Nokia’s latest 3720 Classic cellphone can be dropped into a pint of beer, taken into a shower and stored inside a pile of sawdust. But that’s nothing compared to the Sonim XP3 Quest 2.0, a mobile phone that can withstand being flung across the room or used as a hammer — and can be heard perfectly over the noise of a jackhammer.
The devices are part of an emerging category of rugged phones aimed at people who are rough on their gadgets — or who just want to project a tougher image. Major handset makers including Nokia and Samsung, as well as specialized handset makers such as Sonim, are counting on these near-unbreakable phones to reach a section of consumers–plumbers, construction workers and truck drivers, not to mention mountain bikers and snowboarders–who may find the iPhone a bit too dainty to use.
“Finally users have a phone they can hammer a nail with or use while wearing a glove ,” says Bob Plaschke, chief executive officer of Sonim.”Not everyone wants to walk into a store to get the latest touchscreen or a cameraphone. Some people just want a device that is built to last.”
At least 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the billion or so cellphones worldwide ends up in the hands of blue collar workers, estimates Sonim. That means millions of phones for users that don’t care about popular cellphone design trends such as thinness, touchscreen or video camera.
Instead, says Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, these users want a device that can be tossed around without much care.
“They are people who find that their phones keep getting smashed up,” says Wood, “and while they don’t want something that is bulletproof, armor proof and military grade, they would like a phone that is close enough.”
Rugged phones are not for the faint of heart. Most are built to withstand drops on concrete, work in extreme temperatures, sport scratch resistant displays and be spill-proof and dust-proof. But the tradeoff is that the phones are more expensive than their peers and they are usually not available on contract with most major U.S. carriers.
The devices are not entirely a new idea. Rugged laptops such as those from Panasonic and Dell are a staple among road warriors, especially in construction and the military. The early rugged phones were created for industrial strength users such as the UPS deliverymen or Walmart store managers who wanted a sturdy phone to use at work. But these phones were bulky devices that didn’t particularly score high on looks or style, says Wood. That’s changing as rugged phone makers target consumers, he says.
“Aside from the blue collar workers, there’s also the category of weekend warriors who may want these phones to project an uber-macho image,” says Wood. That means bikers, skiers and hikers could opt for rugged devices instead of carrying phones that are more flimsy. Sonim has already partnered with Land Rover in the U.K. to market its phones.
While rugged phones may not have a 5-megapixel camera like the Motorola Zine (on T-Mobile), they have enough features to keep an average consumer happy. Last year, Sony introduced the weather-resistant C702 Cybershot phone that included a 3.2 megapixel camera. The Nokia 3720 Classic includes a 2-megapixel camera, video and audio recording and a music player. Sonim’s phone comes with GPS tracking and turn-by-turn navigation application and a built-in LED torch.
“Our phone battery can offer at least 15 hours of talk time,” says Sonim’s Plaschke. “Every feature we offer is designed with ruggedization in mind.” It’s not just all talk. Sonim backs up its claims with a three-year warranty on all handsets that it calls an “unconditional guarantee.”
The rugged phones, though, carry a stiff price. Sonim’s XP3 Quest will sell through Best Buy unlocked for $500, while Nokia’s 3720 Classic is available for €125 ($175). Industry executives such as Plaschke hope as rugged phones get popular they will be picked up by U.S. telecom carriers.
“Right now this is a market of a few hundred thousand phones,” says Wood. “But when you have big players such as Nokia and Samsung put some effort, you know there is a real market opportunity here.”
BOSTON–I spent some time today checking out the Nokia Surge, the company’s new smartphone for AT&T Wireless. In a twist, Nokia designed the Surge specifically for the U.S. That means there’s no unlocked version with a different model number (such as with the E71 and the E71x, for example).
In fact, it’s actually Nokia’s third smartphone for AT&T in the past 12 months; the first two were the Nokia 6650 and the E71x. That’s significant because it signals a change in Nokia’s strategy; up until recently, Nokia’s diverse lineup of unlocked smartphones have barely made a dent in the U.S. marketplace due to their high upfront cost.
