The PhoneBoy Blog

Nokia Loses An N8 Prototype. Media Reaction? Meh.

27 Apr 2010

The new Nokia N8 was announced today. I have to say, it looks like a really nice phone. Hopefully the 12 megapixels camera will be less noisy than the typical mobile phone camera and the new Symbian^3 OS will be a step-up from the previous Symbian releases. People are already complaining about the lack of a replaceable battery. The fact the phone seems to support both European and US 3G bands (both T-Mobile and AT&T) can’t be overlooked.

While I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing the fact that a pre-production unit fell into the hands of Eldar from Mobile-Review.com who posted a review of the Nokia N8 had something to do with the fact they officially announced it today. But it does bring to mind something that I believe is worth pointing out.

It’s actually not all that uncommon for Nokia to lose a prototype device. Regular readers of the mobile phone gadget blogs will attest to that. When I worked at Nokia, we got fairly regular reminders about letting information out about our pre-release handsets. They often came out shortly after a “flagship” device got prematurely exposed to the outside world.

When an Apple engineer accidentally left an unreleased iPhone device in a Redwood City bar, that was all anyone could talk about for days. Hell, it’s still in the news. Meanwhile, Nokia won’t get a whole lot of press out it. Sure, they’ll get some from a few hardcore Nokia bloggers and it might get a perfunctory mention on the gadget blogs and podcasts, but that’s it. It will cease to be a story in 24 hours.

I realize Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple sells in a year. I realize Nokia is bigger outside the North American markets. I know many more ways that Nokia is better than Apple. But it goes to show you how the technology press cares more about anything coming out of that secretive little company in Cupertino, CA than they do for the things that come from that company in Finland. Just saying.

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