Welcome back to episode two of the Q&A on the mobile web with Dennis Knothe (Nokia).
Disclaimer: Dennis Knothe is not a spokesperson for Nokia. All statements are personal opinions.
Q: How many Nokia phones/mobile devices do you have? Any favorites? Old or New?
Dennis Knothe: Of course, I’ve had, or at least used for a while, numerous Nokia phones and other Nokia devices over the years. Some of the more notable ones are 3650, 6310i, 7650, 9200, 9500, N-Gage QD, N80, N91, N95 classic and 8GB, N800. Quite a few of them I still have. Though, I tend to prefer the most recent devices, because they usually have some feature which I don’t want to miss anymore, once I got used to it. Like built in WiFi and GPS, large high resolution screens, high mpix cameras with flash, large built in memory, etc.. Hands down, currently my favorite is the N95 8GB. With my Nokia BlueTooth keyboard I often don’t even have to take my laptop with me anymore.
Q: Any commentary on Apple’s iPhone? How does it impact or change the mobile web?
Dennis Knothe: I have used one for a few weeks and I found its UI very slick and responsive. The Safari browser is very fast, but I at least from my view, I still wouldn’t use it to just casually browse the web. Overall, for me, the iPhone is missing too many features and has too many limitations. I don’t think I would consider buying one.
But in general, I think the iPhone is very good for the industry (device manufacturers and web services). It has changed the publics mind, particularly in North America, that a cell phone nowadays can do so much more than these cheap, rather featureless phones that most people were used to so far. Also, people now realize that it is worth paying money for a phone, if it has the appropriate features.
Particularly with the respect to the “mobile web”, the iPhone hype encouraged many websites to optimize their services specifically for the iPhone. Considering that the iPhone has still such a small market share, this is quite an interesting feat. I think in future we’ll see more and more web services launching mobile optimized versions of their offering. I think this development doesn’t end with “iPhone optimized”, but soon will address other devices, too. I think the iPhone also somewhat helped establish WebKit as the de-facto standard for mobile browsers. Nokias S60 platform has been using WebKit for quite a while now. This is good news for web developers, because if you optimize the mobile offering of your service for WebKit, you can easily support both Nokia’s devices and the iPhone. This again should help bring more web developers on board to optimize their services for mobile access.
Q: Tell us a little about your upcoming MobileCampVancouver talk?
Dennis Knothe: I am going to give an introduction to Nokias S60 web-runtime environment and how to develop for it. I guess the title will be something like “Introduction to S60 web-runtime”. Because WebKit is the basic enabler for this, I’ll cover some of the high-level architecture of how WebKit fits into the S60 platform and what it allows developers to do. I’ll describe what the commonalities and differences between developing a regular web page and S60 widget development are. I’ll finish with a brief walk-through of a demo widget and some example code. Hopefully my talk will give web developers enough information to start writing web pages and widgets for S60 or to optimize existing web applications to run smoothly and efficiently on the S60 platform.
Thanks Dennis Knothe. Looking forward to your upcoming free MobileCampVancouver talk.