That said, Nokia is aiming the Surge at a younger demographic than the E71x. The big news is the Surge’s thin, squat form factor, as if it endured a few passes of a rolling pin. It’s made almost entirely of black gloss plastic and accumulates fingerprints like crazy. The handset measures 3.8 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.4 ounces. But it felt lighter in the hand than I had expected.
Is the tide changing for Nokia in the U.S.? Nokia and AT&T have unveiled the Surge, a Symbian S60-based smartphone. It’s a horizontal slider with a four-row QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera, and a 2.4-inch non-touch LCD screen.
The handset also features a GPS radio, support for Microsoft Exchange e-mail accounts, and access to AT&T’s optional services like AT&T Navigator and JuiceCaster. It weighs 4.4 ounces and measures 3.8 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches.
The Surge will be available online and ins stores on July 19th for $79.99 with a two-year contract and after rebates. That’s $20 less than last year’s iPhone 3G. This marks the second time in a few months that Nokia has released a subsidized smartphone with carrier support (the first being the excellent Nokia E71x).
We’ve known about Nokia’s so-called Surge for months now, but at long last, AT&T has done its duty by making things official and giving us a price and release date to consider. The Symbian S60-based smartphone is aimed squarely at social media freaks, boasting a full QWERTY keyboard, a browser with Flash support (imagine that, right?), a pre-installed JuiceCaster app for easily updating your Facebook / Twitter status and a price tag that’s sure to turn heads. For just $79.99 after rebate, you’ll also get a 2 megapixel camera, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Video Share and the pleasure of handing over at least $30 per month for a required data plan (if you want the $50 rebate, anyway). If you’re sold already, you can get yours on July 19th.
Nokia is the worldwide king of cellphones. But don’t tell that to U.S. customers. Nokia’s market share in the United States is on the decline, down to 8 percent last year, from 15 percent two years ago.
“Nokia missed a number of handset trends in the last few years — thin phones, clamshells, touchscreen devices, applications,” says Ross Rubin, an analyst with the NPD Group. “They have been pretty much out of everything.”
And that’s odd, given Nokia’s global dominance. Apple’s iPhone may get talked about more and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices may be must-have executive jewelry, but four in 10 cellphones sold worldwide last year were made by Nokia. Nokia sold 97 million phones in the first quarter of the year, nearly twice that of its closest competitor, Samsung.
But American customers are not finding much to love about Nokia.
It isn’t that Nokia is uninterested in getting its phones into the hands of more American consumers. The company has repeatedly said North America is a significant market. And analysts agree that Nokia cannot afford to stay out of this market.
“The danger is not so much that they will miss out on unit sales in the U.S. and get hurt,” says Michael Mace, who has worked at Palm and Apple and now runs his own strategy consulting firm, Rubicon Consulting. “The danger is if innovations start to happen here first.”
And Nokia is already seeing it happen. Apple’s App Store has changed how consumers view their phones and has given Apple a huge presence among independent developers of software for mobile phones.
Americans are also more willing to buy more expensive smartphones that hold the promise of greater profits for the handset makers, while cheaper feature phones dominate the market worldwide, says Mace.
“Nokia has a huge unit share but look at their share of profitability,” he says. “Those two curves are running in opposite directions for them.”
Nokia declined to comment for this story citing the ‘quiet period’ the company has to observe ahead of its earnings report July 17. But we polled four analysts and two industry experts to understand why Nokia phones get so little love in the U.S. Here’s what they told us is troubling Nokia.
A weak brand When was the last time you saw a Nokia commercial on TV or an ad in the paper? While the company’s rivals such as Apple, Palm and Research In Motion have been competing to get more airtime for their products, Nokia has chosen to be more low-key in its approach. The result has been that the average American consumer doesn’t really lust for a Nokia phone.
That’s in contrast to how the company’s products are perceived in some of the biggest cellphone markets: India, China and Europe. Nokia phones there have a cachet that is unimaginable for most U.S. consumers. “In many countries if you have a Nokia phone it says something good about you,” says Mace. “It says you are sophisticated, stylish and successful.” Not so in the U.S., where the company’s phones rank much lower in terms of their aspirational value. “Using a Nokia phone here mostly means I am offbeat and not always in a good way,” Mace says.
In case of cellphones, a significant chunk of marketing support also stems from telecom carriers who take on the responsibility of promoting the handsets. Without major carrier support, Nokia has been at a disadvantage.
