Nokia N97 Promotional Video vs Real Life | Hacker News Reader

Nokia N97 Promotional Video vs Real Life

mobileinc.co.uk

62 pointsbensummers17 comments

Anssi Vanjoki (EVP Nokia), pretty much offered a mea culpa on N97 not meeting consumer expectations - "it has been a tremendous disappointment in terms of the experience quality for the consumers". Have a look at the video http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11183_Video_Anssi_V...

pretty sincere. That, and the fact that he would probably take over my city unless McClane stopped him gives them a free pass from me.

something about that guy reminds me of Don Mattingly.

Laughable advertising strategy. I hope they purge some of the dinosaurs who still believe you can lie about the experience you provide in your propaganda.

The statement for AllAboutSymbian however.. Nice to see such levels of sincerity in corporate ethics for a change, a huge contrast to the ad in question.

Admitting your mistakes is a good start. The question now is whether Nokia have actually learned their lesson and if that lesson is the right one.

Statements like these, though:

"It happens every now and then in a big company, like Nokia, even if you have the most stringent quality control mechanisms."

and

"We have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect."

and

re:early adopters not getting answers from Nokia about the issues they have encountered - "Like I said, that was a surprise to us. It was not expected."

make me suspicious that they have learned anything.

First these are not QA issues. The problems with N97 are not a result of obscure bugs that could have slipped through. The problems are result of bad design and development decisions. Unless Nokia is staffed entirely by blind and mentally retarded people, they cannot play the surprised-that-our-product-sucks card. And it is very discouraging that Nokia - the biggest mobile phone maker in the world and a company with decades of experience in the telco and mobile phone business - is just learning that user experience is the most important concern they should have when developing a new product.

:) Great comment

My girlfriend has a 5530. It uses the same browser as shown in the video and doesn't have any of that stuttering. Best of all it cost £100 outright. It is a really solid little phone for what I paid for it. It even comes with a stylus tucked away which she uses all the time (not just for nerds apparently).

I used to like using a stylus. They are not so bad.

This is one of the best features of the internet: Bullshit Detector.

Not so long ago, it would have been relatively easy to get away with this kind of misleading publicity (at least long enough to make a pile of cash, which would be an incentive to do the same thing again). Now the backlash is big enough that this is discouraged.

Silly kid. Why buy symbian when you can get an N900?

The classic joke that explains this: "Bill Gates Goes To Heaven" http://www.mooreschapel.org/fun/bill-gates-goes-to-heaven.ht...

Yeah, I laughed on reading that: ''that was just the demo'' : ). I am typing this on a Nokia E63 and it seems kind of ok, though a robust budget device. I have to place the phone some distance from eyes because it's resolution is bright. Point is, there are still some nuggets of good engineering at Nokia. Just give them time to learn from mistakes.

I have an E72, and the lack of flashy gfx transitions doesn't bother me at all. So long as it's responsive and doesn't make some painful-to-the-eyes glitch-out session during transition, I have never needed eye candy. It does it's job.

same sh*t with n900 running maemo 5, in my experience.

Not really. N900 occasionally chokes, but it works quite smoothly.

N900 is definitely not the same sh*t as N97. The UI feels quite good actually.

I have skype, gmail and google talk accounts enabled and also screen locked with password. Often times UI becomes so unresponsive, that I'm not able to use it at all and have to restart (sometimes by taking out battery). Today someone called and screen didn't light up for quite some time, then it lit up but didn't respond to my input until caller gave up finally.

And this happens all the time.

My mobile phone bill shrank significantly with n900 - I'm just not feeling like using this device.

That hasn't been my experience. Maybe it's not a smooth as an iPhone, but it works well enough for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com