and, if so, how much.

This idea of passionate blogging is hardly new. Nic runs the popular SA Rocks blog which is all about passion for South Africa. Rich is, to me at least, passion on two legs and his passion for his family, freebording (not sure if I am spelling that correctly), whichever brand of rock/music he goes for, tattoos and more seeps out of his various online spaces. In fact, when I think about being passionate about what you do, I immediately think of Nic and Rich who I both respect and am continuously inspired by.

This blog is one of my outlets and one of the brands/companies I am passionate about is Nokia. It may not be the most popular brand/company amongst my critics but I dig it and I therefore write about it. Perhaps the comment that I write like Nokia pays me is an apt comment because it implies a certain degree of motivation and drive to write about Nokia except that motivation isn’t money. It isn’t even about the access I have to new phones (although that does fan the flames) or even the fact that Nokia sent me to Dubai (I loved the business class flight, no question, and I really enjoyed meeting the people I met). I write about Nokia because I have been a Nokia fan for as long as I have owned a mobile phone. Nokia may not make the best mobile devices in the world but there are other reasons for me to be passionate about Nokia and that is why I keep talking about Nokia.

I’m not going to argue with my critics about my credibility. Credibility isn’t about how I see myself, its about how you see me. My only suggestion is that you read what I write, compare what I have to say with people who regard as credible, authoritative or whatever your measure of value is and decide for yourself what value my posts have for you. There are a couple things I don’t do. I don’t write positive posts in exchange for payment in cash or goods. I also don’t allow companies to unduly influence my posts in any other way. I also don’t appreciate suggestions that I do these things and I especially don’t appreciate any suggestions that I am being dishonest.

Ultimately, though, it is up to you to decide for yourself what to take from my posts. I’m just sharing what I am passionate about.

Related posts:

1. Which rules should bloggers play by?
2. Woolly thoughts about evangelism
3. Changes to Grouchy Blogger and to Neuvo

I don’t even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia’s managed to make RIM’s BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it’s a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it. Since I have nothing nice to say, let’s keep this part short.

This sort of writing may appeal to Gizmodo readers but it certainly doesn’t appeal to me at all. Gizmodo is supposed to be one of the authoritative tech blogs on the Web and it seems to need to resort to this sort of junk writing to get attention.

Now, this criticism isn’t based on my disagreement with the criticisms of the N97 when comparing it to other modern smartphones like the iPhone 3Gs. I don’t disagree with many of the concerns raised but I have far more respect for blogs like MobileCrunch and podcasts like the gdgt podcast for the way they discussed the N97’s limitations (here and here, respectively).

Anyway, I did my social media thing this morning and posted a comment to one of Buchanan’s latest posts which I took a screenshot of in case it isn’t published for some reason:

I wasn’t much of a Gizmodo fan before but I don’t have nearly enough respect for the blog now to consider it a worthwhile source of news, for whatever my opinion is worth.

Related posts:

1. Nokia N97 vs the iPhone 3Gs and a few other thoughts
2. iPhone announcement on Monday?!
3. Donn Edwards settles defamation case with Quality Vacation Club

That being said I have been wondering lately about the Symbian operating system itself. I listened to a great interview with Scott Weiss, the User Interface Technology Manager at the Symbian Foundation which is now tasked with developing Symbian and there are clearly some changes coming which bode well for Symbian. Whether they come too late is another question. What I have been wondering about is this: if you look beneath the UI at the operating system itself, is Nokia using a robust, powerful and modern operating system or is it as dated as the UI? The N97 seems to be running a slower processor and have less RAM but if the operating system is lightweight enough to thrive on those more limited resources then users shouldn’t see too much of a problem with performance. Buchanan commented that the N97 begins to slow down when running multiple processes but he neglects to mention that the iPhone, for one, doesn’t run multiple processes at all and all the power of its processor is dedicated to running single processes.