Lack of focus on CDMA handsets Nokia has bet big on the GSM standard for wireless communication, a move that had paid rich dividends in international markets. But in the U.S. the battle between the two standards still rages on, with the Verizon and Sprint networks using the CDMA standard, while AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM.
“Nokia just doesn’t make good CDMA phones, so that right away cut their addressable market in half,” says Dean Bubley, principal analyst with research firm Disruptive Analysis. Glance through the Verizon website for phones offered in San Francisco and you can see just four Nokia phones available compared to 17 different models of Samsung and eight models of the BlackBerry.
Nokia has said it is focusing on getting more CDMA phones but some of the company’s latest devices, such as the Nokia E71, phone remain stubbornly GSM-only.
Poor execution Two months ago Nokia launched a revamped app store called Ovi that featured games, applications, podcasts and videos. But the store got off to a rocky start, as users faced problems accessing it and downloading the programs. Nokia blamed the “extraordinarily high spikes of traffic” for the performance issues.
Nokia also botched the introduction of its Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phones. Nokia offered the 5800 phones for $400 as an unlocked and unsubsidized device in the U.S. through the company’s stores. But within hours of the launch, buyers reported crippling connectivity problems with the device. The complaints forced Nokia to pull the U.S. version of the phone off its shelves and try to find a quick fix.
The two incidents haven’t helped bolster Nokia’s image as a company whose phones should be on everyone’s must-have list.
Lack of carrier relationships While Nokia sells some of its phones through telecom carriers, the company has often chosen to sell its handsets unsubsidized and unlocked. While that may mean more freedom for consumers, it also translates into unusually large price tags. For instance, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was priced at $400 for an unlocked phone. The latest Nokia N97 costs $700, which puts it out of the budget of most buyers.
“It’s a phone that most consumers will never see,” says Michael Gartenberg, technology strategist at analytics firm Interpret. “It’s also a device that has gotten okay to mediocre reviews and that’s not of interest to consumers in the age of the iPhone and Palm Pre.”
The prices aren’t out of whack with what similar unsubsidized handsets from other carriers would cost. But try telling that to the average consumer. Most customers would rather pay $100-$200 for a phone and sign up for a two-year contract. But without being able to strike those deals with U.S. carriers, Nokia has been forced to offer its phones at full price to consumers. Carriers view Nokia as a company that puts its own brand ahead of its telecom partners, says Bubley. “Nokia puts a lot more stock in its own branding and marketing worldwide than other handset makers,” he says. “In North America their unwillingness to play a secondary role to carriers has hurt them.”
Unusual design Nokia phones are eye-catching but, unfortunately for the company, its devices don’t fit American standards of beauty. “Their design values don’t mesh with what customers here want,” says Mace.
Since Motorola introduced the RAZR, Americans have like their phones to be anorexically thin. Most handset makers were quick to catch on to this trend — except Nokia, which was the last phone company to do a really thin phone.
“Nokia doesn’t like to do flip phones because European customers don’t want it,” says Rubin. “And they haven’t embraced the touchscreen trend either completely.”
Symbian For years, Nokia was the biggest supporter of the Symbian operating system. Last year the company put its money where its mouth is, and bought out its partners, making itself into Symbian sole owner. Nokia eventually turned Symbian into a non-profit foundation.
But Symbian is now seen by industry experts as a bloated OS that offers little flexibility and is just not ready the social networking generation.
“Nokia does beautiful, detail-oriented hardware but they don’t nearly have the same design skills around software,” says Mace. “Their software is too buggy, too hard to use and too awkward.”
An insignificant app store Since Apple launched its app store on the iPhone 3G a year ago, customers have downloaded more than a billion apps. The idea has been replicated by competitors ranging from Palm, RIM and Android. A vibrant app store is a major selling point for many smartphone users, says Gartenberg. And Nokia just hasn’t put gotten it right there.
It isn’t for want of trying. Nokia relaunched its Ovi app store in May and said it can accessed by about 50 million Nokia device owners worldwid. The Ovi store had about 20,000 titles at launch, including both free and paid apps. But here’s the catch for U.S. users: Alhough U.S. consumers can access and purchase content from the Ovi store those purchases will require a separate credit card transaction. AT&T has said it will offer carrier billing so purchases from the store become a part of the monthly service bills later this year. But there’s still no confirmation on when that will be available. Meanwhile, compare the 20,000 or so apps in the Ovi store to the 55,000 or more apps on Apple’s apps store.
