I REALLY wanted to attend this as it was in London and manageable for me to get to (just a shame it was at Excel arrrgh). Given the 700€ price tag (WHAT!) I had used all my Nokia might and contacts prowess to get a developer ticket, it only took me two months and I only had confirmation at 3p.m. the Friday before the event. That is not a reflection on Nokia just how well attended the event would be.
I had been told to ‘look like a developer’ so I dutifully wore jeans. When I arrived the place was rammed with suits. Not many of them had coded recently I suspected.
The day before had been the announcement that Ansi Vanjoki was leaving Nokia shortly after the news that Stephen Elop from Microsoft was joining the company as CEO. To his credited Ansi performed a very passionate speech with regards Nokia its new products including the N8 and the newly announced C7, E7 and ????. ‘Clear black display’ screen technology being new to the latter 3 products. Ansi played the Tron Legacy trailer via a N8 connected via its HDMI connector. Nice demo but is this really going to sell the phone? Airplay (iOS) does similar without wires. Nokia still find the consumer message difficult and are still pitching to techies. They did have a few digs at Apple as well with the compulsory you can use Nokia phones no matter how you hold the phone. They also made a big point of the millions of downloads they get per day from OVI and the 175 million Symbian devices shipped, 45 million of which are touch enabled.
Of the 3 new announcements the C7 was my favorite especially from a form factor perspective. Good weight without feeling plastic.
Another interesting announcement was Java ‘touch and type’ devices. These are S40 phones with a traditional 0-9, ABC keyboard and a touch screen. Obviously aimed at the masses and emerging markets. With my developers hat on this certainly made me sit up and think. Very interesting indeed.
Over the next two days I attended various developer sessions and toured the demo hall.
I was pleasantly surprised with the event, all in all a positive experience. Obviously Mr Elop was yet to make his full weight felt within the organisation
