Nokia's new N97, I was hoping it would be the next great phone. But looking at a review in AAS, it looks like they totally blew it on the keyboard. There are only three rows of keys, which means that the space bar is in completely the wrong place. Gak!

ZDNet UK notes that the touchscreen is resistive instead of capacitative and apparently this results in a substantially less appealing touch compared to the iPhone. Yet another strike against.

Finally, I note that the camera is still the 5MP unit in the N95. I have that camera. It's good, but it's not great.

Despite the fact that the new home screen looks really cool (and much better than iPhone) and that it actually has keys, this means that we're not looking at the next great Nokia device that I was expecting. My search for a great device that combines a huge touchscreen and a decent keyboard/keypad apparently will have to continue.

Maybe someday, Apple will make it easy to rotate manually into a landscape view. But right now it's been causing me enormous headache with hideous frames issues. Running an app in landscape the whole time is easy, but doing just some views in landscape is insane, especially if you're trying to switch while in the middle of a navigation controller.

However I've found an easy solution which is to use a new window. Just reset the whole view problem. You can then fake out the navigation bar using the method of your preference. Here's the bare bones. For me, I'm going from a tableView, click on an item and get a "results view".

// In ResultsListController, a UITableView delegate:
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
  ResultsViewController * resultsViewController = [[[ResultsViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"ResultsViewController" bundle:nil] autorelease];
  resultsViewController._recordIndex = indexPath.row;
  UIWindow * window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]]; // this is a leak!
  window.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor]; // just for debugging
  [window addSubview:resultsViewController.view];
  [window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

Now ResultsViewController has its own NIB, and the view is set to be sideways in IB.

// In ResultsViewController
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated; {
  // First rotate the screen:
  [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight;
  // Then rotate the view and re-align it:
  CGAffineTransform landscapeTransform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( degreesToRadian(90) );
  landscapeTransform = CGAffineTransformTranslate( landscapeTransform, +90.0, +90.0 );
  [self.view setTransform:landscapeTransform];
}

// Connect your "back" button in the results view to this:
- (IBAction)back:sender; {
  // return screen rotation to normal:
  [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait;
  // Get rid of the window, and the "normal" window will re-appear from underneath
  self.view.window.hidden = YES;
  [self.view.window resignKeyWindow];
}

Easy as cake!

UPDATE: There's follow-up Q&A on the iphonedevSDK forums.

I'm writing an iPhone app in Cocoa Objective-C and really wishing that I could be writing it in Ruby instead (cocoa-ruby on iphone anyone?).

Take this one line:

    if( ! [foo isEqualToString:bar] ) {

Oh yeah, I can really tell what that does by glancing at it... not! But here's the equivalent ruby:

    unless foo == bar

Shorter, more obvious, easier to write, easier to read and maintain. Why does Cocoa need to be so wordy? Even [foo equals:bar] would be better. But no, that would be too ... ambiguous. I don't know. isEqual: is defined in NSObject but who knows what highly dangerous or unexpected result it would have between two strings. Maybe it would only be true if they were the same pointers, or copy: results. No one in ObjC land seems to be thinking about making syntax easier for the programmers, do they? And why don't we have overloading???

For example, if we had method overloading, you could easily have different versions of equals: (or isEqual: if you must) that handle NSString*, NSWhatever*... of course this would require the compiler to be smarter, and the runtime to be smarter, and who uses Objective-C other than Apple ... no one, that's who. Hey, here's an idea—why not ditch ObjC wholesale for Ruby? It's not like Ruby is going to be, you know, slower. Well, of course it will be slower in the C sections.

At least now with "Fast Enumeration" in Objective-C 2.0 we can do something like this:

    for( NSString * bird in [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"owl", @"parrot", @"partridge", @"pigeon"] ) {

Although again, it's really annoying that there's no convenience syntax for creating an array. How hard would it be? Not very hard, that's how hard. In Ruby it would be simply:

    for bird in ["owl", "parrot", "partridge", "pigeon"]

At least we have convenience syntax for NSString * animal = @"Bandicoot" right? I suppose we should pray at the altar for that one and hope they never take it away...