As far as the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs is concerned, I found two helpful comparative reviews in the last few days. Alec Saunders took the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs for a walk around San Francisco and tested a number of features of both devices. I think his post is pretty helpful if you are deciding between the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs so be sure to read it. Another helpful comparative review is this video review comparing the two devices literally side by side:

Also take a look at Michael’s profile page on YouTube, he has also compared the two browsers on the two devices.

The N97 is taking a lot of heat for its UI and given its competitors the criticism isn’t unwarranted. At the same time it will be some time before we see any major changes to the Symbian UI (Scott Weiss spoke in terms of 2011 or so). Hopefully that won’t be too late for Nokia which is losing ground in the smartphone market and will continue to lose ground, especially to Apple which has priced its iPhone 3G at $99 (on contract) in the US. I imagine we will see the price reduction filter through here eventually and the iPhone pick up more fanatics in SA too.

I was chatting to Craig Nicholson and Chris Onderstall at the end of alt.conference the other day about the iPhone 3Gs and the N97. Craig is in the market for a new device and was debating the relative merits of both devices as platforms and in their own right with me. I told him that if I was faced with a choice which device to buy (on contract or cash), I would be very tempted by the iPhone 3Gs. It is the iPhone I have been waiting for Apple to produce for some time now. It still has a couple limitations when compared to the N97 which has quite a bit going for it too. With this kind of competition, Nokia has its work cut out for it going forward.

Related posts:

1. Underestimating Nokia, blinded by the iPhone
2. A few thoughts about the Nokia E75
3. The iPod Touch and iPhone: more versatile and compelling

When it came to briefing our fantastic speakers, I asked the speakers to speak about something relevant to social media and to keep it relevant and engaging for people already in the biz, so to speak. Beyond that I left it up to them to decide what to speak about. I was really curious what they would talk about. I also came up with the idea what I loosely called the “ideastorm” session (not my term although it did seem to fit quite nicely). I asked Gaby Rosario, Allan Kent and Max Kaizen to facilitate these sessions (Gaby and Allan in Cape Town and Max in Joburg). The idea I had for this session was to treat the audience as a panel and stimulate discussions about social media related topics. Aside from that I similarly left it up to them to decide how to run that session.

I ran the Joburg event which was hosted at Vox Telecom (thanks to Lantz Mattinson who helped get the venue connected and set up for us). After a series of small technical hitches (for a change our MacBooks gave us hassles!) were off to a terrific start. I won’t go into the various sessions in any real detail here because I hope to publish videos from the sessions soon (well, as soon as I can get the video off the tapes, edit it, export and publish it … you know, soon!) but there were a couple things about the event which a couple people commented on and which I believe were significant.

For one thing we were all inspired as South Africans working in our respective fields. Between Justin Spratt and Nic Haralambous, we realised (or even confirmed our feelings and thoughts on the matter) that doing what we do here in South Africa gives us a number of advantages. Despite the global economic crisis, we are well placed to succeed in South Africa for a variety of reasons, not least of which a renewal of faith and interest in South Africa as an innovation hub. I have had this growing sense for a while now that nations we usually look to as leaders in tech and on the Web like the United States are, in fact, almost primitive in some respects when compared to South Africa. We are also not as exposed to the world’s financial woes and may even begin to recover a lot sooner. Add increased bandwidth in the years to come and South Africa could well become an even better place to be as a Web professional.

Another important realisation that we came to was that despite a powerful obsession with the tech we use to engage with each other online (whether that tech be Twitter, Facebook, Twitter apps, mobile devices or browsers), when it comes right down to it, social media is more about being social than it is about the media we use to achieve that. Carl Spies and Walter Pike spoke passionately, reminding us that this social media revolution we participate in daily is a hi-tech return to a very human form of interaction that we forgot about. Social media is a celebration of our humanity and of our relationships with each other. The tools we use are just that, tools.

