For the past week, not a day goes by that I don’t wake up, shuffle downstairs, pick my Wall Street Journal off the front porch, sit down to eat cereal, and see a full page article on the iPhone staring up at me. And it is not just the Journal that has gone Ga-ga over the iPhone. The mainstream press (Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Economist), the techie press, and the Style press are all covering the iPhone.

Apple is scoring big in the marketing and PR department-- to say the very least. But more thoughts on Apple PR and Marketing in a future post. For now, let’s breakdown what consumers are getting in the iPhone, vs. what they can currently get in an S60 device like the N95. I’ve listed the functionalities in order of importance, according to Nokia’s consumer research and my personal experience regarding which features/traits are most important for consumers of “smart” devices.

1) Phone functionality: This criteria is always the number one criteria in any comparison I do, because, at the end of the day, we are talking about phones. Devices are used to make calls between people.
In this category I put ease of making phone calls, quality of sound in phone calls,reception (radio quality) and access to PIM functionality as well as advanced call functions such as conference calling, speaker phone, and voice dialing.

Since the iPhone has not hit the shelves yet, it’s impossible to judge whether sound quality and call reception will be better/worse than the N95. However, we do know that the iPhone supports only 3 way (as opposed to 6 way) conference calls, and that the iPhone does not support voice dialing. We also know that it is impossible to dial the iPhone while wearing gloves, as it does not have a physical keypad. And we know that Nokia has, over the past 15 years in the mobile industry, earned the reputation of having the best and most reliable call reception in their devices.

Advantage? N95

2) E-mail: Next to voice calls, the number application North American consumers use their phone for is e-mail. Both the N95 and the iPhone support POP3 and iMAP protocols. Both can be, in theory, connected to Microsoft Exchange, the most prevalent e-mail server in North America. But IT managers are slightly more suspicious of allowing Apple products in general, and the iPhone in particular, on their networks. The WSJ wrote an article on June 21st that listed the myriad reasons why IT manager will not allow the iPhone on their corporate network. The N95, meanwhile, is already integrated with Intellisync, the most prevalent mobile mail network in the US market after the Blackberry. Nokia’s Enterprise Solutions team has also created licensing agreements to allow S60-based devices (such as the N95) to run Blackberry Connect.

Advantage? N95

3) User Interface: There is no question that the iPhone is delivering the better “wow” in terms of user interface. Multi-touch looks cool, especially (at least?) in the iPhone commercials. Of course, there will be those who prefer to have a physical keypad, especially if the iPhone touch keypad is buggy, or especially if the owner lives North of Buffalo and has to spend a couple of months of the year wearing gloves. But for now, we’ll give the advantage to iPhone. Otherwise the Apple fanboys will cry foul.

Advantage? iPhone

4) Browser: This is a tough category, because the browser is so dependant on the overall user interface of the device itself. In terms of sheer audacity, iPhone might win this one, simply because they claim in their PR materials to be the first full-HTML browser on the market, where S60-based devices have been shipping with a full HTML browser for over a year. But the N95 also has MiniMap, Page History, and Page overview, all of which make browsing a pleasure and have, until now, made the S60 browser the hands-down winner in nearly all of the press and blogs I’ve seen. But then there is multi-touch, and much as I’d like to limit Apple’s “Win” for multi-touch to the UI category, the fact is that the demo’s we’ve seen on YouTube, on TV commercials, and in analyst reports make the iPhone look and sound very cool. So, I’ll call this one a draw.

Advantage? Draw

5) Imaging: In this category I put camera quality, image and video sharing capabilities. The N95 has more megapixels, and I think it’s safe to predict it will have a better camera than the iPhone. The Chicago Tribune recently wrote the N95 camera took better pictures than any other mobile phone. The N95 also has MMS while the iPhone does not. And the N95 is capable of sharing video clips, while the iPhone doesn’t have a video camera at all.

Advantage? N95

6) Music: Well, this is where Apple shines, right? The iPhone is, as Steve Jobs puts it, the “best iPod to date”. Until and unless the early adopters tell me otherwise, I’ll take his word for it. No doubt the end-to-end model works for many millions of consumers. So, the advantage has to go to iPhone. I will say this tho: There are consumers out there who prefer not to use iTunes, mostly because of DRM issues…if I buy a tune on iTunes, why can’t I put it on my Oakley MP3-playing sunglasses? Or my mobile phone? Or my wife’s PC? If my iTunes enabled laptop gets stolen, why can’t I re-download the songs I already purchased from iTunes? Well, Apple’s business model is what it is. And Steve Jobs gets extra points for helping to convince EMI to go DRM-free.