Finally, I have to kiss good-bye to any kind of interesting use of first-order functions and closures. Technically Objective-C CAN actually do dynamic function calls at least, but it's so bloody wordy that I rarely use it unless forced to. I can't use the lovely map function in Objective-C which adds considerably to my line count.

But wait, Apple is adding closures?  ... why don't they spend the effort on making Ruby Cocoa better instead? Or maybe give me garbage collection on the bloody iPhone.

Making predictions is fun. I made some predictions a long time ago about the iPhone and it's fun to go back and see which ones came true. #1 was "Apple will design the plans, and they'll twist the arms of the carriers to make them simple to understand and attractive to Apple's users" — that seems to be accurate.

Now that Nokia has demonstrated that they can deliver a device to compete with the iPhone, the question is, can they deliver the rest of the solution to match? Not an easy thing to say. You need a lot more than good hardware to make the kind of great customer experience that Apple shines at.

So here's 9 things that Nokia needs to do to retain and win back their smartphone dominance.

1. Forget the carriers. Nokia has a great brand (outside the USA) in part because many of the carriers they deal with have virtually no control. They need to make the same deal everywhere, including the huge US market. When you get a nokia, it has to be a totally nokia experience. Just like iPhone.

2. In line with that, every unit sold must run the same firmware. Right now there are a zillion firmware versions for the N95 alone. This is insane and frustrating for users and developers. Everyone should be running the same version, just like iPhone.

3. Simplify product line. Again. Like Apple. Nokia has about fifty billion products on the market, all with insane numbers instead of names, and so none of them get any buzz. Names are good, small numbers of models are good. How about 3? Even 10 models would be a dramatic improvement, and probably enough to cover the gamut from $10 developing market to whatever is the highest in the range.

4. App store. Duh. BUT — this requires absolute cross-carrier uniformity and a way to ensure that every subscriber has a data plan...

5. Getting away from copying Apple here. How about they shape up their open source story? What they've started with is a good start, but it needs to be better. Developing for Symbian is just about the worst thing in the world. Apple's SDK is better but you still have to use Objective C. How about Nokia lets us code in a nice modern language like Ruby? They could really leverage open source excitement if they made that a possibility.

They can really jump the queue on Apple with this one, because OSS just goes against the grain at Apple. It's not that they don't like open source, but it doesn't work with the secrecy and the total control thing. But Nokia could leverage open source efforts to really turn their platform into something to care about as a programmer. Android is starting from scratch, but Nokia has a developer community already in place, loads of users, and all of those people would jump at the opportunity to make and use cool apps.

6. Open up the platform. If nokia is seriously about open sourcing Symbian, then they should let people go so far as to actually installing their own versions of Symbian OS on their phones. That would just rock, and the user mojo would be amazing. Of course the carriers will hate it, which is why 1. above is 1. And they'll probably have to keep key sections of the OS (radio functions probably) under control.

7. Continue the content creation story, and back it up with better web integration. Keep pushing the megapixels and the video capture, etc. But, I should also be able to, with no setup, upload my high resolution movies I make with my Nokia directly to a Nokia-branded website (or flickr, if I so choose). Not using some stupid PC tools, but directly, over my WiFi network. There's no reason Nokia can't do this, and they've already made a good start with the kick-ass Sports Tracker app/web site combo.

7. Keep converging. Turn by turn GPS navigation is good, I can throw out my garmin. Keep going! They'll naturally stay ahead of Apple because they are inherently conservative on features, not wanting to add too many, each one has to be perfect and the market mature enough. Nokia can stay ahead here. I only want two electronic devices — my phone and my PC. And hey, if I can get rid of my PC that's great (integrated projector??). Unlikely, maybe. But Nokia should aggressively continue to add core features.

8. Keep innovating form factors. Another nokia advantage to stay with. Although I admit this conflicts with simplifying the product line. Wild and wacky form factors ARE cool...

