if connected

The Nokia N97 is currently Nokia’s flagship phone for consumers. Key features are a large touch screen, sideways sliding qwerty keyboard, five megapixel camera and Symbian Series 50 5th Edition.

Somehow, Nokia appear to have convinced themselves that simply because the N97 is the current flagship, and the N95 8Gb was last year’s flagship, that owners of the latter should buy the N97. See the imagery below which also matches my impressions after talking with Nokia product managers.

Nokia phone upgrade positioning, summer 2009

I don’t buy it. The N95 8Gb was famous for its dual-slider mechanism and easy access music playback controls. The N95 is completely controllable one-handed, with the N97 it’s a struggle. N95 buyers were attracted by what was, at the time, a state of the art camera, but today’s top end phones have eight or twelve megapixels, not the five of the N97. The N97′s features and form factor are simply not a clear evolution from the N95.

Ironically, there is a model in Nokia’s current line-up that is the clear heir of the N95, but Nokia are not choosing to market it that way. The N86 has a near identical form factor to the N95, a better eight megapixel camera with variable aperture, and it has the same neat music control buttons. Like the N95, it runs Series 60 3rd edition and is completely controllable one-handed.

The N97 has had a lot of criticism. Most is deserved. But if Nokia had presented the N97 more modestly rather than as the all conquering flagship heir to the N95, I suspect the many critiques would have been more measured, and reviewers would have given Nokia a little slack.

Last week on holiday I did hardly any work.

This wasn’t my choice: My new’ish employer only allows Blackberries to connect to office email/calendar/contacts, and no other phones. As I only had pocket space — didn’t carry a bag most of the time — I chose my personal phone over the corp one. I didn’t have space on me for both phones.

Even people that are usually prepared to carry multiple bits of kit — like me — will have many times in their lives when it’s not convenient to carry more than one phone. Companies that want to encourage 24/7 working had better make it easy for employees to work on their personal phone, because no one will leave their personal mobile behind in these situations to make space for a corp Blackberry / other work phone. A personal phone will always trump the work phone if there’s a conflict.

It’s Thursday, four days after European clocks changed to what others call daylight saving and I’m still finding clocks stuck on GMT.

I’ll forgive those without an Internet connection like the wall clock in the kitchen, but way too many devices should know better. Windows Mobile still seems awkward, probably because I’m still running 6.0. The brand new Blackberry Bold hooked up to my company’s Blackberry Enterprise Server really should have updated itself. Two years ago I wouldn’t have cared.

But iPhone has changed everything. It just worked.

A former colleague wrote recently that ‘save file’ should have no place in this day. Everything should be saved automatically all of the time. I think manually changing the clocks twice a year should follow it into extinction.

Sidenote – This is the first post I’ve written on the new version of WordPress for iPhone. It’s a big improvement and worth returning to if you’ve tried and rejected it in the past. It means I can post more easily from wherever I happen to be:

Earlier, I wanted to take a photo of an electrically-powered UPS delivery van. The vehicle was stationary while waiting to turn.

Even so, my phone camera was nearly fast enough… But still missed the shot.

The iPhone asked me whether I wanted to allow the camera to use my GPS location yes/no. The seconds delay from that extra dialog meant a bus obscured the van, and then the van turned and was gone.

The phone wasn’t fast enough.

As I tweeted earlier, at 4am this morning I caught someone getting into my car in front of the house. I knocked on the window of our front room and he ran. I bet he was extremely surprised someone was awake.

I thought about taking a photo. But the camera phone I had on me — an iPhone — was no good in the dark and my good camera was upstairs and I didn’t have to the time to find it: I’d have missed the opportunity. Late last year, someone hit my car coming out of a sideroad. I reached for my iPhone to take a photo of the other car and its number plate, but by the time I was ready the car had driven off.

“Make the most of now” is Vodafone’s smart slogan for mobile. It hits the rationale for mobile perfectly: Doing virtually anything costs more using a mobile, from making calls to sending emails, but the immediacy of now makes that higher cost worthwhile.

The speed of now is equally important. Mobile devices need to be really quick to use to make them usable “in the moment.” Mobile phones have a tremendous speed advantage over virtually any other device as they are often already in someone’s hand. If not, they’re placed in an easily accessible pocket, rather than in a bag, or left behind at home.

Good enough speed is rarely enough in those tight moments. And, this is one of those rare situations where subjective speed isn’t sufficient.

It’s actual sheer utility that’s essential. Mobile phones need to be fast as well as feeling fast.

Earlier today Gmail stopped working, for most people, for about four hours.

It’s not the end of everything, as numerous things I’ve read today argue. It doesn’t blow apart ‘cloud computing’ or putting faith in other companies or other people. Computers break. Parts of the Internet fail. Even phones seem less reliable now. There’s nothing new here. Anyone that relies upon just one digital service, or device, will enjoy painful cold turkey sometime soon.

But what is different now, is how many ways we all have to do something. If our main phone goes down, we reach for our mobile. If twitter dies, then it’s back to Facebook, email, IM or the best option yet: Friendfeed. If one email address stops working, most people reach for another: The main pain with email failing is that incoming messages sent to the broken account can’t be read until that system — Gmail here — comes back up.

I use Gmail as a fallback to my work email because it is so versatile, Gmail has many alternative ways of access: I had few problems during the outage earlier as I access Gmail via IMAP on my PC, and on my iPhone, as well as using the web browser interface. So, I could read stored messages fine. Unlike Hotmail and Yahoo! mail, Google makes access to Gmail easy from regular Internet-standard PC/Mac/handheld/phone email software, complete with full folder management.

But, to take advantage people need to set up their phone or PC email software, and ideally in advance before panic has hit.

Thinking about the so-called cloud services, all the best ones work this way: remote access via a browser plus local sync for speed, fallback when the cloud rains, and for offline use, when the Internet isn’t available like on a plane.

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

At MWC, multiple companies have launched mobile application stores that seek to build upon Apple's iPhone success (Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, mPortico, Surfkitchen, Adtonic, PocketGear and others). These join existing announced app stores (including RIM, Google Android, Palm).

These are more than simple me-too initiatives.

Mobile app stores are not new. Palm, Handango and even Nokia with their Download! service pre-date Apple. Like the iPod, Apple was a follower — rather than first mover — that succeeded due to terrific execution and a clear strategy and market position. Apple benefits from the ease of commercial iPhone application distribution. Developers now prosper in a virtuous circle:

• iPhone application store is easy to use on phone or PC. It offers consumers reviews, user ratings, reliable download & install and low price points. Developers benefit from reliable content protection.
• Developers sell more applications and so prioritise more r&d for iPhone over other phones. This leads to a greater catalogue of applications.
• The greater wealth of third party support increases the benefit for consumers of owning an iPhone, thus driving iPhone sales.
• A greater installed base of iPhones increases the audience of potential application buyers, leading to increased application sales.

To succeed, owners much ensure that their store's convenience to consumers is high. Superb execution will be critical.