Nokia World, London - Having jumped off of a burning platform and into Redmond’s arms – a story that I (partially) broke on TechCrunch back in February this year – Nokia this morning finally took the wraps off its much anticipated entry into the Windows Phone world with two new devices: The flagship Lumia 800 and a lower-cost but competitively spec’ed (for a Windows Phone, anyway) Lumia 710.

I’ll get this out of the way right now. The Nokia Lumia 800 is a great looking device, sharing its design cues if not its internals with the recently launched meego-powered N9. After spending some hands-on time with the Lumia 800, overall there’s much to like if not love about this phone. However, much of the credit has to go to Microsoft not Nokia as the OS – Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) – is all Redmond’s own work. And herein lies the conundrum.

How does Nokia intend to own the platform when it doesn’t actually own the platform? How will the company differentiate its smartphone wares in a sea of Androids and iPhones and, drilling down further, with LG, Samsung and others offering Windows Phone-powered handsets. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop himself inadvertently highlighted the exact problem when he described his decision not to adopt Google’s Android for fear of commodization. Today we got a partial answer.

Exclusive apps and services

Right off the bat, Nokia announced two exclusive apps/services that it’s bringing to its Windows Phone devices. The first is Nokia Drive, which brings free turn-by-turn navigation, including a very slick in-car user interface, to its new Lumia range of smartphones. Perhaps not surprising given that all of Nokia’s recent Symbian smartphones come with free sat-nav powered by Nokia Maps. Still, free, lifetime, turn-by-turn navigation is nothing to turn your nose up at and it’s a feature that will come right out of the box.

Second, Nokia Music on Windows Phone sees an upgrade: MixRadio is a music-streaming service that uses the Internet radio model and can be compared to something like Pandora or We7. It comes with preset ‘mixes’ based on genres or artists and, crucially, supports off-line playback. Like Nokia Drive, it’s a free service, although I’m not sure if the company plans to monetize through advertising. Streaming isn’t cheap.

(They’ll be a curated app store too, reports SlashGear).

Carrier support and marketing

On stage, Elop said that in Europe alone, the company has already signed up 31 operators and retailers who have said that they want Nokia’s Lumia 800 to be one of their hero smart phones. That’s good news for the company after Symbian became the ugly stepchild of the industry and would also explain why pictures of the device leaked so early. Then there’s a hefty marketing campaign, some of which we got a glimpse of today. Again, Elop said this would be by far the biggest campaign Nokia has ever run.

Industrial design and logistics

Lastly, as already noted, the Lumia 800′s industrial design (full spec here) appears to be some of Nokia’s best work. The company is also playing on its perceived strengths by employing Carl Zeiss optics to support the phone’s 8MP camera. As was said on stage, it is a Nokia after all.

And in what feels like a Nokia first, the Nokia Lumia 800 will be available in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK this November. Yes, next month, not next quarter or six months later (hello N97). It will be priced at approximately 420 before taxes and subsidies and is scheduled to be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the end of the year, and “in further markets in early 2012″. Alas, North America has to wait again but that’s fine with me.

In a smart PR move too, Elop’s keynote address ended with a live video feed from a Nokia factory in Finland to see a Lumia 800 being boxed up. It was reminiscent of the Xfactor TV show final when the winner’s CD is seen being pressed live. So, yes, this thing is going to ship real soon.

Overall, after jumping from a burning platform into the unknown, Nokia’s future became a little clearer today. A future that offers much hope.

On paper at least, Nokias E6 smartphone could have been designed just for me.

It keeps most of the design cues and form-factor first seen on the E71 and its successor the E72 – easy one handed operation, great physical QWERTY keyboard, rock solid build (well, the E71 at least), superb call quality, free turn-by-turn navigation, amazing battery life and sleek design – while introducing a high resolution touch screen, 8 megapixel camera, HD video recording and playback and the latest version of Symbian, somewhat redesigned for touch.

In fact, the E6 is the type of smartphone that Ive been waiting for: a touch screen phone that doesnt generally force me to use touch so that I can still operate the device one-handed and swap between direct manipulation and click and scroll when either is more efficient or convenient. Of course, attempting to combine the best of both worlds could mean the E6 falls horribly between the two. Im glad to say, however, that for the most part this isnt the case.

The good

Keyboard. Im not sure how but the physical QWERTY keyboard on the E6 feels like an improvement over the E71 and E72. The larger space bar returns after being shrunk on the E72 and it seems like there is a little more travel or a more prominent click on each key. This may or may not be the case but either way Nokia certainly didnt try to fix what wasnt broken and if anything improved on it.

Symbian Anna (OS) and one-handed operation. Symbian has come a long way since Nokia first attempted to bolt-on a touch screen User Interface onto Symbian S60, which was never designed for touch. As my recent review of the Nokia N8 attests, Symbian 3, the latest version of which is dubbed Anna and runs on the E6, does away with most of the idiosyncrasies that plagued devices like the N97. Its not nearly as refined as iOS, webOS or Android, all of which have the advantage of being designed for touch from the get-go and dont try to support legacy users. But in actual fact Nokias Symbian non-touch roots benefits the E6, a device that as already noted is trying to bridge both worlds.

