Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

Ok, so this is something that I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time but never seemed to get the chance. Now, it seems, that the news wagon is fairly slow, little going on, so I figure its the perfect time.
I see this being a multi-part (or multi-session) post, as there is quite a bit that I would like to go over. I’ll try to draw on real phones but hey, this is just my imagination talking, so that might now always be possible.

Well first off, what is wrong with the current phones? Why is it that I say that there is no perfect phone out there?
My perfect phone does not yet exist as the features I want somehow seem to be mutually-exclusive. I want my phone to be a powerhouse and have a long-lasting battery, but it seems that the only phones out there that can do that are almost big enough to be someone’s house. I also want the phone to by thin and light but then you can forget about the features. Anyway, here’s what I think the perfect phone would have:

Signal Strength & Quality
Starting with the basics, I want the phone to work just about anywhere, that means that it has to have a strong, clean signal even when speaking in an elevator or underground parking garage. To be fair, most of today’s phones do this quite well. I use my N95 8GB just about anywhere and only in a couple confined places do I regularly lose service (such as the London Drugs in Lougheed Town Center). Now, the interesting thing, is that my Blackberry 8100 seems to have signal in some places that my N95 8GB does not, and vice-versa. So there must be something that can be done in order to get signal everywhere. Of course, often times the stronger signal results in shorter battery life, and I think there should be an option to boost the signal strength in places where the signal is weak (with the option to only do so with a hands-free, since the radiation output will be quite significant).

Telephony
Next up, is the most basic thing that the phone should do well: telephony. While this encompasses the signal strength/quality topic, its actually much larger than that. For starters, the earpiece on the phone has to be of high quality in order to let you hear exactly what the other person is saying. The sound should be automatically adjusted for the surrounding environment. The microphone should filter out that same environmental noise so that the person on the other end of the call is actually able to hear me. That said, the microphone, or microphones in the case of noise cancellation, have to be of very high quality as well. After all, this is the single most important function of the phone. Additionally, the user interface surrounding telephony needs to be very well thought out: the volume buttons in the appropriate location, the loudspeaker or call-muting easy to turn on off, of course the bluetooth accessories need to pair effortlessly, and connect and work without any glitches.

Display
We all use our phones outdoors, in fact, its nice to think that we spend more time outside, so this should be even more important! Although realistically we spend little time outside, instead breathing in conditioned air, with the eerie glow of the monitor as the only light source at times. But in all seriousness, this is a very important part of the phone, especially if its a touch-screen phone or if you, like me, use it a GPS.
The phone screen has to be vibrant, have high contrast, be easy to see on bright sunny days, and have a nice, high resolution. Of course depending on the resolution of the screen, whether its a touch screen or not, and the form factor of the phone itself, the screen should be of a good size. For instance, an all touch screen device should have a 3.2″+ screen, preferably 16M color AMOLED, with VGA or higher resolution; where as a qwerty E71-like phone could have a 2.4″+ screen with HVGA resolution (of course 16M color AMOLED still stands).
The capacitive vs. resistive touch screen technology is really a trade-off, so its not a requisite, however I would rather have the resistive only if it implemented that super-high-sensitivity resistive technology that was shown around a while back. (if anyone wants the link let me know I’ll look around)

Build Quality / Durability
This topic is actually quite an extensive one, so I will try to briefly go over what I think this should be. First off, high quality materials need to be used. That’s not to say that it has to be metal, although it helps, but there are very high quality, pleasant plastics around as well. Plastics, while being lighter, tend to be less resistant to damage if only very thin sheets are used. Personally, I would rather have my phone out of metal, even if it means it will be heavier, because its more durable and can make the phone thinner/smaller. Of course the exterior is not the only important part of it, the interior design and construction of the phone has to be held to high enough standards that the phone being dropped is taken into consideration (e.g. by placing rubber dampeners at critical points), as well as the phone wouldn’t make creaking sounds when squeezed. Now Nokia phones used to be this good (not sure about the current generation), but then the quality seemed to drop. For example my E60 was build with amazing quality, dropped it a million times and it just got a couple scratches and that’s it, where as my N95 8GB is not quite of the same construction, and I won’t even start on the old and very popular 3310. To be fair, the E71 has very commendable build quality, so it could be that the E-series is held to a high standard than the N-series, which is understandable.
There are some interesting concepts out there, like the Nokia 3720 Classic, which look like a regular phone but are really very durable – that’s what build quality should be like (given that the touch and look aspects are as I described).

