Folks of The Really Mobile Project wanted to show just how horrible experience Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Ovi Store provides. To illustrate their hassle in buying a Twitter client, they made a short video above. As you can see for yourself, something’s fundamentally wrong with the Ovi Store. I’ve no doubts the issues raised will be fixed in time, but in the meantime saying “it sucks” is an understatement…

[Via: Gizmodo]

I just came back from the first of six international Nokia N900 meetups. The Helsinki event took place in none other than the Nokia Flagship Store, a shop that I used to visit quite often during my usual daily strolls down main street, but have lately been ignoring due to Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s present uninspiring portfolio of devices. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not it was a success, but I know that has something to do with the former financial analyst in me who would like to see some hard numbers. A success, by my definition, would be recuperating the costs of these events, with Nokia N900 purchases from the people in attendance. I’ll never know if this event, or the five similar events coming up are actually cost effective, but I did discover something just by showing up. Nokia employees working on Maemo have hearts.

There are four types of Nokia employees. You have the majority of employees, who do their job just so they can pay the bills. They’ve established a mind numbing routine and are indifferent about their role, but they know that working for Nokia allows them a gracious amount of time off, flexible working hours, and a healthy severance package should they become fired. Then you have the people who are actually into the mobile industry and really do care about where Nokia is heading, but unfortunately they’re in roles that have little to no impact towards the future device or service portfolio. There are a healthy number of these individuals, I used to be one of them. Next you have the people who actually work on the future devices and services Nokia will be releasing, the people who get their hands dirty, the people who use an IDE more than they use PowerPoint. These people care about what they’re doing, developers love solving problems and seeing a project rise from concept to product, but they may not exactly care about Nokia or the wireless industry as a whole. Finally you have the people who are in the right place, at the right time, and doing the right thing. These people may or may not have technical savvy, but are in a position to change things and are really excited about the things they’re working on, what their work will mean for Nokia, and the mobile telecommunications as a whole. Few of these sort of people exist, but I was fortunate enough to meet a few at tonight’s event.

Maemo employees, and I’m not going to name names since I don’t want to get people in trouble, know what they’re up against. They know the iPhone offers a fantastic consumer experience, but deep down they really do care that it is a locked down platform where developers play by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s rules. They know Android is on the tip of everyone’s tongues, but they oppose the fact that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) worked to build something that is open on paper, but in reality is just Google saying “we know there is stuff out there in the open source community that does what we want to do, but we’re just going to write, from scratch, the bits and pieces we want to make so they can be exactly how we like them; to shut the community up we’ll just open source everything”. They know that the N900 will be what the technology media people will be talking about when it hits stores next month, but they’re humble and admit that internally their judgement day, when all Maemo employees receive self vindication, will be when the device after the N900 running Maemo 6 will be on store shelves.

The enthusiasm Maemo people have about open source software is astounding. They don’t want to build something from scratch, open source it, and call it a day. Instead Maemo people look at the best at what open source offers today and then takes from all those projects whatever it can to combine it into what you and I call Maemo. I never really understood that until tonight. To me “open source” has become such an overused phrase that I’ve associated it with filthy marketing talk. One Maemo employee whispered to me “notice how there are no marketing people here tonight?” and at that point I realized the whole concept of these events was not about pushing the Nokia N900, but pushing Maemo and the concept of open source to a greater audience.

I may not agree with open source people. They probably hate the fact that I use Windows 7, that I don’t give a shit as to whether my software is open or not, and that I constantly bring up the fact that going to an open source event is like waking up in a world where females never existed. That being said, open source people are free thinkers, and the people who talked to me today did not spew the well rehearsed Nokia corporate communications quotes, they actually started their sentences “well … personally I think …”; unheard of since Nokia marketing people are not allowed to have their own opinions when speaking to a public facing audience.

The Maemo guys have heart, and people with passion get far in life, but can this team execute on a mission to bring the best open source software device to market? I’ll just have to wait and see. I can’t offer anything else that that.

Just wait and see.

Oh and one more thing: congratulations to my mate Henrikki for winning a Nokia N900 tonight.

Long time Nokia (NYSE: NOK) fanbois and fangirls know that Nokia’s Nseries devices pack the latest hardware and software inside, albeit at the cost of some instability, while the Eseries packs the hardware and software from the previous generation, but thankfully has been matured and made highly stable, and finally the numbered devices, 6220 Classic for example, are tried and tested and practically bulletproof. As time goes on however, the Nseries appears to be getting more and more buggy, prompting a mobile shop owner who prefers to remain anonymous to say:

“I’ve found myself advising customers to wait three to four months from a [high-end] N-Series handset’s initial release before purchasing, as we expect all of them to have flaws in the original release.”

I’ve personally jumped back and forth, starting with a Nokia E61, then getting a N95, then E61i, then N82, and now I’m using an E71. Nothing in today’s Nseries lineup excites me. But back to software stability: one thing I can depend on is quick software updates that fix any bugs I may run into. The imported models I used to purchase were usually Finnish, and now living in Finland I obviously get Finnish models. Nokia smartphone buyers in the UK however have to wait a few more weeks for their software updates. What does Nokia UK have to say about this?

“The team are working hard to speed up the process and ensure consumers in the UK and around the rest of the world can get all software updates as soon as possible.”

