Archived

ICT time at Nokia

^{Jan Bonnevier from Nokia presenting the future, Nokia Morph, to Samad Zeeshan and Wenlei Dai.}

The six members of the ICT theme group and four members of the Renewable Natural Resources jumped on a bus from Kiljava to Otaniemi at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning. The campers were sleepy still, and not bothered by the morning traffic. The first stop was University of Technology, which is part of the Aalto University. The Renewable Natural Resources group visited companies operating in the area.

The ICT group consisting of Wenlei Dai, Wanmeng Zhang, Samad Zeeshan, Peter Major, Adina Nedelcu, and Jun Nishida continued the ride to Keilaniemi, where they were welcomed by Marko Mahkonen, the Senior Manager of Education Policy. As soon as the group entered the lobby of Nokia Headquarters the sleepiness was gone, and the enthusiastic group was interested to hear about Nokia’s new gadgets and innovations.

The Group was guided to the VIP-lounge, where they were greeted with snacks and beverages, and presentation about the new portal Ovi, and other new innovations by Nokia. Senior Marketing Communications Manager Jan Bonnevier was well prepared for the presentation, but the group was by no means the second best in holding up the conversation. Especially, Wenlei and Peter, came prepared with some trickyish questions, which was a very good thing, and the event didn’t turn out to be a “1,5 hour commercial message” as Bonnivier jokingly put it.

^{Wanmeng Zhang and Adina Nedelcu admiring new Nokia phones.}

“Do you acknowledge that Nokia is left behind by its competitors on?” Bonnevier was asked, regarding the lack of applications for the Symbian operating system that is used in Nokia phones.

“We are on catch up mode. What is bubbling in the kitchen is on par with what else is out there. I’m quite confident that we’ll come back,” Bonnevier replied. Bonnevier also explained that thanks to the Ovi landscape, there is now an easier and more approachable way to distribute applications.

“It’s not about quantity, but also about quality,” Bonnevier stressed. This means that Nokia offers applications according to the market, things that people are interested in and need.

^{Marko Mahkonen facing the competition with Peter Major.}

High-end, low-end, the end…

“Ovi email is the first email service in some of the third world countries,” Bonnevier said, and gave the campers an example of how it can make people’s lives much more easier in rural areas of the world. Bonnevier told about a boy who had to bicycle a 2-hour-trip everyday, to discover the crop price of the day. And then bicycle the same trip back home and tell the news to his father. Now, thanks to the launched network, time is saved for other things, e.g. the education of the boy.

Nokia develops more affordable devices for the needs of the developing countries, and also innovations that help to reduce the need for charging in the areas where electricity is scarce. But still: “Should Nokia also have the best high-end phone, if it wants to be number one?” was asked from the group, and Bonnevier agreed.

Also the Ovi map application was presented to the campers.

“Its advantage is that it is vector-based, and thus the information can be squeezed into small info footprints, and it then can be used without internet connection, and the map of the whole world can be stored in 4–5 gigabytes,” Bonnevier explained.

^{Tap the screen! Jun Nishida and Wenlei Dai.}

According to the ongoing themes of the camp, Adina brought up the sustainability aspect of mobile phone production. She wanted to know where the parts for the mobiles come from and what happens to them after the lifecycle of a phone comes to its termination.

Bonnevier explained that Nokia takes these things seriously and has been on the top spot in Greenpeace’s green electricity ranking since 2006. Recycling and responsible collection of old phones are part of Nokia’s principles. Also small packaging and usage of recycled package materials reduce the amount of waste.

^{Wenlei Dai and Wanmeng Zhang trying out the new Nokia phone application that enables using Chinese characters instead of Pinyin.}

After lunch, the day continued at Nokia’s research centre in Ruoholahti, where the camper’s got to see videos of Nokia’s new inventions, and try some of them out themselves. After that they had couple of hours to work on their projects at Nokia. The ICT group is working on two separate projects and Mahkonen offered them some valuable ideas and feedback.

Guide of the ICT group, Toni Kaario, tells more about ICT group’s projects in MY Science on Wednesday 9 June.

More photos from MY Camp on Flickr

Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.