This is a compilation of the many hours of video we shot during our N97 24/7 Tour, edited without sound for the big wrap-up party in NYC. I added some appropriate music to it for you… The party starts at about 15 seconds in.

This will be my last post about last month’s N97 24/7 Tour of the USA. And it’s a biggy.

Was the tour a success? For me, absolutely. Beyond the free ride and fancy accommodation it almost single-handedly validated all the blogging I’ve been doing since 2001. I met a whole bunch of like-minded folks, made lifelong friends and rubbed shoulders with some bona fide blogging celebrities. As for my resume… Well, I’ve put rockstar blogger there, whether I’m worthy of the title or not.

But what about Nokia and their flagship N97?

They clearly poured many buckets of money into this campaign, and from where I sat I’m not entirely sure if it was a success for them or not.

George, Jon, Matt and I joined many others behind the scenes in trying to make this thing work. But there were some frustrations along the way…

Bloggers Need Time to Blog

This was the single biggest issue on the tour for me. While Twitter and Qik proved to be stellar tools at capturing moments on the move, neither has the Google Juice that only an olde tyme blog post with text and links can provide.

But finding time for said blogging proved almost impossible for the few first days in Los Angeles, due to a variety of factors which basically boiled down to strangers getting to know each other and trying to figure out a game plan on their feet, without stepping on each other’s toes.

We eventually hit our stride midway through San Francisco, with city-specific challenges that we could split up and do by day, then blog about it by night. The downside of that LA felt like a beta product rushed to market.

Marketing Disconnect

Had someone ponied up for a PR firm and done a little extra legwork ahead of time we probably could have made the local news in at least one of the cities we visited. Instead our media strategy looked like this — names drawn out of a hat.

Of course we all wanted to be celebrities wherever we went, but in this particular case an entire day was spent pursuing old media outlets, which had a nagging feeling like a lost cause.

It was all to drum up attendees for the Mobile Camps we hosted in every city but New York. Matt Bennett was able to tap into his MobileTron community in San Francisco; I tried my damnedest to get people from The Chicago Second City to come out, and failed.

Preaching to the Choir?

The Mobile Camps were largely successful, I think. We never reached the capacity of 35 attendees at any one event, but those who came brought lots of insight, opinion and devices to share.

But, largely because of our failure to make an impression on the local old guard old media, there weren’t a lot what we call “normobs” there — that is, normal mobile users who could stand to benefit from hands-on time with a high-functioning Nokia device.

Nokia really has their work cut out for them in North America. For starters, every carrier in the U.S. has their flagship handset — the iPhone for AT&T, the Palm Pre for Sprint, the G1 for T-Mobile and the BlackBerry Storm for Verizon. Though AT&T now carries their own version of Nokia’s E71, there is arguably no place for the N97 in any carrier’s lineup.

Nokia is doing what they can to address this, with flagship stores selling unlocked devices in Chicago and New York City. They’ve also produced a video trying to school North Americans on the benefits of an unlocked mobile:

But with the mindset of most normobs being something along the lines of: “What can I get for ninety-nine dollars?”, maybe Nokia is better off going after actual rock stars and secret agents — those with deeper pockets, as I suggested in a previous post.

It all sounds pretty grim for Nokia in North America, doesn’t it? Almost like they should have never bothered in the first place? Well, not so fast…

Here’s The Thing

Nokia’s outreach to bloggers around the world is unlike anything else on offer from any other manufacturer. The “pro” blogs and bloggers bash Nokia and the N97 specifically (I won’t name names, but I’m looking at you and you). Might this be because they don’t want to jeopordize their relationship with another handset maker (I’m talking about you) that’s known to be a bit of a bully when it comes to the press?

Nokia on the other hand seems perfectly willing to take its lumps. Bloggers are sent trial devices and are urged to provide honest feedback. And though my way was paid across the United States I myself was most certainly was not, lest what I write here be taken as lip service to a certain handset maker in Finland.

So while Nokia users in North America may be relatively small in number it seems that there is nonetheless a genuine respect for us and what we have to say.

I probably won’t end up purchasing an N97 of my own, but I picked up another Nseries handset this week — the N79. I’ve also got my eye on the just-released N86. I’m holding out for a white one.