Okay, you know the drill by now: just because it’s in a patent doesn’t mean it’s happening anytime soon, if ever. With that said, we’d love to see what Nokia had in mind when they concocted this one. As Unwired View recently unearthed, the Finnish phone maker has drawn up a design doc / patent application for comfortable, stretchable material that fits over your skin and is used for device interaction. Gestures and stretches are computed and signaled into nearby computers, phones, or interestingly enough “near-eye displays” — sounds like we’re getting into a bit of virtual / augmented reality territory here — and they are also tailored to provide feedback via vibration. Again, don’t hold your breath on seeing this come to fruition any point in the near (or even long) future, but still, we know what you’re thinking: Nokia’s gonna have to think of a ton of kooky color descriptions to accentuate any future lineup of input wristbands / fingerbands.
Nokia’s slice of the smartphone market in the U.S. is virtually non-existent, although it’s still the number one cell phone vendor worldwide. However, that could change soon. A new study from Generator Research predicts that Apple’s share of the smartphone market could exceed Nokia’s sometime within the next four years, according to Electronista.
In fact, the research firm sees the market virtually “reversing itself” by then. It predicts that Nokia could fall from 40 to 20 percent share as the iPhone increases to 33 percent by that point–with Apple shipping 77 million iPhones in 2011 alone.
Generator cites the usual reasons for Apple’s success here, basically saying it’s a combination of the iPhone itself and Apple’s App Store, according to the report. That $99 iPhone 3G can’t hurt either. Meanwhile, Nokia seems unable to get U.S. carriers to pick up their devices here in the U.S., aside from the occasional E62 or E71x on AT&T, and steadfastly refuses to push into the CDMA side (read: Verizon and Sprint).
The N97 is Nokia’s attempt to stand tall in an unfamiliar, hostile world populated by the iPhone, Pre and Android the only way it knows how: by throwing the kitchen sink at them. If this is it, they’re doomed.
Okay, maybe you don’t think that’s true, the doomed part: Nokia is the number one cellphone maker in the world—they sold 468 million phones last year and still own 41.2 percent of the smartphone market. But in the context of Symbian’s sliding marketshare—Symbian was on 56.9 percent of smartphones at the beginning of 2008, now it’s on 49.3 percent, while the iPhone has doubled its marketshare to 10.8 percent and RIM’s grown to 19.9 percent—the N97 indeed spells a certain kind of doom for Nokia, if it’s the best the number one cellphone marker in the world can really do.
Hardware Let’s start with the most decent part, the hardware. The form factor is great, actually, for a QWERTY slider, because it still feels like a phone. It’s a little narrower than the iPhone 3GS and the exact same thickness as the G1—not svelte, and it still fits in skinny jeans just fine. The snappy “thwack” it makes when you slide the screen upward to the reveal the keyboard is the single most satisfying thing about this phone. It’s loud. But it’s reassuring. It feels powerful and sturdy and smooth, like it’ll last a hundred years.
The tilt angle the screen thrusts out at isn’t adjustable, which is unfortunate, since it’s slightly off from where I’d prefer. For instance, you have to hold the keyboard flat when you’re typing to look at the screen dead-on—if you tend to tilt your phone toward you as you type (like I do), the screen is going to face your crotch and you won’t be able to see anything.
The keyboard waiting underneath the screen is a mixed bag. The slightly rubbery texture of the keys is perfect, and while I found I had no problems with the layout, some people might loathe the fact the space key is shoved all the way to the right. The real problem is that the keys have an ultrashort travel distance, so there’s virtually no tactile feedback when you’re typing—less than the G1, which wasn’t exactly rocking faces with its keyboard, either. Put another way, it doesn’t pass the driving test—I couldn’t bang out a text message while driving to save my life. (Good thing I didn’t wreck.) Not only does the d-pad suffer from the same defect, the ring with the directional buttons is too narrow, so you’ll likely push the center button a whole lot when you don’t mean to. I wound up avoiding it altogether, since I’ve got a touchscreen after all.