Advantage? iPhone

7) Miscellaneous stuff that N95 has and iPhone does not have: In this category I put download speeds (N95 sports 3G speeds, iPhone is 2G) messaging (N95 supports IM, iPhone does not) and Security (iPhone details are conspicuously missing, N95 supports SSL, VPN, remote lock, AVG from Symantec and F-Secure. A smorgasborg of features, no doubt. And some would argue that some of these features deserve a category of their own. But I’m lumping them together here. If you ask “Why no category for stuff iPhone has that N95 does not”, my answer is that I honestly can’t think of anything that consumers use/want that I haven’t already listed that fits this category. Therefore N95 wins this category.

Advantage: N95

Conclusion: There are undoubtedly many many people who will buy the iPhone on based entirely on its strength in the User Interace and Music categories. Those of us who use GPS, Instant Messaging, want the best imaging phone on the market, and perhaps most importantly want the ability to add and remove software, the N95, based on S60 software, might be a better choice. I believe comparing the two products is fair, and for me, the N95 is a better product. Why the N95 gets about 1/100th of the attention out there, is, I believe, a function of marketing and PR as opposed to legitimate product/feature/value advantage of the iPhone over the N95. But more on Apple PR and marketing in a future post.

Last Thursday night was our third "An Evening with S60", this time located at the Nokia Flagship Store in Helsinki, Finland...and I wasn't there!!!! After weeks of heavy planning and preparation and anticipation, my flight from the Baltimore to New York (with connecting flight to Helsinki) was canceled due to storms and even tornadoes on the east coast!!

Needless to stay I was quite upset with the whole situation (actually first I was angry and cursing, then scared, then sad, then depressed). The earliest I could get rebooked wasn't until 7am the next day due to all the other cancellations that day, so I didn't make it back to Finland until the morning after the event. :-(

So my sincere apologies to everyone who'd attended, I know that many of us had plans to individual plans to meet and discuss things. But the night was a huge success, close to 50 guests were in attendance and the S60 crew was well represented. Everyone I had talked to had a great time and all said they met some great people and had some very interesting conversations.

But here's the worst thing about me not arriving in time - I had some cool giveaways with me!! We just printed up new S60 Blog long sleeve t-shirts!! Check'em out below. On the front they say "What's in your phone?" and on the back it says "S60 Open to New Features" and "blogs.s60.com" written below. I think they're pretty cool. Originally I was going to write "Got S60?" on the front, then Dan Shugrue made fun of me cause that saying is "so last decade", so Darla Mack had come up with "What's in your phone?" (thanks Darla!!)

Also, I have a bunch of Nokia BH-900 and BH-800 Bluetooth headsets with me (mostly BH-900's) and Nokia AD-42W Wireless Audio Gateways, all courtesy of Jussi-Pekka Erkkola from the Nokia Multimedia team (thanks JP!!). There was supposed to be one of these and a shirt in every goodie bag! But fear not, I have all the info of the people who went Thursday night, I'll be contacting each of you for your address and shirt size. I can't promise I'll have exactly which accessory you want, but you can e-mail me with your requests, first come first served (phillip dot schwarzmann at nokia dot com)

Even though I don't have much to say about the night's happenings, plenty of others do...

- The Blue Nile has some great photos.

- Jake from S60TV has reviews here, here and a special mini site here.

- Tommi has his checklist here.

- Ricky from Symbian Guru has info here as well.

- And there's tons of photos at our Flickr page. If you have any photos from the evening, please please please take a second and transfer them to our s60online group!

And here's Heidi welcoming everyone...

Wow, what an amazing night in Chicago! Many many thanks to everyone who came out to the event, and special thanks to those who flew in just for the event - I met a few people from Toronto, Dallas, North Carolina. Amazing! Check out photos from the night at the Flickr groups s60online and s60chicago. If you haven't already uploaded your photos to these groups, please do!!

First off, you people are awesome. I had so many great conversations with so many great individuals Thursday night, I never wanted the evening to end. I just can't thank you enough for your continued support for S60.