By the time we reached the end of the Joburg session it was clear that there is a need for these sorts of gatherings. They are a terrific opportunity to get together and talk. Max commented to me that there was quite a bit of conversation taking place in the kitchen during the breaks as people went through there to make tea, coffee or grab something cold to drink. This wasn’t at all intended but worked out well nonetheless!

I was also watching tweets coming out of the Cape Town event and everyone there seemed to have a fantastic time thanks, in no small part, to Paul Cartmel and the New Media Labs team who hosted the Cape Town event (and who I hope will host it again in future). If you’d like to get an idea what happened in Cape Town, be sure to check out Allan Kent’s post. Allan was kind enough to MC the Cape Town event as well as facilitate the ideastorm session with Gaby.

My thinking behind having the two events occur at the same time was to encourage a flow of feedback and information between the two events via Twitter and FriendFeed and I think that worked pretty well. There seemed to be a lag with the Twitter stream into the FriendFeed channel but there was a pretty strong flow of comments, reports and feedback throughout the day which left a pretty rich record on FriendFeed. You can find pretty much all mentions of the event which used either “altconf” or “alt.conference”, certainly on Twitter.

While this post really doesn’t do the events and the people who attended/spoke/facilitated justice, I enjoyed being part of it tremendously. I am constantly reminded that we are surrounded with such smart, savvy and compassionate people who do amazing work. We have access to incredible talent and we saw some of that talent on display at alt.conference.

Once again I would like to thank all our sponsors and all the people who helped make this possible in their way. No contribution was too small and without them all, alt.conference may not have been the success it was.

We have already started talking about the next alt.conference later this year. There are still so many things we would like to explore and experiment with. I’d like you to be part of that so head over to the alt.conference site and sign up. Participate in the ongoing conversation.

Related posts:

1. More of what you can expect at alt.conference
2. Go go alt.conference – a preview of what to expect
3. 2nd New Media Marketing Conference preview

The E75 is, in some ways, similar to its predecessor, the E71 in that both are designed to be business messaging devices. That being said the E75 is also touted as a great device for your leisure time too. While its functionality does tend to support both your personal and business needs, the device’s design lends itself far more to business use.

The obvious innovation with this device (at least as an Eseries device) is the slide out keyboard which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand the larger keyboard makes typing more comfortable and on the other hand the flat keys made it a little more difficult for me to type accurately. That may just be me and my biggish fingers but I kept hitting surrounding keys by mistake. There are a couple other features the E75 has which make this a device worth considering if you are keen on an Eseries device. The E75 has a narrower form factor and the more conventional alphanumeric keypad on the front of the phone for people more accustomed to this form factor rather than the E71’s (and several other members of the Eseries line) qwerty keyboard. It runs a newer version of the S60 3rd edition software and comes with Nokia Messaging which is a huge improvement over the usual Nokia email client you find on Nokia’s smartphones (even the flagship N97, for some reason).

These improvements do improve your experience of the device although I was happy to return to my E71 with its admittedly smaller and yet easier to use keyboard. I found the E75 a little bulky after my E71. The E75 is about double the width and it is heavier. While it can be easy to forget you have an E71 in your pocket (it is slim and relatively light), you will definitely feel an E75 in your pocket. I do prefer the E75’s software version over my E71’s but when it comes down to it, I’d stick with the E71 (or perhaps hold out for an E72) if I were given a choice between the two devices. This is really one of those times you have to play with both devices and pick the one you personally prefer. Neither device is inherently better than the other (and no, I won’t even attempt a comparison with the iPhone or even the N97, both of which are in a class of their own).

The E75 will get the job done (and, in the process, help you get yours done). It is a solid device with a decent set of software features you will expect to find in an Eseries device. If you are in the market for a business device that is not a Blackberry then perhaps you should consider this one.

Related posts:

1. The Nokia N97’s promise
2. Work-life balance and the Nokia E75
3. Nokia N97 vs the iPhone 3Gs and a few other thoughts

So here are more details for the Joburg event:

… and the Cape Town event:

There is still space at both events so feel free to sign up if you are interested in attending. It costs a mere R250 to attend the event and there are payment details on the front page of the site.