What actually surprised me most about the 640×360 screen was how much it totally didn’t blow me away. Let’s get the fact that it was a resistive touchscreen out of the way. The N97’s touch responsiveness was about as good as resistive screens get, but even at best, that’s minor league stuff compared to a capactive touchscreen—the touch hardware that makes the Palm Pre, iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, G1 and myTouch 3G awesome to poke and flick. In terms of visual quality, I simply never had a “wow” moment, like the first time you peep the brilliant screen on the Palm Pre. It’s acceptable bordering on good, though—watching YouTube videos on its Flash Lite-enabled browser was a solid experience, for sure.
The most disappointing aspect of the hardware is the pokey 424MHz processor that attempts to run this thing—the one spec that’s notably not emblazoned on the back of the N97, because it’d be a badge of goddamn shame. It still baffles me that Nokia sent their all-singing, all-dancing, all-Qiking flagship phone out into the world with this anemic slice of silicon. Running just a couple of basic apps at once—say, Facebook or Gravity and Music—I had more hangups with this thing than a telemarketer on meth. HTC’s been using 528MHz processors for what feels like an eternity, so what the hell?
As for the camera, well to start, there are two cameras. A 5-megapixel shooter on the back protected by sliding cover, and front-facing camera for video conferencing. It also shoots 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. As you can see, the still images are good, not great—despite the size they’re still washed out enough that they have the definite feel of “cameraphone” all over them, even in broad daylight. The LED flash is surprisingly strong, though you’re not going to light up a whole room with it, obviously. The secondary camera is pretty laughable in terms of quality, but that’s okay. And then the video quality is passable for a phone, though far from startling clarity, both the clips stored locally and the ones I uploaded to Qik using the built-in app.
My favorite hardware feature is the built-in two-way FM transmitter, so you can pick up radio stations or beam your music library out to your car’s FM radio, no Belkin dongle required. Performance was just about as good as a separate FM transmitter dongle, too. (Passable, but it’s never going to be awesome.)
Hurray for hardware standards, though. It charges over the same microUSB port that plugs into your computer, not the little tiny peehole that’s been Nokia standard for a million years. A standard 3.5 mm headphone jack is dead center on top, and it’s got stereo Bluetooth. And let’s not forget that 32GB of internal storage, which can be expanded by microSDHC cards for up to 48GB of total storage.
Overall, as much there is wrong internally, there’s a lot to like in the hardware—it’d be total win with a faster processor and more brilliant screen, since the battery seems more than up to the task.
Software I don’t even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia’s managed to make RIM’s BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it’s a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it. Since I have nothing nice to say, let’s keep this part short.
Nokia’s instinct to widgetize the homescreen, giving you access to messaging, maps, the browser, Facebook or whatever else you want is a good one, and one of the few non-terrible things about the user interface. But even its visual feel is dated and worn, like someone dragged 2003 into the present tied to the back of a battered and rusted pickup truck. Yuck visual elements abound—in landscape mode, there’s a fairly persistent right-side dock of buttons, that steal screen real estate for no discernible reason at times. And inconsistency seems to be the rule. Some stuff you double tap to activate, other stuff you single tap. There’s a list in the manual detailing which is which—I forget. There’s no flick scrolling, except for when there is, like in the Ovi Store.
The phone’s built-in apps are solid, mostly, with the exception of the default email program (download Nokia Messaging 1.1 from Nokia to get an actually competent program).
The WebKit browser mostly kept pace with the iPhone’s over Wi-Fi. The interface isn’t as easy to use, like to zoom, but hey, it does Flash Lite, so suck on that everybody. The browser’s back button serves up thumbnails of previously visited websites you can zip through, a desperately needed touch of form and function on this phone.
Nokia Maps, if you want more than the basics—namely pedestrian or voice-guided navigation—you get a three-month trial before you have to pay up for a subscription. That said, it’s feature rich, with a compass, multiple map modes like 3D, traffic info and points of interest, though not as easy to use to pick and use as Google Maps on other platforms. (I handed it and an iPhone off to a friend in my car while navigating deep into the wastelands of Alabama, and Google Maps proved much easier for them to deal with, despite their intense dislike for all things Apple.)
