Nokia Flagship Store, as seen from my E71
Nokia must really hate Canada — as far as I know Nokia Messaging and Ovi Sync still won’t work through my carrier here. Likewise, we have no Nokia Flagship Store to call our own.
So it was with great interest that I took the famous Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island to visit Nokia’s official retail presence in Causeway Bay. What follows are both my impresssions of the store and the mobiles therein — many of which are reportedly on their way to Fido and Rogers in 2009.
First, the store itself… Unlike the stark whiteness of your typical Apple Store, this Nokia Flagship was festooned with alternating plum and purple. And just like an Apple Store Nokia had all it’s wares out on display for prospective customers to get their grubby hands all over — actually two models of each handset in most cases, one set to Chinese language display and the other set to English. But without SIM cards or available WiFi it seemed to me that any network features of Nokia’s products were off the table — kind of a shame.
Nonetheless, here’s a sneak preview of Nokia’s latest and greatest…
5800 XpressMusic - This is the handset that Nokia is currently pushing in Hong Kong, and pushing hard. I believe it was actually released in this market first because touch-screen devices are strongly favoured here for Chinese character input.
The 5800 certainly seems like a solid little unit, and the full-screen virtual QWERTY keypad puts the iPhone to shame. But I couldn’t for the life of me find the option to turn on the haptic feedback — or in English, “the deal where the phone vibrates when you press a key on the screen”…
N79 – Being a fan of monoblock/candy bar/no moving parts designs I had high hopes for the N79 as a travel phone, since my E71 won’t work in Korea or Japan. Unfortunately, while Nokia’s trademarked Xpress-on rear covers are a great idea, the rest of the handset feels disappointingly cheap.
N85 – I almost gave up on QWERTY to buy this phone, sight unseen. It’s perhaps a good thing I didn’t. The OLED display is fantastic (indoors, anyway — they wouldn’t let me take it outside for some reason) but the keypad is merely average, and I still don’t get the black & brown colour scheme.
N96 – The biggest surprise for me, considering how extensively the N96 has been slagged online. The screen is huge, the keypad feels great and the whole package is surprisingly light — possibly because at least parts of the faux-metal trim may be actually painted plastic.
Whatever the case may be, the N96 looks every bit the part of flagship device for Nokia, at least until the N97 comes out!
One Comment
I like to comment on several points you made in this article.
The Nokia store does have many of its models out in display and free for customers to use. They have more than 2 units for the current actively promoted models.
Each of the staff at the store carries more than one models on them at all times and is very willing to let anyone interested in trying them with working SIM in them.
The store is also equipped with free WiFi (SSID: Nokia), all the WiFi enabled phones should be set up to use the WiFi in house. Since there are no lock on their WiFi network all customers are free to use the same WiFi connection.
If you’re interested the staff will also go outside with you to demonstrate the built-in or add-on GPS functions of any of the models.
Although the Causeway Bay store across from Time Square is Nokia’s first, it is not the only Nokia specialty store in Hong Kong. There is also one at IFC Mall in Central.
Now for the comments on the Nokia model. I think the 5800 is too narrow and the Touch S60 is not as responsive as the iPhone OS. I don’t understand your point, “… the full-screen virtual QWERTY keypad puts the iPhone to shame…”, the iPhone also has a virutual QWERTY keyboard. I don’t believe you really mean “full-screen”, as having the entire screen filled with the keyboard will make the keyboard useless.