As Rafe Blandford writes over at All About Symbian:

Ironically, this legacy element, represented by a preponderance of menus and selection lists, usually faces heavy criticism and is deemed to be a bad thing because it takes away from the fluidity of the direct touch approach. In the case of the E6, however, this same legacy becomes a benefit, making for a better hybrid device, with near equal usability in both touch and non touch modes.

Most notable is that the hardware softkey (contextual) buttons are replaced by on-screen versions. I thought this might be an issue but because they are more or less in exactly the same position, muscle memory isnt a problem and the change doesnt impact one-handed use. Interestingly, once a menu is brought up using the on-screen softkeys, they can be navigated and selected using either touch or click and scroll.

That said, scrolling through long lists of menu items is much quicker using touch but its nice to have the choice. Its also worth stating that because of the Nokia E6s small screen size (2.46″) that even when using touch, its possible to operate the device with one-hand by moving your thumb on to the onscreen buttons, menus and other content while you cup the phone.

Screen. It may be small and uses older LCD not AMOLED technology but the E6s screen is very bright (good viewing angles and quite visible outdoors) and vibrant with a resolution that boasts VGA (640 x 480) and 326 pixels per inch. Thats a welcome first for Nokia. In terms of touch, the screen is capacitive and as a result is very responsive.

Camera. For those who are upgrading from the E71 or E72, the fact that the E6 boasts a decent camera is a major win (and quite possibly reason enough to upgrade). Its 8 megapixel full focus (EDoF – see Steve Litchfields explanation of the trade offs compared with a fixed focus camera) and is supported by a dual LED flash. The result is much better still shots compared to its two predecessors, although EDoF means limited (or no) macro photography. However, its video production that really excels: 720p HD recording, which in decent light looks absolutely stunning. The only real limitation for shooting video is the phones microphone, which is decent up close but doesnt hold up so well if the subject is further away, although thats pretty much the case with any smartphone.

Video playback. Aside from the limited screen size, video playback is superb on the E6, supporting HD video, multiple video formats (including DivX) and fairly good Flash video support on the Web. This is largely due to the fact that the E6s hardware adheres to Symbian 3s requirement for a dedicated graphic processor, which means it punches above the weight implied by its modest overall clock speed. In addition, the E6 has 8GB of built-in storage along with microSD card support and USB on the go. The latter means that its possible to plug in a USB memory stick to get content off and on the device.

Maps. Like all of Nokias recent smartphones, the E6 comes with Nokia Maps (previously Ovi Maps), which supports free turn-by-turn navigation. It works really well and the E6s GPS radio and aGPS support means that you get a satellite lock very quickly. Its a major selling point of even Nokias cheapest smartphone devices and a feature I miss out-of-the-box on other platforms.

Battery life. Ive arguably left the best till last. Battery life on the E6 is mind bogglingly good. Thats likely a combination of Symbians modest power requirements, the E6s small screen, and its 1500 mAh battery. This means that even with push email, a fair amount of tweeting, surfing, sat-nav and media playback, you should comfortably get a full day. Do less and Ive got two days or more out of the E6 easily.

(Battery life is something that really matters to me as I need a smartphone to double up as my get out of difficulty device so that I can operate more independently of help despite my disability.)

The not so good

Web browser. Nokias bundled web browser is an improvement over previous versions for Symbian (touch) but is still someway off from iOS, webOS and Android. It renders pages fairly well and is speedy enough but it doesnt reflow text intelligently and this is particularly exposed by the E6s high resolution but small screen. In order to view text on web pages at a decent size you need to do a pinch to zoom but this introduces a lot of needless horizontal scrolling. Fortunately there are other options, such as Opera Mobile.

Apps. Its fair to say that Symbian doesnt have the breadth nor quality of apps compared to rival platforms and is a factor that contributed to Nokia announcing that it was switching to Windows Phone in the future where it hopes to catalyze Microsofts burgeoning apps ecosystem. That said, depending on your needs, you may still be covered by Nokias own and third-party apps that do exist for the E6.

The Twitter client Gravity (which also has limited Facebook, Foursquare and Google Reader support) is worthy of particular mention, as is Skype, Gmail (albeit a Java app), and the bundled JoikuSpot, which makes it easy to set up an ad hoc WiFi network via the E6s 3G connection. One app that should face real criticism is Nokias Social, which is just awful considering it will be one of the first that a modern day user fires up.

Notification light. Lastly, the notification light that surrounds the E6s navi-pad is a step backwards from the E71 and E72 because its simply not bright enough. Ive not seen multiple missed calls etc. and have had to learn a new habit and switch my phone off from silent. Hopefully, this can be fixed through software as its likely a culprit of the E6s ambient light sensor that attempts to adjust the screen and back lit keyboards brightness depending on outside lighting conditions.

Verdict

If youre coming from a Nokia E71 or E72 and arent tempted by an iPhone or other slate touch screen device then the E6 is a must have upgrade.

