By a mysterious turn of circumstances I am interning at Nokia India for summers. I can play with N97 protoypes and get the inside scoop on how the phone is shaping up almost everyday. You can rest assured that the N97 is absolutely amazing in real life. The hinge design is brilliant and youll really like the feel of the phone moving. Everyone in the top management uses the E71, E75, E90 or the N97. Talk about the pricing and launch date is hush hush but all I can say is that it seems close to what we predicted earlier. The initial versions of the software seem to have a lot of social networking apps preloaded. Moving the widgets around is fun :)
Working with Nokia has made me realize the kind of passion they put into their phones and how Nokia plans and markets its offerings to the market. Whenever I go for market visits or talk to customers and people about Nokia, there is only one word that seems to capture it all -> Respect. Where else can you see people just walking into a store and asking for only one brand. Though my perception may have an India bias, it is what I have developed by spending most of my time in stores and shops developing customer insights.
I shall keep you posted on the N97 as more info comes up.