Further down the road I’m watching the Symbian Foundation with great interest. This open-source mobile OS for Nokia (and other) devices seems like a perfect companion for my Linux netbook.

And all this talk of Nokia being doomed? From where I’m sitting, I just don’t see it.

It’s a good thing for Nokia that my new N79 arrived yesterday, because I was all set to write a damning report of the complete and utter disaster that is N-Gage on the flagship N97.

Despite not being able to get N-Gage screen grabs I would have still persevered and shown you firsthand how the touchscreen and physical D-Pad are used for input arbitrarily and actually work against you when you’re trying to play a game, or navigating through a game menu for that matter! Furthermore, I would have told you that it’s not even worth enduring this because (1) the games don’t even play full-screen (?!), and (2) every single game I tried looked like crap.

I would have summed up by letting you know that the N97 is absolutely not a gaming machine, and that you’d be much better off with an iPhone or iPod touch if that’s all you’re after.

But like I said, I got a new toy yesterday and was busy setting it up. Oh, and unlike the N97, it runs the tent pole N-Gage property Reset Generation, which I’ve been waiting to try for over a year now…

Look, let’s stop beating around the bush with this… It should be fairly obvious from the photo above who Nokia’s after with their flagship N97. It also can’t be denied that in North America, at least, Apple’s iPhone is everywhere.

My goal with this post is to highlight the key differences between the two and let you draw your own conclusions. Along the way, I’ll be pointing out what Nokia could have done (and can still do) better.

Character Input

The typical reaction I get to the N97 is something dismissive along the lines of: “So it’s like an iPhone”, at which point I flip up the screen to expose the full QWERTY keypad underneath, and all derision immediately stops.

The keypad is okay but not perfect — the space bar placement is a non-issue but putting the shift key next to the four-way D-pad makes it very awkward to select a block of text. You’re better off doing that with a free finger on the touch screen.

But there’s an additional way to input text which I find myself using more often than not, a full-screen virtual numberpad with old-school T9 built-in. It’s often a bit frustrating when I try to write something in Lolcat or enter my favourite curse, but one-handed texting is very useful when I’m on a crowded bus or train, or have bags in my other hand.

Homescreen

The second big revelation for anyone seeing an N97 for the first-time is the touch screen. But even then it’s not immediately apparent that pretty much every single element on the homescreen is a shortcut to something, and many of them are updating live by pulling in data from the Internet.

More on the homescreen widgets in a moment… I’ll finish my critique of the N97’s default display with the recommendation that entire folders — not just apps or bookmarks — should be an option for shortcuts from the homescreen as well.

Interface

It’s at this point that the wonders of the N97 begin to get lost on the new user. For starters, it’s not immediately apparent that the large diagonal menu will take you to into the handset’s filesystem. BlackBerries have a menu presented as a default screen, while Apple overwhelms you with screen upon screen of apps. I think Nokia would do well to eliminate an unlabelled physical button and put something that says “menu” right on the screen.

Back to the iPhone UI for a sec, the N97 has a nifty feature where you can organize individual apps into folders, like this. I really wish Nokia would include an option to sort these folders alphabetically. You can do it in the optional list view, but there’s too much wasted screen space to make me want to use that.

Widgets

Widgets on the N97 are akin to many apps are to the iPhone — lightweight single-purpose tools that are often little more than mobile-friendly skins for web sites. But some of the the Nokia widgets can run on the N97’s homescreen — like the bundled one for Facebook, while others — like Dabr’s excellent Twitter interface — cannot.

Dabr, could you kindly rectify this?

Ovi Store

It’s actually not the full-on disaster that I was expecting, but it’s certainly no iTunes App Store, either.

Gaming

In a similar vein, Nokia needs to get N-Gage working with the N97, and fast. The included games on the US version of the N97 are embarrassingly bad.

Price

Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know: The N97 is actually cheaper than the newest version of Apple’s iPhone.

“But the iPhone is only $199“, you say… Well for starters, that’s the 16GB version. To match the built-in 32GB of Nokia’s N97 you’ll have to pony up an additional hundred bucks.

Oh, and you’ll also have to sign on for a contract of up to three years, whereas the N97 is sold unlocked. I’ve ranted enough about the evils of contracts that I would be repeating myself at this point, so I’ll just point out that the actual, unsubsidized price of an iPhone 3GS 32GB is actually over $800, USD or CAD — and that’s if you can even buy one legally in the country where you live!

