By Charlie on 30 December 2008
ESPOO, Finland – OK. Leaks have dominated our device launches this year, stealing, with different lead times, the thunder from the Nokia E71, Nokia E63, and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. But, it’s been interesting to watch, as well, how folks have been misled by fake-fakes, real-fakes, and what ever else the nasty cunning crafty Chinese counterfeiters can throw our way.
But will anything change for 2009?
By Mike on 30 December 2008
GLOBAL – It’s been a milestone year in Nokia’s evolution with CEO and President, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, announcing a fresh direction for Nokia that has already seen it beginning to move from being a handset company to an Internet services company.
By James on 30 December 2008
LONDON, England – Early on the morning of June 26 this year I got a call. “Be at Somerset House first thing, there’s a big announcement happening”. What’s this, a new phone? A new service? No, something much bigger, and infinitely more significant. Nokia’s decision, along with the other interested parties to package up Symbian into a single foundation and make it open source. Throwing the baby out with the bath-water? Unlikely, that doesn’t happen at this level. Exciting stuff indeed.
By JBC on 05 December 2008
ESPOO, Finland – James and I are back from Nokia World, where we hustled our butts off to get some choice stories and sound-bites. There were a lot of things that were going on and channels we used to keep you all informed and also for us to watch how things were going on.
By JBC on 28 November 2008
BARCELONA, Spain – I just want to remind everyone that Nokia World 2008 is coming, 2-3 December, next week. James and I will be there to bring you stories from the show floor. Carita and Mike will be back home making sure everything runs smoothly.
By JBC on 26 November 2008
SOUTHWOOD, England – Breaking phones is all well and good, but it’s finding out where, and how, faults occur as a result that builds reliability. Obvious physical breakages are easy to spot – a chipped casing here, a furled keypad there, but what happens when those cracks appear on one of the gates in a silicon chip? Or one of the myriad components on the numerous circuit boards inside a phone comes apart? That’s where the reliability labs analysis department comes into play. Resembling a science lab the place is packed with microscopes, and xray machine and a scanning electron microscope, which uses liquid nitrogen to clear the air before scanning, so no unwanted particles get scanned.
By JBC on 25 November 2008
SOUTHWOOD, England – In the final part of our series on testing (though we still have analysis to do) we take a look at stress tests. I tend to keep my phone in my front left pocket. That way I always know where it is (alongside my keys) and if I don’t feel it there, I know it’s missing so I naturally look for it. Some people though, keep it in their back pockets. I’m not sure why. But Nokia has a test for it.
By JBC on 24 November 2008
SOUTHWOOD, England – Kevin Smith, reliability labs team leader, jokes that he gets a new pair of jeans every month. Not because he’s hard on jeans, simply because the old ones get strapped to a machine designed to test phones. The test is one I’d never imagined taking place, but I’m pretty glad it does. It simulates what happens when owners rub their phone on their jeans to give the screen a quick clean. Yep, I do it, and I bet you do too.
By James on 21 November 2008
SOUTHWOOD, England – Depending on the type of use, some devices can have their keys pressed over one million times during their lifetime. Which is why the team in the Nokia Reliability Labs have machines that can relentlessly tap out 1 million dabs on a keypad. Tucked away in the back of the labs is a little room, no bigger than the average kitchen where the tut tut tut of pneumatic-powered metal fingers jab away at keypads, d-pads and on and off switches.
By James on 20 November 2008
SOUTHWOOD, England - The one thing most Nokia device’s share is that they could be on sale anywhere in the world. That means they need to be able to work as well in northern Finland, where temperatures go well below zero, as they do in the Equatorial depths of Africa, where sun-like roastings are a regular occurrence. Kevin Smith, reliability team leader, looks after the mechanical reliability labs in Nokia’s UK Southwood base and yesterday took us through the details of how they test for such environments.
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