Update:

Ok, so I think its time to add some more details, don’t you?

Storage Capacity/Memory Card
I strongly believe that there is no reason to carry around multiple devices when just one device will suffice. Case in point: I don’t carry around an MP3 player because my N95 8GB gives me fantastic audio quality. Granted, 8GB of music is getting a little low, and because of that I’ve had to scale down my MP3’s to 192kbps – being an audiophile I would like to have 320kbps. There are of course many reasons to have large amounts of storage, especially with phones capable of capturing and outputting HD Video content. This means that more space consuming files will be stored on the phone. Personally, I believe that having a 32GB internal flash drive, with the ability to insert a 32GB microSD card will provide plenty of storage. The first 32GB would give 99.95% of the people out there enough storage, however having the ability to carry around a couple extra microSD cards would cover the other 0.05%. The only other option is USB-host capabilities and enough juice to power a 1.8″/2.5″ hard drive – but that’s not very realistic.

Processing power/speed
This is kind of a multi-hardware piece topic in that its not just the CPU that matters. Case in point: my E60 had a 220MHz CPU, which would have been enough, only the very limited amount of RAM made multi-tasking nearly impossible. Also, I’m finding that more and more manufacturers are integrating GPU’s in order to boost performance, which works quite well, even if it uses a fair bit of power. What would be nice to see is a multi-core CPU, perhaps at 400MHz-800MHz variable clock speed, with the ability to turn off a number of the cores. The CPU should either have a dedicated GPU (potentially integrated into the main processor circuit), or be designed with GPU demands in mind (that is, vector/shader calculations, and so forth). The phone should also have a minimum of 128MB RAM, however 256MB or even 512MB would be nice to see. Bottom line, is the phone should not slow down even when having to draw multiple three-dimensional, semi-transparent, reflective objects, or when encoding/decoding HD Video content (camera recording, or outputting to an HDTV). Of course all this would have to run smoothly even with multiple processes running in the background.

Audio
We all listen to music, many of us, like me, prefer to do so on our phones. This means that dedicated, specialized hardware is a requirement, in order to get consistently high quality across all frequency ranges. This also means that the phone needs to have a standard 3.5mm audio jack, as well as good quality loudspeakers. I rather like my N95 8GB’s 3.5mm solution, which supports a variety of equipment, including TV out (albeit at QVGA quality). One thing, however, that I liked more on my E60 than on my N95 8GB, is the way it handled call and message tones when playing music: instead of pausing the music for the message ring, it just decreased the audio volume, beeped, and brought the volume back up. Something like that shouldn’t even be that difficult to make configurable.

Update 2:

Alright, it’s that time again, lets update this again.

Battery
We all hate it when this happens: you’re in the middle of your day, hours away from any potential power source, when the icon on the right appears on your phone. What tends to make it even worse is when you know you will have to call someone, listen to music, or even use the GPS function to get home. So what are the options? You can always carry around a spare battery or charger, but that gets more problematic when you don’t have any place to put it. You can keep charging your phone whenever possible, but sometimes, that’s just not possible due to time constraints or lack of a power source. Well there are two more options. They may be more complex, however are still quite realistic.

Option #1: We can drastically reduce the power consumption of the hardware. There are already a number of components that do that, such as a new generation GPS chip, with higher sensitivity and much lower power consumption. There is also the Bluetooth/WiFi on a single chip (part of Bluetooth 3). And finally, different printing processes have different power consumption levels, such as 60nm, 45nm, 32nm, etc. All of these combined can drastically reduce the power consumption of the phone.