Meanwhile, the current price of the N97 from NokiaUSA.com is almost $100 less. No contract required. No iTunes required. And no unlocking or jailbreaking required should you ever want to sell it to someone on another carrier.

But like I said when I started this, I’m not here to tell you which is better — I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that.

The camera on the left is my Canon PowerShot S70. It doesn’t have tri-band 3G connectivity, GPS or a built-in compass, nor can it check your email, send/receive text messages or browse the web. But it does come with a cable that connects to your TV so you can show photos and videos to friends and family.

On the right is the Nokia N97, which has a slightly smaller 5-megapixel sensor but can also capture VGA video. It too has the ability to connect to a TV just like my Canon — but Nokia decided for some reason not to include the cable with your purchase.

On a flagship handset that’s a pretty serious omission.

You’ll also notice that the N97 is the first Nseries device with a full QWERTY keypad; therefore you wouldn’t be crazy for expecting a full install of QuickOffice to be on board, like Nokia’s Eseries line and very much unlike the nearly-useless read-only version of QuickOffice that comes on other Nseries models.

Not so, I’m afraid.

The good news is that OfficeSuite — a superior alternative in my opinion — works great on the N97 and its touch-enabled screen. Even better, you have a fully-functioning 30-day trial to see for yourself. And better still, last time I checked you can transfer your OfficeSuite license to a new S60 handset once the time comes. The bad news is that you have to pay for an office suite in the first place — again, not at all a good thing for Nokia’s “no compromises” smartphone.

If Nokia is so serious about making a dent in the North American market with the N97, why are they nickel and diming us with the stuff that sets it apart from other high-end handsets in the first place?

Chime in with any ideas in the comments below, because I sure don’t have any…!

So it looks like a grand total of 765.75 MB of data was used by yours truly on his N97 24/7 tour across the USA. That’s probably an inconsequential number to my new American friends and their unlimited mobile data plans, but had I not been loaned an AT&T SIM Card for the trip I would have had to pay for all those ones and zeroes myself — and at 3¢ per kilobyte I’d be on the hook for almost $230 CAD from my carrier!

That’s not to say that Nokia’s flagship N97 is at fault here; quite the contrary, in fact — this latest version of their smartphone OS has a spiffy feature called Destinations, where you can group and prioritize a number of Internet access points into a single scenario. I’ll let Jonathan Greene explain it in more detail…

Here are some additional tricks you can use on your S60 device to get more with less data:

1. Use Opera Mini & mobile-optimized sites – I still don’t buy into the perceived need for fully-rendered web pages on a mobile screen, and WAP Review’s Dennis Bournique would agree with me, I think. Check out his excellent site for a running list of the best mobile-friendly pages out there, and rest easy knowing that should you ever need to click through to a big, bloated URL, Opera Mini will scrape the extra crap off of your plate and serve up only the stuff you want.

2. Use Ovi Maps with Map Loader – I’ll freely admit that I used Google Maps much more than the Nokia version while travelling the United States, but if I had to pay for my own data it would have been an entirely different story. The killer app for maps and stingy travellers is Nokia’s Map Loader, which lets you download maps of entire continents onto your device, so that when you’re abroad you only need a GPS connection, which doesn’t cost you a dime.

3. Take Qik offline - Qik really proved itself on the tour as a killer multimedia app. But live streaming video to the internets doesn’t come cheap. There is a neat little trick that Matt hipped me to, however, that will save you money and make your Qiks look better — from within the app select “Go offline” from the options menu; your recorded video will be temporarily stored on your handset until you hit a WiFi hotspot and can go back online. Data roaming costs = zero; coolness factor = intact!

I myself will be making use of these tips later this year on a little excursion of my own. More on that in a future post!

(With apologies to The Rovers — wait, who the hell cares what they think about anything?)

So last night WOM World/1000heads and Smart Fusion threw the highly-anticipated finale to our 2-week tour of the USA at THE XCHANGE, with Nokia footing the bill.

And barely a day later I’m back home in Toronto, asking myself: “Did that really happen?”