9. Keep drinking whatever they are drinking. Somehow Nokia is the most Apple-like company that isn't Apple, even though they are a massive decentralized conglomerate with no dictatorial genius at the helm. Whatever they feed their people, keep doing it.

So Nokia has announced the N97 touch screen device with real keyboard—the form factor that RIM should have used for the Storm, and the Steve Jobs will never allow at Apple.

Link to video.

As you can see the screen slides away from the keyboard. This is really the ideal form factor and the one that I've had in mind ever since I saw the iPhone and wondered what RIM and Nokia should do about it. As I've said before, I'm not a fan of touch screen. However, there are quite a few use cases where they are massively better for UE than a directional pad. For example, a web browser.

So the obvious solution is to provide the best of both worlds. I'm pretty surprised that RIM didn't take this approach with the Storm. Their customer's #1 favourite feature after all is the keyboard. Did they think that they had to copy the iPhone too closely? Or maybe they couldn't get the mechanical design to work. Well, this N97 renews my faith that Nokia can still design a great device.

As for the iPhone, I don't think Steve will ever allow this style for the iPhone, as he's too much of a design purist and he obviously hates buttons. The iPhone is a gorgeous lump of solid "metal" & "glass" (how it appear anyway) that expresses a purity of design and function that other companies will struggle to ever match (and probably never succeed). Adding moving parts to that would ruin the experience.

Now if only Nokia would simplify their line-up and naming system. Why not give this phone a NAME? huh? Apple has made their product line simple — even obvious — to understand by providing clearly named products and doing basically what car makers do: upgrading them once a year. Nokia needs to do the same and step away from the numerical and mostly meaningless current system.

And one last thing. They still need to fix the development process for Symbian. It sucks, and it's even more blatently bad now that Apple is making it so ridiculously easy to learn how & develop & market products for the iPhone.

PS One more thing, the last one I promise — Nokia also needs to, starting with this new phone, have a SINGLE firmware version that runs on ALL of the devices worldwide, with a simple update system, so that all users are running exactly the same software. Their current system is so insane I'm not even going to explain how bad it is.

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mobile CSS

Posted by Simon on July 09, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: internet, mobile

I decided to revisit the mobile CSS situation today. It's actually pretty good. HTML Dog has a pretty good update as the to the situation but I'll summarize it for you.

Basically CSS comes with so-called media types which include all, screen, print, handheld and some others that presently aren't probably worth bothering about. I've already been using the print thing as you can tell if you have a recent browser and you do a print preview of this page. The styling is quite different from the screen version. It's pretty easy to do, just look at the source of this page, you just define a print.css and a screen.css and then, in each one, @include common.css which would contain basic character styling and colours that are used in all the medias.

So the point here is handheld media type, if supported correctly in the mobile browsers, can be used the same way. Is it supported correctly? Yet? Well, the test page http://htmldog.com/test/handheld.html will tell you - just point your phone browser at it. The CORRECT answer SHOULD be, "no" for the screen ones and "yes" for the handheld ones.

My Nokia 6630 incorrectly ignores all the styles. My Sony-Ericsson S710a correctly ignores the screen styles and uses the handheld styles. Yay SE.

Also notice that if you grab the Opera web browser, View menu, Small Screen, you can see the correct result as well.

So, using that I've set up a few things.

• Repeat the page title at the top of the page - useful because a lot of phone browsers don't show the full title on the screen
• Hide a lot of the bling, like the banner, the footer - keep from spamming the small screens. I do this by defining div#footer { display: none; } and so on in the handheld.css file
• Add a "Skip navigation" link at the top of the page - add an anchor #contentbox link at the top of the page that only shows up in the mobile version of the page - this is so that people don't always have to scroll down every new page

That's about it for now. My pages are already really lightweight in terms of KBs and I assume the phone browsers don't bother loading images that are hidden by CSS. So the result is an HTML + CSS solution that doesn't require any browser detection, rewriting any of your pages, or server-side junk.