A typical recycled and well rehearsed public relations line. The UK has it bad, the USA is the worst however. Software updates usually don’t even come out for American variants.

What’s up Nokia, isn’t the Nseries supposed to be your premium brand? The Ferrari of your device lineup?

[Via: The Guardian]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) (NYSE: NOK)’s word of mouth marketing team are up to their silly little tricks again, this time staging an event in London for a select group of 10 mobile bloggers this Thursday. The invitation is one big arrow shaped box and comes with a Nokia N97 inside. “The Nokia Signpost opening on the 23rd of October” sounds like it has something to do with the “Ovi Prime Place” trademark we heard about earlier today. All you have to know is to come back to IntoMobile come Friday to get the details on what’s going on Good Luck to Nokia’s PR team competing with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s PR team who are going to be launching the next version of Windows that very same day.

Update: This picture is also being sent to various Nokia bloggers:

Update: Now we have an exact time and date:

The Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 2200 Slide has been leaked and it’s nothing you iPhone packing, Nokia Nseries toting, HTC Android (or Windows Mobile) powered fanbois have to worry about in terms of shrinking your e-penis. What we’re looking at is a S40 powered slider with a 128 x 160 resolution screen, dual band GSM/EDGE capability on the 900 and 1800 MHz bands, 3.5 mm headphone jack, FM radio, and Opera Mini preinstalled. Hopefully this sucker will come in more colors than “pink so bright my eyes are on fire” when it ships in Q4 of this year.

[Via: Daily Mobile, where you can also see more photos by the way]

Aleksi Moisio, a writer for Talous Sanomat, a Finnish publication, who was the first to tell IntoMobile about Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s previously filed trademarks: Xseris, Cseries, Netbook and Money, brings news of a new trademark that was filed in Finland on October 14th: Ovi Prime Place.

We have absolutely no idea what Prime Place actually is, or when it will be announced, but if I was a betting man I would say it has something to do with Ovi Maps.

Update: And like clock work, Aleksi provided further clarification by leaving a comment below:

The description for the goods and services involved reads as following: “Mobile advertising services; providing an online searchable database featuring information about local businesses.”

So it has something to due with advertising … on maps? Time will tell.

Looks like Obopay isn’t the only parter Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is going to be working with on providing mobile payments. Today Nokia signed a 5 year agreement with TANLA, an Indian company, to provide a “mobile payment service to enable on device transactions”. Tanla’s service works in 160 countries and can use both operator billing and credit card billing.

“This agreement further highlights our strong track record in processing secure transactions on the handset and our position as a trusted supplier of mobile payment services. Through a single integration with Tanla, application developers can monetize their services in 160 countries through operator and credit card billing.” — Uday Reddy, Chairman & Managing Director, Tanla Solutions

[Press Release]

We’ve already seen how to BitTorrent stuff from the Internet with the Nokia N900. Now we have a video of the same device running Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s latest product – Wave. As you’re about to see, things don’t run too smoothly — there’s some lag between the keyboard and text box — but overall the experience is more than acceptable considering just how JavaScript-intense the Wave is. Hopefully, Google will release its JS framework or at least Chrome browser for multiple mobile platforms and all the lag will be removed. In the meantime, check the N900 riding the Wave. Enjoy!

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

Earlier today I posted the press release that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) issued this morning about Rick Simonson leaving his post as CFO to head the mobile phones unit. Reuters managed to digg up some more details. The Devices Unit is now split into three subunits, not two as I said this morning. Mobile Phones, which does S30 and S40 based devices, will be headed by Rick Simonson. Smartphones, which will work on Symbian based devices, will be headed by Jo Harlow. Mobile Computers will be headed by former Apple Vice President John Martin and will focus soley on Maemo. Good luck gentlemen.

Staska from Unwired View lives in Lithuania and the poor guy can’t get the latest TV shows and movies from America, so he has to resort to piracy. I do the same thing from here in Finland, but to be honest even when I was living in America I pirated the living hell out of everything since I didn’t have a TiVo. Anyway, back to Staska, he was one of the lucky ~ 300 people to receive a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N900 from the Maemo Summit earlier this month. He installed Transmission, a bit torrent client, clicked on a link to a torrent file, downloaded it, and bada boom, he hit play and it worked.

There are a few bugs. In the beginning of the video he says that N900 has no unRARing software available. RAR files are what pirates at the highest level of the scene, higher than even top sites, use to share files due to their robust integrity checks. RAR software is free, open source, and available for all platforms, so why the hell isn’t it on the Nokia N900? Lots of the torrents I grab are nothing more than a collection of RAR files. Speaking of torrents: Transmission hauls ass, downloading at over 700 KB/s, even peaking at 2.25 MB/s, but you pay for this. When Transmission is open and doing what it does best, breaking the law, it makes the N900 almost unusable. He does all of this over WiFi of course, and it absolutely slaughters the battery: a single 380 MB episode consumed about 20% of the battery in roughly 30 minutes. Worst thing about all of this, Staska admits this is highly unstable, and at one point his N900 crashed so hard he had to pull out the battery. What’s good is that this can all be fixed in software, but how long will it take is anyone’s guess.

After all is said and done, one of the most beautiful things in the world happens: the Nokia N900 plays back an XviD file natively. It’s wonderful that all of this is possible, but really, are you going to kill your battery just to pirate something on the go?