It’s going to take me most of the weekend to catch up on some other stuff before I can blog about this incredible experience some more, so in the meantime I need to do two things…

1. Thank everybody who made this blogger’s dream come true come true, including

• Colin, Donna, Katie, Siobhan & Tom from WOM World;
• Blair & Justin from Smart Fusion;
• Wrangler extraordinaire Mobile Dan;
• Fellow superstar bloggers George, Jon & Matt;
• All the awesome folks we met along the way!

2. Give you a little taste of what you missed if you weren’t there:

The moral of today’s story is don’t cheat, or it will bite you in the ass…

Today we were split into two teams and given a running lists of ten GPS co-ordinates to input into Ovi Maps, along with further instructions as to what to do once we got there.

I headed downtown to Astor Place with my teammate for the day. to find The Cube, otherwise known as The Alamo. Once there, we had to snap a couple of photos (which was easy) and I had to move it a bit (which was nearly impossible).

With one landmark under our belt, we headed into the local Starbucks to relax and wait for our next co-ordinates. But the numbers we were given to punch in to our N97s were in the wrong format — degrees, hours, and minutes with decimal places versus degrees, hours, minutes and seconds.

Being too lazy to perform a simple conversion I instead took my cue off of Matt, who figured from the additional clues that he could get us to where we were supposed to navigate to without actually having to navigate to it — the arch by the Brooklyn Bridge shown above.

He was right about the arch, but dead wrong about the location.

I certainly didn’t mind, and truth be told was equally complicit in this navigational crap-shoot. But the detour cost us much of the afternoon, and though we did eventually make our second checkpoint soon afterwards it was pouring rain and dinnertime.

Final Score: 2/10

… Although I should point out that we were back at the hotel to enjoy our in-room massaging chairs a full two hours before George and Jon. So I ask you, who was the real winner here?

Oh look, here’s some guy on a bus shooting video with his N97 to recap the challenge handed down to him from Nokia HQ yesterday:

The original plan called for me to take a Segway ride across The Golden Gate Bridge, which would have been pretty spectacular, except that (1) the company that rents them out only does supervised group tours, and (2) downtown Sausalito is quite a ways from the opposite side of the bridge — so far, in fact, that I couldn’t even see it when I finally got there.

And how did I get there, you ask? Well, fellow superstar blogger Matt Bennett — who I technically know from the Internet — told me I could hop a ferry across the bay, and that I could get to the ferry dock via any number of buses that passed more or less in front of our hotel.

Once out on the water the N97 got to work. Using Nokia Sports Tracker I was able to verify in real time to anyone who cared that I was indeed crossing the bay by public transportation — at least I thought I was. I guess I hadn’t properly set up my public profile on the Nokia site so my “workout” wasn’t properly logged. Even worse, all those apps multitasking on my high-powered device eventually froze it up, and soon after it automatically rebooted the battery ran out — see Exhibit A and B tweeted live from the scene.

Once on the other side of the bay things got better in a hurry. I fired up the latest edition of Nokia Maps — you know, the one that offers free walking navigation and uses the N97’s built-in compass — and within just a few minutes had found the exact address where I had an appointment with destiny…

And who was the lucky Sausalitoan who got to meet up with yours truly? Are you sitting down? Then prepare yourself for this…

That’s right, my Internet-brokered meet-up was with a candy store. I would have taken a photo with the shopkeeper inside but truth be told she was a little ornery, and I didn’t want to risk having a gypsy curse put on me.

And if you’re wondering how a place of business qualifies as “a person I found on the Internet”, it came up through a Google search while I was monitoring Twitter for people living in Sausalito. I just really like candy is all…

Okay, it’s go-time. We just got off a conference call with Nokia HQ, and they’ve given each of us a specific challenge for this stop on the N97 24/7 Tour.

And when they say “specific” they’re not kidding around: My challenge for tomorrow is to make to my way over the bay to Sausalito using only my Nokia N97 and without taking a cab. But there’s more — once there I have to meet face to face with a local whom I connect to over the internets!

Now being a blogger and all I’m normally a bit shy about meeting new people, but there’s a lot at stake here — if I fail this challenge Nokia may well leave me stranded here in San Francisco. Okay, that might not be so bad… But they might take away my N97 — and that would be a fate worse than death!

So if you live in Sausalito and you’re up for a quick hello (and maybe a free T-shirt) tomorrow afternoon, please let me know in the comments below this post. I’m looking forward to meeting you!