It’s pre-crammed with a buttload of mostly excellent third party apps as well: Qik, RealPlayer, YouTube, JoikuSpot Premium, Accuweather, Facebook (a really impressive though appropriately S60 version) and Spore, to name just a handful. Qik in particular is fantastic—I set up an account and was livestreaming video within a minute of popping open the app.
That’s fortunate, because the Ovi Store manages to have the worst mobile app store interface I’ve seen yet. Just try to use that header/scrollbar thing on top to move between categories. And it’s “stuff,” not apps, since Nokia hawks a melange of goods at Ovi, from wallpapers to ringtones to apps, often jumbling them all on a single page. Speaking of Ovi, the desktop suite, also named Ovi, didn’t fall far from the Ovi tree—it’s a natural disaster that’s not a single app for managing your phone, but a handful of distinct apps that intersect in the actual “suite” launcher application. Imagine iTunes, then its remarkably confusing total opposite, ontologically speaking. (And I’m not even getting into the Ovi online services, which are distinct from Nokia’s other offerings, so I wound up creating two wholly different accounts in the process of getting my N97 totally setup.)
What a mixed bag.
Conclusion Nokia has to know where it stands. At least, assuming somebody actually used the N97 before it went out the door.
Symbian S60 5th Edition only makes sense if it’s a stopgap keeping Nokia in the game (barely) until they put out an actual next-generation OS, just like the underwhelming Windows Mobile 6.5 will do for Microsoft. I’m really hoping for a complete rebuild of Symbian. I am not expecting Nokia to turn to an entirely different OS from a certain Goo-ey company despite recent (and retarded) rumors. Nokia is married to Symbian for the long haul—after all, they paid nearly half a billion dollars for it.
That’s the only way I can fathom them releasing something this unusable into a world populated by the iPhone, Palm Pre, Android and BlackBerry. If this really is the best Nokia can do, the giant is doomed to die a slow death, propped up for a while by the cheap handsets that it sells by the tens of millions.
Built-in Qik app and setup rocks
Widgets on homescreen are solid
32GB of storage expandable to 48 freakin’ GB
Two-way FM transmitter for playing music over car radio is awesome
Keyboard feels nice, but weird layout might bug some people
High-res touchscreen, though it doesn’t make the most of it
Pokey processor
Ovi Store is worst mobile app store on the planet
Symbian S60 5th edition user experience is garbage
Everyone else is working on an Android handset, so why shouldn’t Nokia? The Finnish handset manufacturer is reported working on a new touchscreen smartphone using Google’s open operating system, which is set for debut at September’s Nokia World conference, according to The Guardian.
Since the launch of Android, Nokia has been hedging its bets on Symbian, with plans to offer that OS free of charge. The company, naturally, is not yet commenting on this latest round of rumors.
Talk of a possible Android / Nokia tie-up has been ongoing since time immemorial, and the latest fuel to the fire comes from the Guardian which is sourcing “industry insiders” as saying that the world’s largest phone manufacturer will reveal an Android-powered touchscreen handset at its Nokia World event this September. Though Nokia itself has never truly ruled out the possibility of working with Open Handset Alliance code, a move into Android right now would truly be an odd one — granted, the Symbian Foundation is probably on thin ice any way you look at it, but even without S60 and its successors in the mix in the long term, Nokia still has Maemo quietly reaching platform maturity in the background with rumors of an imminent MID / superphone hybrid swirling in recent months. It seems that adopting Android (even if only for a select number of models) would be an admission on Nokia’s part that it has failed to be a Maker of Standards, despite its overwhelming size and market position — not to mention a major bet that it can continue to win customers based on the strength of its hardware alone, since it’d now be working with a common platform adopted by dozens of companies large and small. So, here’s the million- (or maybe billion-) dollar question: all things being equal, can Nokia outdo HTC and Samsung on the same platform?
Update: And now the Nokia spokesman response: “Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever, everyone knows that Symbian is our preferred platform for advanced mobile devices.” Yes, unfortunately / fortunately, we do know that.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Built-in Qik app and setup rocks
Widgets on homescreen are solid
Keyboard feels nice, but weird layout might bug some people
Pokey processor
Ovi Store is worst mobile app store on the planet
