Now you can check the video that started the whole talking about Nokia cloning iPhone, and really understand what happened there.

The video shows the Nokia CEO explaining the new multimedia UI , and in the end the small portion that was the polemic one.

After watching my attention went completely to the new multimedia UI. And all I can finally say is “Ahh it was about time”. Why that? Well for some time (since N91 I think) I have been asking myself WHY. Why put a dedicated key that just open ONE screen with ANOTHER launcher for 5 applications (customizable) and that’s it ? This was present in most of 3rd edition Symbian phones.

Then, It evolved into this :

A much nicer openGL ES (I supposed as it has nice effects) screen, that is quite juicy but has one deadly problem: It’s just THAT. you click, you go back to the hell that became s60. If you take a time to go to your music listing, you going to see a list with 2 to 3 icons on each line. Unbelievable.

Ok, now I thought the new phones had the last thing, the carousel thing shown on some pictures and announced by Nokia, but the video showed us finally one thing that makes sense: the multimedia key is becoming on full (or almost I don’t know) UI!. Yes, finally. It took four iterations and now the video show a full usable thing that appears to be quite simple and to solve one of the worst problems in s60 IMHO: too much launchers. Too much applications looking different and behaving different. This is a nice step, a needed one, and while I like to criticize a lot I also now when to send the compliments for this kind of release.

The only thing that worries me (of course can be just a video thing) is that you actually need to circulate too much the ipod-wheel-like thing to scroll up and down. And this is a huge iPod problem. Once you have thousands of songs is quite boring to keep circulating to scroll a full list of songs and the scroll back up. The iPhone solved this problem beautifully with a index on the side. So I consider this thing as shown in the video a nice step for Nokia but maybe a step backwards in terms of market, as mainly Apple has at least product speaking accepted and fixed that.

About The VP speech and the final section showing the iPhone I keep my opinion : To show something that does not evolve from iPhone could not be something to be proud on, and they would be just great enough just announcing the new UI and leaving the iPhone like possibilities in the future for other occasion. The new UI is nice enough and didn’t deserve to be shadowed by a 10 sec session that wanted to show that Nokia will not stand still staring at Apple’s UI.

To read more about this from a Nokia oriented mind visit Stephan’s post. For more info about Nokia’s VP opinions about the iPhone visit this web site.