I would be remiss for not mentioning our sponsors. We have a terrific group of sponsors who include the following:

• Bare Creative who designed our very funky logo;
• AlterSage who are sponsoring labels and have helped us promote the events;
• Vox Telecom which has generously sponsored the Joburg venue;
• New Media Labs which has generously sponsored the CT venue as well as a host of other goodies for CT attendees;
• Skyrove which has sponsored an access point in Cape Town; and
• Nokia SA which has sponsored a little something for Joburg attendees.

We have one or two other sponsors who have sponsored t-shirts and one or two other things too. A very big thank you to the sponsors!

Related posts:

1. Go go alt.conference – a preview of what to expect
2. Alt.conference – more social than media
3. 2nd New Media Marketing Conference preview

I will hopefully have an opportunity to chat to Kalle in some format about plans for the the Ovi Suite on the Mac (Linux is apparently a little tricky) and I’ll publish a follow up post.

I am going to keep this post here as a reminder to myself just how wrong I can go sometimes. It seems that I was off base just based on my initial interaction with Kalle today. One of the dangers of being an impulsive blogger and not a trained journalist!

Update 2: The FAQ on the site (look under “Learn More”) has been updated with the following:

6. Are you also going to release a Nokia Ovi Suite for Mac?
Yes, a version of Nokia Ovi Suite for Mac will be released at some time in the future.

7. How about Linux?
Nokia Ovi Suite has the tech enablers, but building an linux support for Ovi Suite is not in the scope currently. Naturally we are constantly following how the desktop operating system markets evolves.

Nokia has just launched Ovi Suite 2.0 beta which is intended to replace all those other versions of Nokia PC Suite which you may have for all of your phones. The new desktop software has a new look and has pretty much been designed from the ground up. Here is a little background from the Nokia press release:

We’ve changed the direction and thought about what would be the ideal Nokia desktop app for our users. We’ve analyzed existing apps, looked how different people use them and really started to think what the primary use cases users need are. Then we started drawing, designing, usability testing, planning, implementing, and testing a totally new Qt-based Nokia desktop application, which we now bring to you for Beta testing: Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0, a fresh start to Nokia’s desktop presence. With Qt we were able to make the UI look fresh and light.

Fabulous. The new software looks fantastic. The catch? Well, despite having started from a clean slate, there is still no version of the Ovi Suite for anyone other than a Windows user! So this means no software update via your MacBook or Linux machine (yes, more and more Nokia devices will be able to update over the air … one day, but still). There are other apps for Macs which allow you to update Maps and so on but Mac users are very much second class citizens and Linux users are those cousins from another country with bad personal hygiene who you pretend are on another planet – they just don’t feature.

The reason for the emphasis on Windows compatibility in the past has been that the majority of users are Windows users and so receive the lion’s share of the developers’ attention. This held water, to a point, but now that Nokia has rewritten the application using, even in part, the cross-platform Qt development environment (or whatever it is classified as) I don’t accept that rationale anymore. Jbernardo pointed this out in the discussion forum:

Since Nokia bought Trolltech, a qt based multi-platform application should be easy, right? You’d have Mac, Linux and Windows native versions with the same codebase!

This is the sort of development decision I’d expect from a startup with a very limited development budget, not an organisation with Nokia’s resources. So why are there still no versions for Mac and Linux users? This is just nuts. If anything Nokia is giving Mac users fewer reasons to buy its products. As you know the iPhone 3GS released recently and as a Mac user, it is very appealing. I was sitting with my son a couple nights ago waiting for him to fall asleep (lots of thinking time) and I was comparing the N97 and the iPhone 3GS. The two devices are pretty evenly matched as I see it and the one thing the iPhone 3GS has over the N97 (and any other Nokia device) is its compatibility with my MacBook. You plug it in, it syncs, updates and does stuff seamlessly. I’m looking forward to getting a N97 but I do wonder how easy it will be to sync with my iTunes playlists, my contacts and calendars via iSync and so on. I can understand why Mac users go to the iPhone immediately. If there was at least a Mac version of the same software that Windows users used (let’s not forget Linux users either) then I would be secure in the knowledge that there was a bridge between my phone and my MacBook that covered my bases. Heck, even Apple has an option for Windows users through iTunes (ok, once again sorry for you Linux users who are forced to come up with some other solution).