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Metro WiFi and Converged Phones slides

Posted by Simon on June 14, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: meta, wifi, mobile

For my talk today, the slides are available . Lots of pretty pictures! I didn't do the three about WiMAX, WiFi mesh and WiFi though.

Downtime... I know... I'll talk about it later.

Comments: 0 (view/add your own)

New Nokia thingy - Nokia 770 - why?

Posted by Simon on May 28, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: theories, mobile

Engadget has a good story on this new linux gadget . The question really is, why the hell did Nokia release this thing? (For a contrarian point of view, which I haven't read yet, see this PC Mag article .)

I'm inclined to think that Nokia is generally speaking on the right track these days. The Nokia N-Series , despite the horrific flash on that page, looks really, really solid. They seem to have settled on a design aesthetic that's actually pleasing again - witness the Nokia 8800 . Their open development platform strategy with Series 60 is a definitely winner.

So, the new device. It's a small tablet-style device with a substantial screen (800x480) suitable for watching TV and movies on, and surfing the web. It's got Wi-Fi and bluetooth. NB: no phone! It's got 128 MB RAM but only 64 MB flash card. It runs linux! And not only that but the whole OS, dev kit included is GPL top to bottom, and Nokia seems keen to make this into a real open source community process.

So, that's a pretty different set of specs from any other Nokia offering. It actually looks a bit more like something Apple would make.

So why is Nokia doing this? Speculation follows.

First there's the ambition angle. They want to be more than a mobile phone maker. They're breaking out into new markets. So, they leverage their ability to make clever small hardware. It's a bit odd they would choose this particular niche to move into though, because it's not a game device (PSP) and it doesn't have a hard drive (iPod) so it doesn't really seem to compete with any existing products.

They might be doing it to push forward open platforms . I think that Nokia is pretty seriously committed at this point to be pro-open and anti- walled garden . Which is good for us, whether by "us" you think I mean consumers or developers.

But the reason i think they're really doing it is a power play against the operators . One of the major underlying stories of the mobile phone arena is the power struggle between operators and manufacturers. Both want to have all the customer loyalty and make all the decisions about what goes on and in the phones. Each one has their own revenue needs which conflict, because manufacturers don't care about ARPU and carriers do.

Now, consider the Nokia N91 . I recently wrote a blog entry about Wi-Fi wireless VoIP cell phones and as it turns out (thanks Chris ;-) the Nokia N91 does everything that I asked for there. Who knew? There is of course one small problem, which is that the operators are none-too-pleased about the prospect of people stealing their ARPU by using wVoIP on home, office, and municipal Wi-Fi.

So how does that affect Nokia again? Oh yeah - they have to avoid getting slapped in the face like Apple and Motorola over the iTunes phone. If the operators feel too threatened by the N91 with both Wi-Fi, cellular, and also incidentally Skype ... which they should! Well, then, they might refuse to carry the N91. And that would be a Bad Thing.

To finally get to the point, by releasing a completely non-cellular Wi-Fi convergence 770, Nokia can make the carriers look stupid if they don't pick up the N91. Because they'll still be selling a Wi-Fi device that has Skype or whatever on it, just not through the carriers.

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watch out for wireless VoIP (...nokia)

Posted by Simon on May 02, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: theories, wifi, mobile

Witness the first mobile phone + wVoIP . This is a mobile phone with two radios, one for GSM and the other for Wi-Fi. So when you're in a Wi-Fi hotspot, you Skype. When not, you cell. It's brilliant.

The slight problem is that mobile operators are not going to like this too much. You see, it means that when people are at home especially, and also at work, and maybe at the coffee shop, they're not going to be paying for airtime.

But so what? The technology is so compelling that the public is going to be kicking and screaming until they get it. In case you're not up to speed yet, wireless VoIP is internet telephony that runs over a Wi-Fi style network. It's also know as wVoIP and Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN... keep up the crazy acronym work, people).