Option #2: We can use different battery technologies. Different technologies have different properties, and there are two main ones that I am thinking about. Using a different composition within the Lithium battery can yield up to a ten-fold increase in the capacity, or it can allow for charge times of a couple minutes. Both of these technologies are already past the concept stage and well into prototyping. Really the biggest issue is the mass-production set up. The biggest players in these are carbon nano-tubes, and Lithium Air. The capacity is an obvious one, however the fast charge time would allow for charging stations in malls, gas stations, and other locations. There is, I should say, another technology: Fuel cell. It falls under the higher capacity category, however I believe its still too far off to really call it.

The best part about these two options is that they’re really not exclusive, both can be incorporated at the same time. Allowing us to use our phones, and indeed other gadgets, for days on end.

Camera
To me, a good camera on my phone means that’s one less gadget I have to carry around, and as much as I like gadgets, I don’t like to carry them all. There are some limitations on the current cameras, however if you understand that this is still a cell phone and not a dedicated camera, those limitations become quite insignificant.
First off, the camera should be 5-8MP, as any higher resolution and the dpi becomes too high and not enough light is captured on each pixel. The sensor should also be larger than what is used now in order to capture more light, although with small quarters it might take some fancy printing technologies to get it to work just right.
Second, the camera should have some sort of optical zoom – there’s already a Samsung W880 with a 3x optical zoom, but that phone is a bit bulky, a little on the large side. There are a couple of different variations on the standard optical zoom, such as Origami optics, and they seem to work quite well, some are even getting close to production.
Third, the phone should have a dedicated camera processor, kind of like Motorola’s ZN5. Having it will allow more complex features and better quality processing, as well as increasing focusing and shot-to-shot speeds of the camera. Now, it is quite possible that a graphics-derived CPU will be able to handle all the calculations and produce good quality, but it seems that a company who’s sole purpose is cameras will be able to give better results. A Nokia-Canon partnership would be nice to see.
Fourth, a dual-led light and a zenon flash. Enough said.

GPS/Compass/Navigation
Well I don’t really know what to say here. This is kind of a two piece: hardware and software. Both have to function well, with slightly different requirements for each one. The hardware needs to be sensitive enough to be able to quickly obtain a GPS signal in streets with high-rises all around. A digital compass and an accelerometer should be used when GPS isn’t working, or simply to quickly sense changes in direction. For example when turning or when navigating through tunnels. Finally, the navigation software needs to have the most up-to-date maps, should be easy to use, with clear instructions. I’ve always like TomTom’s software for its interface and navigation speed, however Navigon’s interface seems quite intriguing as well. Bottom line: it should be a pleasure to use, not a nuisance.

Update 3:

Alright, time for the last and final update of this little article. And thankfully, there’s just one piece left. Well there are more I’m sure, but one left that I am going to talk about.

Money
I know what everyone’s thinking – “The phone should be free!” Well I must disagree. We all tend to buy more expensive things because they’re better, they last longer, and more of a pleasure to use. And to be honest, I wouldn’t like the device nearly as much if I got it for free than if I had to spend my heard-earned money on it.
So what is a good price for the be-all, end-all device? I guess it would depend on just how much of the criteria the device meets. For instance, if the device doesn’t have GPS then the price needs to reflect that. If everything I mentioned is met I would say that a good price would be around $1,000, however I doubt I would actually buy it for that much.
That’s really the killer now, isn’t it? I mean if the phone is perfect I should be willing to spend that much on it, however if I’m not going to spend my money then why bother, right? I guess that’s why we don’t see a lot of these “perfect phones” out there, however many come mighty close. I suppose manufacturers are doing the best they can given that not a lot of people will buy these phones.
But at the same time, there must be enough people willing to spend that much. I mean I would like to think that when I start making more money I’ll be able to afford these phones. And for now I would contend with waiting a couple months for the price to fall and then buy the phone for $500 – $700, of maybe even just buy it used!

Bottom line, the phone needs to be priced fairly according to its specification. Releasing very expensive phones with low sales volumes doesn’t mean the phones will cause the company a loss since they have a lot of marketing value. I would be proud to have a phone manufactured by the same company that gets “The best phone of the year” award year-in, year-out.

I hope this wasn’t too boring for you and that you actually got something out of it. I will be making a point-form recap of this, but for anything with detail you’ll want to look here.

-Nokia FanBoy

via: my brain!