Bridget Gibbs and her crew at the Nokia Flagship Store were just phenomenal - so helpful, so friendly, so energetic, so passionate about what they do. And big thanks to all the other Nokia crew we had there: Eric from Multimedia, Dean Andrews from Enterprise Solutions, Ganesh Sivaraman from the Browser team, Heidi from the S60 demo team, Lassi Maksimainen from Technology Platforms, and Jouni Juntunen from S60 Marketing. And of course it was a pleasure as always working with fellow host of the event, Dan Shugrue, head of S60 North American Marketing.

It was my first time in Chicago and I had a ball, I'm still kicking myself for not staying longer. Chicago has that same New York City vibe that I love, except the people are super friendly and everything isn't as crammed. I need to get there soon! And after Thursday night's huge success, I know we'll be bringing An Evening with S60 back to that store sometime in the near future.

I'm gonna wait for some other bloggers to write about the event, then I'll have a more detailed analysis of the entire night on here tomorrow.

(In case there is any doubt, the symbol "<3" means love. It's like a smiley. Turn your head to the right 90 degrees.)

For Mac users, integrating an Nseries device has been, up until now, a challenge. Sure, we've hadiSync plugins for a while, but that's only for PIM data. Microsoft Outlook on Windows and Intellisync Mobile Suite are the centers of my PIM universe, so for me, at least, iSync support is not something I need.

Music and pictures, however, are another story entirely. My MacBook and my Nokia Nseries devices are the centers of my media universe. I consume (and generate) mass quantities of digital media on both my MacBook and my Nseries devices, but there was no practical way to connect these two worlds. Sure, some of this could be done with third party software using the phone in Data Transfer mode, but none of them were particularly automatic or easy to use. To boot, the phone had to either be in Offline mode or, in the case of the Nokia N95, apps would not be allowed to use the MicroSD card while in this mode. Sub-optimal at best.

No longer! Nokia Media Transfer for Mac OS X is here! Once you have configured the application, which is extremely easy to do, syncing is as simple as plugging in your Nseries device into your Mac. Bluetooth is also supported, but Bluetooth is much slower than a cable. Both photos and non-DRMed music/videos from iTunes will be synced.

Your Nseries device has a "folder" inside of both iTunes and iPhoto. Anything (including a playlist) that is put in this folder is synced when the device is connected. There is a mode inside of Nokia Media Transfer to ensure that your Mini/MicroSD card is not completely filled up with music, known as the "Music Fill-Up" option. nice. The music that is ultimately synced is given a playlist on the Nseries device, making it very easy to load it up and start listening!

The Device Browser is also a nice thing, giving you the ability to browse the file system on your Nseries device. Unlike using the device in Media Transfer mode, this also gives you the ability to browse the file system on the phone memory (versus just the Mini/MicroSD card). Nice.

The best part is that all of this functionality works in PC Suite mode! This means not taking the device offline when you connect and you can keep using the apps on your phone.

Now of course, this is beta software, so it may be a little rough around the edges. However, I am pleasantly surprised at how easily my Nseries devices now integrate with the Mac. I just wish I could get the same integration with the Eseries devices. In theory, they are also built on S60 3rd Edition, so it should work. I'm sure it's just a matter of getting the devices for testing. I'd be happy to beta test it. :)

Any Mac user with an Nseries device should go download a copy of Nokia Media Transfer. Post your thoughts in the comments. Also submit your feedback via Nokia Media Transfer (Tools and Settings > Send Feedback to Nokia) as I know they want to hear it, both good and bad!

Wow, a busy day for news! Probably not good marketing to launch all this new cool stuff at once, but I'm too anxious to keep this stuff on ice for another week. :-)

Introducing the latest blog to the S60 Blog family, "Smartphonin': The non-tech guide to doing stuff with S60 phones" hosted by Johanna MacDonald of Satama Interactive in Helsinki, Finland. Here's the plan with this blog...

I'm a S60 geek. And most likely if you're reading this, you're a S60 geek too. :-) Out of the 100+ million S60 users out there, we geeks represent a small fraction of the S60 ownership out there. Most of these 100 million would like to learn more about their device, and they might look for a blog to teach them more. Imagine if you're kinda new to S60 and went to Tommi's S60 Application Blog, you'd probably be like WTF!? His blog, and most other S60 blogs assume you already know alot about S60.