Now so far Microsoft looks like it's doing very poorly in the mobile arena. But, they seem to be the leading OS for Wi-Fi enabled cell phones. And there's already a not insignificant number of Pocket PC style devices that are being used for wVoIP, even if they don't have cellular yet. And you should note that this first phone, jointly developed by Skype and some tiny manufacturer called i-mate, runs... Windows Mobile.

I certainly that Nokia et al get in gear on this one, no matter how unpopular it might seem with the operators. Because otherwise they might let microsoft out of the cage that it's been so cleverly manoeuvred into.

(Some notes... of course it's already being done in Japan . And check out this announcement: Orange to offer 3G, Wi-Fi palmtop smart phone again running .... Windows Mobile.)

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Nokia's Red Screen of Death

Posted by Simon on April 23, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: mobile

Bet you've never seen this before. It's the Series 60 Red Screen of Death from my Nokia 6630.

OK, true confession: it's actually a 6630 prototype I got on loan from Forum Nokia Pro . I've never seen it on my production 6630 which works like a charm.

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Nokia HS-4W review

Posted by Simon on January 31, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Categories: mobile

Before I start this review, I want to say that I really like Nokia's products. Nokia's stuff has a kind of overall product integrity that reminds me very much of Apple. All of the Nokia phones I've owned have had a very solid feel. Their interface design is solid too. They seem to focus on quality more than flash. Notwithstanding some funky phone designs, they went through a bad start to 2004 and are now in a strong start to 2005.

The focus of this review is the HS-4W bluetooth headset . I've owned a few headsets, notably the Sony Ericsson HBH-20 which was shite and the HBH-30 which wasn't so bad. But the HS-4W really jumps out of the pack for me.

First of all is the attractive industrial design. It's got a very sleek look. It looks good on the ear and in the hand. Also, it's a one-piece design with no moving parts. Their innovative solution to the left/right problem is a bi-directional speaker that fits both ways. I wore it for a few hours yesterday and today and so far it's been very comfortable, and very light-weight. I've never felt like it might slip off, and a shook my head a bit in front of the mirror and it stayed on solid.

The controls are also well designed. The pick-up/hang-up button is located on the boom and all the other controls are on the back of the ear. That way, there's no risk of accidentally disconnecting your party while you fiddle with the volume. The volume control is a rocker switch that feels quite different from the power button. In addition, at least with my Nokia 7610 I could control the volume from the phone as well.

Of course sound quality is the most important thing. I've used it both with OS X's iChat and with my phone and the sound quality is very high. It's as good on my end as holding the phone to the ear... maybe a bit better actually. On the other end I'm told it sounds very good, in fact my other party said he couldn't tell I was on the headset.

The boom mic may have a lot to do with that and it's one of the reasons I bought this headset. It sticks out quite a ways towards the mouth but doesn't get in the way at all.

I paid about $100 USD for this (production) unit.

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My iPhone article makes it big

Posted by Simon on December 30, 2004 at 12:00 PM

Categories: meta, mobile

I wrote an article for MobileWhack with some iPhone predictions . Amazingly enough, I'm now on the first page of google results for "iPhone" (although it may not last).

Comments: 0 (view/add your own)

Whacked!

Posted by Simon on December 22, 2004 at 12:00 PM

Categories: meta, mobile

MobileWhack saw fit to publish my article about the rumoured iPhone. Now that I haven't worked for Apple for 3 years, I can feel free to speculate madly about the company without fear that my "predictions" will actually come from prior NDA-covered knowledge.

Comments: 0 (view/add your own)

Nokia will make a Series 60 phone with QWERTY keyboard

Posted by Simon on December 15, 2004 at 12:00 PM

Categories: mobile

I was just listening to Antti Vasara's talk (realaudio) from Nokia 2004 Capital Market Days . It's not on the slides but during the talk he said that

there will be Series 60 phones with QWERTY keyboards

Will these be shaped like the Nokia 6820 ? Certainly when Series 60 gains the ability to flip from horizontal to vertical, which will happen I guess in the next year, a Series 60 phone in that form factor seems likely.

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