It doesnt sacrifice what its predecessors did best – fast QWERTY keyboard, best-of-class battery life, stylish looks and one-handed operation – but adds touch as an option for increased operational efficiency, along with much improved media playback and production capabilities.

Excellent job Nokia.

Introducing tenthings.me

What started off as a bit of fun on a long New Year’s day weekend, has launched as TenThings.me:

… a place to share (up to) ten things about yourself that your friends and co-workers might not know.

It’s in part inspired by the recent viral hit threewords.me but also an old blogging meme whereby bloggers wrote a post dedicated to letting their readers know a bit more about themselves. Just for fun. And so in the age of Twitter and Facebook in which most people don’t blog anymore, tenthings.me was born so that the old ‘ten things’ meme could live on.

Here’s 10 things you might not know about me

There’s also an interesting (to me anyway) aside to the story of tenthings.me. I actually wrote some of the app’s code, along with my friend Pete Harris, but prior to TenThings I hadn’t programed for years. Inspired on New Year’s day to get my hands dirty again, I browsed the Amazon Kindle book store and within a few minutes had bought a PHP refresher book electronically. A few minutes later, I was writing code again. If I’d had to wait till a dead-tree book arrived in the post, I’m pretty sure the moment would have been lost.

Another reason to love my Kindle.

Announced back in July, Nokia’s new flagship N8 smartphone began shipping on the last day of September to those that had pre-ordered the device (it’s now available on most UK networks). As did the first review units sent out with almost military provision to chosen technology bloggers, this writer included.

Having already declared “Nokia is back” at Nokia World, the Finnish juggernaut is to a degree framing the N8, the first to run the new Symbian 3, as a hard reset for the company as it attempts to return its once held leadership position in the smartphone space. Not in terms of marketshare (that’s not looking too shabby) but in terms of mindshare where Nokia has in recent times fallen behind iPhone, BackBerry and the relentless onslaught on Android. It’s in this context that the N8 is to be judged.

Software

Improvements to Symbian’s UI

It’s traditional when reviewing a smartphone to begin by evaluating its hardware, but in this case I’m going to start with software. Specifically, the N8′s Operating System, Symbian 3. That’s because as already noted, it’s the first of a new line of Nokia devices to ship with the updated OS. It’s fair to say that Symbian’s reputation suffered greatly with the move to touch, with the old S60 UI getting a terribly rushed and kludge of a makeover.

So how does S3 stack up?

Well the short answer is just good enough but that in itself is significant. The N8′s UI will feel familiar to long time Nokia users but also does away with most of the head on the table idiosyncrasies of Symbian 1 (or S60 5th Edition) as found on the likes of the N97 and N97 Mini. Gone is the need to double and single tap in different areas of the UI, such as the media player. Instead a long press brings up contextual menus in a similar way to Android.

Symbian 3 also makes better play of the OS’ multitasking abilities through a much improved application switcher that presents a thumbnail preview of each running application in a carousel that can be swiped left and right and clicked on to be brought back into focus. To close an app you simply tap on the x in the corner of said thumbnail. It’s not quite as cool as Palm’s WebOS card view, lacking the ability to close an app by swiping it off of the screen, but it works just as well. Definitely better than iOS or Android’s multitasking UI.

The N8′s homescreen, which divides opinion, is the same as found on the N97 except that there is now three of them. They house the same fixed dimension widgets in a grid that works in both portrait and landscape mode. And while this keeps things tidy, it restricts the utility of many widgets, such as email, because not enough valuable information is on show.

The newly improved UI also benefits greatly from Nokia’s decision to finally embrace capacitive touchscreens, meaning that the N8, while running on moderate hardware (see below), feels pretty snappy. Not the fastest but again, good enough.

However, there are still aspects of Symbian 3′s – and therefore the N8′s – User Interface that full behind the likes of the iPhone, WebOS and the best of Android. The virtual on-screen keyboard is improved but it’s still stuck in the past. First up, you can only invoke a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode, with a T9 type affair in portrait mode. It would have been simple enough to give users the choice. And as previously, the keyboard takes over the whole UI, meaning that you can’t refer to the web page or app that prompted you to type something in the first place. It also introduces an extra tap or two to bring up and dismiss the keyboard.

Another frustrating aspect of Symbian’s UI/UX is that it’s incredibly prompt heavy, bringing up dialogue and confirmation boxes far, far too often. It’s as if the designers suffer from an anxiety disorder. If you’re a long time user, it’s no big deal but sort of reminds me of the few times I move from a Mac to a PC running Windows, having to adjust to continually being nagged about this action or that. Yes, I want to connect to WiFi in “off-line” mode and so on.

Other than that it’s the familiar grid of icons and somewhat nested folders. Nothing inspiring but plenty functional.

In fact, the Windows analogy is probably quite a good one for Symbian 3 overall. No, it’s not the best touch screen UI on the market but, actually, it’s just good enough for most users and it’s definitely an improvement over previous versions. And besides, a great UI does not make a market success. See Palm’s WebOS. There are other factors equally if not more important.