By Mike on 02 October 2009
GLOBAL – Battery life and phone charging remains one of those intriguing and forever passionate topics of chatter here on Conversations – over the past year we’ve set our brains buzzing with the big phone charger debate and been impressed by environment and sustainability announcements, security shake-ups, and explored how important long-lasting mobile power is for many groups with different unique requirements.
This week’s comment of the week winner responds to the results of our recent business phone reader poll, which saw long-haul battery life come out on top as the most important feature in an enterprise device. Read on to find out who has won a copy of Gravity for Twitter, and to join the discussion and share your thoughts.
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By JBC on 02 October 2009
GLOBAL – There’s a new feature on Ovi Maps and its needs you to make it a brilliant one. Good Things is a way for Ovi Maps users to share their favourite places around the world. Already there’s hundreds of places been added with hundreds more being added every day. What’s more, it’s dead easy, too.
Once you’ve installed the latest Ovi Maps browser plugin Good Things will appear as an extra tab alongside “find places”, “favourites” and “routing”.
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By Charlie on 30 September 2009
BOSTON, USA – This is my last day at Nokia.
Back in June I stepped down as Editor-in-Chief and handed over the leadership of this site to Phil, in preparation of my eventual departure from the company.
Since then, I have been just another writer on this team, focusing more on my usual “round ups” of links, generating discussions based on articles from elsewhere in the Nokia neighborhood. I’ve also been transferring as much of Nokia Conversations’ culture as I could to Phil, who has been mixing it with his special sauce to take this site and ancillary channels to a new level.
In this final post as a Nokia employee, I’d like to leave some parting words, pointing to things that I think will be major parts of the conversation over the next year, if not longer. These are more my observations, and, at some points, may deviate greatly from the established corporate line. But these comments are more to generate a discussion that I hope lasts a long time.
Care to join me? Then read on.
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By Mike on 30 September 2009
GLOBAL – The folk over at Nokia Beta Labs continue to showcase and give public access to some super experimental Nokia apps, in a dedicated section reserved for innovative research prototypes. The sort of stuff that gives us goosebumps of the good variety. The latest app to appear, and as featured in our video stream, is a new Nokia Braille Reader (watch the full video). We know many of you are keen users of the apps found on Beta Labs, but you may not be familiar with all the cool things going on over there on a more experimental tip. So we’ve decided to run a video poll to find out which ones (yes, by popular demand we’re allowing you to pick more than one thing) you like best.
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By JBC on 30 September 2009
GLOBAL – Reading an interview with Nokia CEO OPK in India’s Economic Times, a few lines just struck me. Talking about the evolution of the mobile handset, OPK shines a light on the competition for mobile devices – in essence, saying there isn’t any. Specifically, OPK says “I don’t think that it’s the mobile device versus anything else. It’s a question about the convergence space where a lot of opportunities will arise.” Now, I’m not going to read into what OPK is saying here particularly as he’s talking in a much wider business context, but instead I’d like to use it as a base point to think about what it means from a consumer point of view.
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By Mike on 29 September 2009
GLOBAL – Well that’s the verdict according to our most recent reader poll in which we posed you with the question what is the most important feature in a business device? It certainly surprised me that long battery life landed the top slot as the most crucial aspect of an enterprise device (of course I see it as important, but most important?). What’s interesting is that battery life has proved itself a most popular and top ranking feature in each of our recent series of polls, landing first place in the music phone stakes too. Opening the question, do we underestimate the significance of long battery lives, or does it remain true that some devices require it more than others (such as basic devices aimed at rural communities in emerging markets)? Share your thoughts on this topic and read on to find out all the results of our recent business phone reader poll.
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By JBC on 29 September 2009
GLOBAL – I still had a couple in the drawer up until recently. Even though they’d long since been retired, I couldn’t really face parting with my either my 6310 or 6310i. And neither could a lot of people. Certainly everyone I’ve known who’s used one will testify its many endearing qualities, most common of which seemed to be its ability to last forever. Like the cockroach of phones, it didn’t seem to matter what you did to it, you couldn’t stop the thing from working.
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By Charlie on 29 September 2009
BOSTON, USA – My article on the never ending march of tech did not just hit a nerve, but set off a flurry of passionate comments. One idea that came up in the comments was that hardware differences are starting to diminish, elevating the importance of software in product differentiation. But moving from hardware to software does not remove the importance of user-centered design.
I’ve mentioned a few times the disconnect between what a designer hopes and what a user gets. I’ve collected a few recent links that ask questions around design issues, such as adding apps to smartphones that are close to app-complete, juxtaposition of conflicting expectations, good enough being the enemy of perfect, and a design scorecard proposal.
Read on to stimulate those brain cells. These are some really good articles I’ve collected for you today.
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By JBC on 28 September 2009
LONDON, England – The folks behind the onedotzero Nokia N900 installation have put together yet another video to show us just how the onedotzero installation worked, including insight from the creators themselves. If you’re not familiar with it already, then the onedotzero festival played host to a special installation for visitors to enjoy. Powered by a Nokia N900, the installation was the brainchild of software architect Gary Birkett and Computational designer Karsten Schmidt, both of whom were brought together by the folks at Wieden + Kennedy. The installation itself saw a huge projection, controlled by an N900, which users could manipulate and play with and in the process managing to amaze gathered onlookers.
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By Charlie on 28 September 2009
BOSTON, USA – Living in Europe, I was accustomed to whipping out my phone, booting up Ovi Maps, and finding out where I was and where I needed to go. The synchronization through Ovi also made it easy for me to set up landmarks from my browser, or transfer landmarks from one device to another.
But since I’ve moved to the USA, the whole thing has broken down, mostly due to lack of uniform network coverage. Read on to hear my trials and tribulations and weigh in with some of your own stories.
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