After I made the mistake of saying: "For all my American readers: Eurovision = American idol," I got 3 comments, 5 emails, and roughly 7 instant messages saying how absolutely wrong I was.

Seems like people really love that show!

I apologize for the mistake.

In this video I take a look at how well a device stays on a flat surface.

I don’t know about you guys but I like to open up a flip phone and lay it on my desk. You can do this very well with the N93.

Not so much with the N93i:

Click To Play

Hmmm what does this menu do?

White:

Red:

Green:

Blue:

Pink (aka Darla Mack):

Ray asked what that would look like:

One thing to note: The text goes away after less than 5 seconds BUT you still have a blinking light near the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) logo that flashes every once in a while.

VERY useful. Something I love and miss on my old Nokia 3220.

Any more questions I can answer?

The external screen is beautiful. I wanted to capture the experience of getting a phone call and a text message and share it with you guys. One thing to note: The moment you take this device outside, even on a mildly sunny day, you can’t see anything. This is the price you pay for having a mirrored surface.

Notice how far the N93i moves when it vibrates? The (lack of) vibration feature on my E61 would often cause me to miss calls and text messages. Not so with the N93i!

Also notice how there is a light on top that blinks? Another one of my favorite features. The white LED on my E61 is utterly useless. The E series team could learn a trick or two from the N series folks

Phone Call:

Click To Play

SMS:

Click To Play

Direct link to SMS and Call videos

It’s going to be sent to Finland for flashing. I’m going to loose my auto focusing capability while shooting video.

I took this screen shot so we can see what has changed when I get it back:

I might just do my review today then … I mean what else am I going to do on a Sunday afternoon?

Money Control:

Enhancing further the mobile experience for its customers in Punjab, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today inaugurated its second Concept Store in the State in the city of Ludhiana. Nokia had earlier launched Punjab’s first store in Chandigarh.

A state-of-the-art retail outlet, the Nokia Concept Store offers full range of mobility products and allows consumers to get a first-hand experience before making a purchase decision. The Nokia Concept store in Ludhiana will have a dedicated ‘Nseries studio’ to demonstrate its comprehensive portfolio of mobile converged devices and multimedia applications.

With this launch, Ludhiana becomes the sixth Indian city after Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur and Delhi to have its own ‘Nokia Concept Store’. Located at Sarabha Nagar, the prime retail hub of the city, the store is approximately 2400 square feet and will follow the international format for ‘Nokia Concept Stores’ to provide an interactive and informative shopping experience to consumers.

Sharing the rationale for opening the ‘Nokia Concept Store’ in Chandigarh, Mr. Sunil Dutt, Director, Sales, Nokia India said “Within a span of 70 days, this is our second Concept Store in Punjab. Punjab is one of the fastest growing states in India, with stylish and technology savvy consumer base. We are very happy to bring an enriched mobility experience to our customers in Ludhiana.”

Added Mr. Dutt, “We believe in a human approach towards technology by offering our customers a connected world that empowers them to experience the true power of mobility. Our state-of-the-art Nokia concept store will demonstrate the entire range of Nokia mobile phones across its entry, mid range, multimedia and enterprise categories and will redefine the consumers’ retail experience”.

What’s a concept store in comparison to a flagship store?

(photo from Flickr)

The most interesting part of Steve Garfield’s post would have to be the fact that the video you’re about to watch was edited on his N95.

That’s right folks. The N95 has a built in video editor. This isn’t iMovie, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, Vegas or Windows Movie Maker. This is pure Finnish innovation.

I’m impressed:

Click To Play

I’ve only owned one camcorder in my life. It was a Sony Hi8. The one thing tapes offered me that digital doesn’t was the fact that I could record multiple clips and have them play one after the other.

What I mean by that is I wish my Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N93i and N93 had the capability to merge videos I recorded on the fly. I don’t want to install editing software just to combine two clips, add some transitions and a soundtrack.

Dear Nokia: Can you add the video editing features on the N95 to the N93i via a firmware upgrade?

Update: El has just introduced me to features I never knew existed in my Nokia N93i. I guess I should have read my manual! Thanks El.

Are the people behind Canola working for Nokia (NYSE: NOK) yet? They honestly should.

Calling the N800 an Internet Tablet isn’t going to turn a lot of heads. Call it a portable media player with the best in class web browser will have a lot more people paying attention.

ThoughtFix:

PhoneBoy:

In the meeting this past week, I got a rare opportunity to ask someone in management a point-blank question. While I can’t write everything he said, I can share an interesting fact that was mentioned in his response.Carrier customizations take a lot of work, especially in the US. US carriers have some rather unique requirements for handsets. And even if the work is done to meet those very specific requirements, the carrier can come back and say “we’re not going to carry the phone.” While I don’t have any exact figures on what that some of that work runs, it’s wasted money all the same. I suspect that was one of the reasons that phones take so long to come out here in the US, if they come out at all, is carrier customizations for the US market.

Read the whole thing, it really hits home that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) just doesn’t want to waste their resources peddling to the carriers needs when they have so much more money to make elsewhere.

As a US customer: I don’t care. I import. You should too!

His idea’s for improving Nokia’s situation:

• More online retailers
• More physical shops (target indirect resellers)
• Direct from nokiausa.com, which I’ve seen done with some phones at least
• In Nokia Flagshp Stores
• Put some mobile phone vending machines out there

Jive perfectly with what I suggested less than 2 weeks ago.

Idle ideas are useless. Who will be the one that is going to step up and talk to the top brass within the company?

Is it going to be you PhoneBoy? Tommi? Phil? Jouni?

All it takes is one mobile phone maker to show Americans that they can get awesome, hip, advanced devices from someone other than their operator and the chain reaction will occur.

Other phone makers will follow. An industry will be born.