Unfortunately I am not in a big enough demographic to get any real attention from Nokia. Linux users can whistle for any real attention (they’ll probably look to Android for their smartphone goodness). What will it take for Nokia to develop an Ovi Suite for all Nokia fans or is Nokia just not interested in us non-Windows users? Doesn’t seem like it at all.

Related posts:

1. Nokia is planning to step aside as market leader
2. Linux less secure than Windows?
3. Ovi.com is more meh than mind blowing

Alt.conference is around the corner and there are already over 80 people who have joined the Alt.conference site. So what is this all about? Well, here is a nifty poster I just whipped up which gives you the nutshell details of what I hope will be a pretty exciting event:

Please feel free to download the promo poster and pass it around to anyone who would be interested in attending. I’d love to see more social media pros there as well as their clients who would like to see what else is going on in the SA online space.

I am also interested in anyone who is interested in sponsoring the event (if anyone is interested, I have a sponsorship package which may be of interest).

I’ve managed to put together a pretty exciting lineup for the Joburg and Cape Town events. Both events are going to be really interesting and I am kicking myself that I decided to arrange them for the same time. Next time they’ll run on different days so I can attend both. So here are some of the smarties you can expect:

Cape Town

• Henk Kleynhans
• David and Marc Perel
• Allan Kent
• Gaby Rosario
• Bev Merriman

Joburg

• Justin Spratt
• Nic Haralambous
• Melissa Attree
• Max Kaizen

I have also set up a FriendFeed channel which will update realtime (just include the tag “altconf” in your tweets, Flickr uploads etc and the channel should import your mentions). The channel will probably look a little like this:

I chose FriendFeed as the aggregator because it updates in realtime and has terrific conversational capabilities but feel free to chat about alt.conference wherever suits you best and let me know if the FriendFeed channel isn’t importing your feed and I’ll add it.

Account holder: Leo Archer CC
Bank: Standard Bank
Branch: Sandton (019 205)
Account number: 42 096 219 0

Very important: Please include a payment reference using the following format: First_initial Last_name C/J (depending on whether you are attending the Cape Town or Joburg event)

Related posts:

1. More of what you can expect at alt.conference
2. Alt.conference – more social than media
3. 2nd New Media Marketing Conference preview

The media event kicked off in ernest with presentations by Chris Braam, Nokia’s Vice President of Sales for the Middle East and Africa region, and JP Sipponen, Nokia’s Director of the Ultimate Product Group, Nokia Nseries. The presentations largely focussed on Internet usage trends with an obvious focus on mobile Internet usage.

Braam said there are roughly 1.3 billion Internet users in the world. Over 40% of these Internet users are accessing the Internet on mobile devices. In 2008, the number of people accessing the Internet using mobile devices doubled. Braam said that by 2012 the number of mobile Internet users is expected to rise well above 1 billion users and we can expect mobile computers like the N97 to overtake conventional PC’s/laptops as the dominant form of device used to access the Internet. Users are currently willing to spend more time without their laptops and use a mobile device like the N97.

Sipponen pointed out to me that consumer demand is a key determining factor in how Nokia designs its products and services. Nokia spends a fair amount of time speaking to consumers both internally and externally.

I found it really interesting to learn from Sipponen that Nokia has a vibrant community of internal bloggers and other employees who provide feedback on Nokia’s products and services (sometimes fairly brutal feedback). There is apparently a fairly high correlation between internal and external user profiles so the comments Nokia receives internally do seem to match up with what Nokia is hearing from the rest of us.