In steps Smartphonin' - It's the S60 blog for the non-techies. It'll have hints, tips, tricks, app reviews, phone reviews and other cool ways for you to learn more about your phone. So since it's a non-techie blog, I wanted to hunt down a non-techie person who knows how to write techie stuff to non-techie people. Johanna is an excellent writer in her free time and I know she'll be perfect for this. She'll be writing at least three times per week, so be sure to visit often and leave your comments!

Visit Smartphonin' at: blogs.s60.com/smartphonin

Calling all S60 fans in and around NYC! The S60 Market Development team (those are the guys that are bringing S60 love directly to consumers) are starting a word of mouth marketing campaign in NYC this summer. If you live in NYC, you own an S60 phone, and you enjoy telling people about S60... sign up to be a S60 Agent at www.s60.com/s60agents

The first Word of Mouth pilot campaign will run from July 1 to August 31st. All you have to do is talk to the people you know and don't know about S60, and report your conversations (good and bad) back to the Market Dev team. All agents will be rewarded with cool S60 swag. Head of North American S60 Marketing, Dan Shugrue, will be around An Evening with S60 tonight sharing more about the campaign.

Good luck agents!!

Today is the day!! I arrived yesterday to Chicago from yesterday, I immediately checked-in to the Intercontinental on Michigan Ave. and walked one block down to the Nokia Flagship Store and met up with store manager Bridget Gibbs and her great staff, all of whom were very excited about tonight. I have no idea how we're going to fit 100+ guests into this store, it's going to be interesting... :-)

I'll be live blogging via Jaiku all night long, add user 's60online' to your contacts to get all the latest, or visit s60online.jaiku.com

Also, I'll be posting photos of the event (via ShoZu) throughout the night to our Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/s60online

One last thing, for all you Flickr users attending tonight - If you get a chance, please upload all your photos from tonight's event to our Flickr group: www.flickr.com/groups/s60online

Looking forward to seeing you all there this evening!!

I will be moving within the next couple of months. Among the many things I have to concern myself with is what kind of connectivity I will have at my new place. While wired connectivity is also an issue, on this blog post I will focus on mobile connectivity.

This is not an S60-specific issue. Every mobile phone is expected to be connected to a mobile phone network of some sort in order to be useful. It is, however, worth pointing out that all of our S60 3rd Edition devices can be used without a connection to the mobile phone network. Many of the WiFi-enabled S60 devices can also be used to make phone calls using VoIP--no mobile phone provider needed!

The move away from conventional landlines and towards mobile devices makes moving just a little easier easier. If you have cut the cord (i.e. you don't have a landline), it's one less thing you have to concern yourself with. You move and your phone automatically number moves with you. I know a number of people who have moved out of one area and kept their old number in their new area. Very easy to do with mobile phones. (Note for non-North Americans: most phone numbers here, even mobile numbers, are geographic in nature)

Phone numbers are only one part of the equation. The other is service. For the non-North Americans among you, mobile phone service is far from universally available here. Depending on where you move to, you may not be able to even use your service in the new location. You might have to switch carriers and possibly handsets to get usable mobile phone service.

Fortunately, I am moving a mere 20 minutes away. I was easily able to verify with my own handsets that yes, in fact, my service works in and around the new location. Both T-Mobile and AT&T have good coverage, even inside my new house! On AT&T, even 3G service is available, though I don't have a US 3G handset to personally verify that. If someone wants to send me a Nokia N75, I'd be happy to verify it. ;)

For those who are moving a bit farther away, it may not be feasible to check with your own eyes and equipment. Though it has taken them far too long to make this information available, all of the major carriers in the US now offer street-level maps on their respective web sites. This is helpful, but it doesn't take into account other factors such as the device you are using, which often plays a critical role in how usable the service is. To give an example, T-Mobile shows non-existent coverage for my current house. However, due to the both the conservative nature of T-Mobile's maps and the awesome RF prowess of Nokia devices, I get a bar or two of signal, even inside my house!

Even with the maps and if you're able to do a cursory check of service at your future domicile, you also have to check at the places you will be at most often, e.g. the local shops and other businesses you frequent. Unfortunately, it's hard to know where those places are until you live there and are settled into a normal routine. Even with the street-level coverage maps, it's going to be difficult to know exactly how well service will work in these specific areas.

Have you moved you and your mobile service recently? What are some of the challenges you faced? What tools did you use to assist you in your planning? For those outside of North America, do you even face any of these issues? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.