LONDON, England – Nokia Conversations rocked up a little late to the N97 launch party at the Getty Images Gallery in London, and missed the guest of honour, none other than Mr Stephen Fry – writer, broadcaster and technophile. Stephen spent an hour checking out the launch demonstrations, playing with the N97 and speaking to UK Nokia MD Mark Loughran. Mr Fry also found time to tweet during his visit “At the Nokia N97 launch. Mmm. Looking good….” (twitter.com/stephenfry). He also later remarked on Gravity, whilst also discussing some other devices with his followers.

Stephen Fry is a legend in the UK, and no doubt thanks to Twitter around the world now too. He’s well known for his brilliant presenting, writing and acting, but latterly through his various columns and blogs, he’s become something of a tech celebrity too. Continue reading>>

Exploring the Nokia N97 homescreen – video close-up

GLOBAL – This Friday sees the Nokia N97 officially touchdown on UK soil, so in the run-up to its launch we thought we’d highlight a smart new video showcasing its widget-savvy homescreen.

Tomorrow, we’ll be posting a video that focusses on the Facebook app in action on N97, following up with a separate video on Friday featuring an interesting chat we had with the designers behind the new Nokia N97 homescreen.

In the meantime, click through to watch this short close-up clip of the new N97 homescreen doing its thing.

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Peppery prognostications pertaining to the parcel

GLOBAL – Goodness. This Pass the Parcel game does not seem to end. We are in Day 12 and still have not reached the heart of the parcel. But that hasn’t dampened anyone’s spirits, as folks are still guessing away. Ranging from the Nokia N97 to the Nokia N86 (to a ton of great speculations), everyone seems to be getting into this guessing game.

As I did last week, I’d like to get you thinking of other possibilities. This last week has revealed some things that might make you think one way, though I would like to speculate about other things that fit the features that have been revealed so far. Want to join me in this speculation? Please do, read on.

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Don’t call it a comeback!

YOUTUBE – LL Cool J is probably the last person I expected to lend a song to be the backing track to a new Nokia N97 video. “Don’t Call it a Comeback” is the title track to a new video on YouTube to celebrate the Nokia N97 going on sale, and boy does it work. My favourite bit? Aside from the music, is the swapping out of the shaking hands on the start up screen to something much cooler (and yes, I want that on mine too – tech bods, any chance?). June 2009 is the month of the N97, we’ve been playing with ours for a few days. Many of you, I believe, will be playing with your shiny new N97s quite soon. I think you’ll like them, meanwhile, here’s the video.

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Where the phone and the service come together

GLOBAL – The evolution of applications on our devices has been quite rapid. The first step was of course giving the device extra functionality – the ability to watch certain types of video codecs, or view your messages in a different way. Then it got a bit more involved, bringing little bits of the Internet into your device one bit at a time, bringing things like Maps onto your device, along with info sucked from the Internet and combining it with functionality on the device (GPS) to create a whole new experience. Now though, I think we’ve reached a whole new level.
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How much is your phone?

LONDON, England – With the Nokia N97 already being snapped up in different cities around the world, we thought we’d check out the kind of deals folks are getting when buying one. When Nokia announces product prices, it is usually a suggested retail price before taxes and any operator sweetening. In the end, the operator decides not only when a device comes out but the real street-price as well.

So we expected some deals close to maybe £299 (what might be expected from a two-year contract on a 32GB touch-screen smartphone), or at least some sort of up-front payment of, say, £99. But we weren’t expecting to not have to pay anything up-front for the N97. Yep, Orange and Vodafone both have offers where the N97 will be available gratis, free, for nada when you sign up to an 18 or 24 month contract.
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Introducing The Almanac (and a few other small changes to Nokia Conversations)

GLOBAL – Uncharacteristically, we have another “administrative” announcement. The last one was pretty recent and mentioned things like Blogbite, @nokconv on Twitter, and blogs.nokia.com. This time around we want to introduce something a bit larger.

One thing that we’ve been wishing for is a central place that has all the information on a particular product or service. No, we don’t mean some static page with fancy graphics and long lists of technical specs. What we wanted was a page that had some info on the product, some photos, some dynamic ever-changing info about the product, and something fun. A jumping-off place for all you would want to know about a particular product.

What we came up with is The Almanac. And we think it’ll be a hit. Read on for more details.

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N97 transformed me into Mr Proactive

LONDON, England – I feel somewhat like a werewolf trapped outdoors on a full moon, only the transformation I’m currently undergoing is fully consensual and I’m not howling.

Back in December I posed the question “N97. Will it change me?” sparking a heap of comments and debate from many of you on the topic of anticipation versus reality when it comes to new devices, and how we often think and hope that our mobile behavior might alter (for the better) with a new product. And how it often does change our behavior, but not necessarily how we think it might. Especially a flagship product of the stature and near unparalleled expectancy of the N97.

I was lucky enough to get hold of an early N97 last Friday, and in less than 72 hours my new device has indeed triggered a rapid metamorphosis in my mobile behavior. One I may not (and hope not) to recover from.

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Inside the Nokia N97 factory tour

SALO, Finland – Factory visits aren’t usually high up the agenda for us at Conversations, but when the chance came to visit the facility responsible for bringing the N97 to life came up, we simply couldn’t turn it down. Carita did the decent thing and trekked over to Salo to shoot the footage and check out how it all works. The early start wasn’t an issue with the opportunity ahead of her of seeing the first N97s rolling off the production line. Stepping into the Salo facility was like stepping into a whole new world – the platform 9 and a half of mobile phones.
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