I had an opportunity to interview Sipponen after the initial presentations. The audio from the interview is available through the player below and you can also download a higher quality AAC version of the interview with chapter markers here.

One of the things that came out of the interview which appeal to me as a blogger is the degree to which Nokia pays attention to its users’s blogs, tweets and other public statements, comments, criticisms and praise (Sipponen tweets as @jpzip). My presence at the Dubai event is a pretty clear indication of Nokia’s perceptions of bloggers’ value as contributors to its marketing and development process (I wasn’t the only person there from South Africa, I accompanied Nicholas Boerma from PC Format magazine).

I asked Sipponen about the influence devices like the iPhone may have had on product design and he told me that while Nokia doesn’t slavishly copy competing devices, those devices influence consumers’ expectations (which filter through into Nokia’s focus groups) and Nokia does pay attention to what seems to work in the marketplace. Bottom line here is that the iPhone does seem to have had an impact on Nokia’s product development process and, if anything, it has emphasised the importance of touch-screen devices (I had a couple very unofficial and informal chats with Nokia people who shall not be named who gave me a certain look when I rambled on how great it would be to see a touch-screen in something like the E71 or other devices that don’t traditionally have touch-screens – then again they could have had dust in their eyes).

Above all, the media event and my interactions with numerous Nokia representatives impressed on me Nokia’s respect for consumers’ opinions and desires. This doesn’t mean Nokia is going to produce the “nPhone” and leave it at that but it is placing particular emphasis on empowering users. This is one of the driving forces behind the Ovi Store (more about this later).

As an aside: As much as I love my MacBook and as much as the iPhone 3G S appeals to me, I have far more respect for Nokia than I do for Apple as a consumer. My critics complain that I sound like Nokia PR on this blog. It is true that I evangelise Nokia products and services but one of the primary reasons for that is Nokia’s focus on my opinions and my desires. I haven’t seen anyone from Apple respond to my musings on Twitter. Nokia’s interest in my opinions as a consumer inspires my passion for Nokia’s products and services.

Related posts:

1. Nokia is planning to step aside as market leader
2. YouTube on your Nokia with the Nokia Video Center
3. How your Nokia N97 is built and prepared to ship to you

The E72 boasts a number of improvements over its year old cousin including a 5 megapixel camera, support for download speeds of up to 10.2 MBps over HSDPA and a new optical navigation key which seems to bring the scrolling experience that much closer to the Blackberry’s trackball. It gets better. The audio jack is the standard 3.5mm jack and the phone runs s60 3rd edition (feature pack 2 – the same version the E75 runs). It also comes with Nokia Messaging for a better email experience.

There is some pretty exciting instant messaging integration built into the device too. According to the Nokia press release:

On top of these developments, for the first time, owners will be able to set up instant messaging (IM) accounts provided by Nokia Messaging direct from the homescreen. In just a few steps, device owners will be able to connect to their favorite IM accounts such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk and Ovi, amongst many others.

These new IM features are complimented by Nokia’s range of email solutions with a lifetime license for Nokia’s mobile email and IM service, Nokia Messaging, as well as onboard clients for Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler. Accessing popular accounts such as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Ovi Mail and thousands of other email service providers is simple through improved on-device email setup, with the same easy to use UI integrating all of the owner’s corporate email accounts as well.

It feels like just yesterday that I got the E71 and as fantastic as the device is, the E72 looks even better. This slim device is an even better business tool and the only gripe I have right now is that the space bar is so small. I have been trying out the E75 and will post a review soon but if the E72 performs the way I think it will, it will beat the pants off both the E71 and the E75.

Update: I received the E72 datasheet from Nokia yesterday:

Related posts:

1. The Nokia N97’s promise
2. A few thoughts about the Nokia E75
3. Work-life balance and the Nokia E75