What application or technology are you currently working on? If it’s confidential, could you give us a hint?

I don’t concentrate on any particular technology, but do anything that is needed with Symbian OS at any given day. Today I was looking into AIW and what could be done with it, but tomorrow it’s probably something else again.

Do you read mobile phone blogs? If yes, which is your favourite?

I do read some of them sometimes, but nothing particular regularly. All and all, I do read anything that has enough newsworthiness to be mentioned in www.AllAboutSymbian.com news.

What specifications does your ideal dream mobile phone have?

Something that is many years away: Small, device that has paper thin screen; hugely fast short & long range wireless connections.

Having a job at Nokia should mean that you are quite busy, but you managed to get a Masters degree and a PhD. Please share with us how you managed your time, and at what Universities you studied.

It’s all about planning, and then executing the plan accordingly. Of course it requires self-control, self-motivations and lots of hard work. And what should newer be forgotten, is that when you are busy, it’s important to sleep & eat well and most importantly to have fun time to time.

Where do you get the imagination and creativity to develop all the programs you have compiled yourself?

Most of my freeware I had personal need for, and then decided that somebody else might also find them useful, thus made them publicly available.

While attending high school, did you ever imagine that you would become one of the world’s most respected programmers?

No, since it would have been impossible. I’m rather sure that I’m probably only Finnish citizen with PhD. degree, who has never attended a single day at high school (in Finnish: Lukio). I basically took a bit longer route and before starting my university studies I studied at Lappeenranta vocational school for 3 years and graduated as an electrician.

We know that you are also a guest lecturer at a university in Thailand. How do you find the country and the students?

Currently I’m only participating on student final projects as an external expert and most likely will not find time for teaching this year, though I’m doing short 2 day course with AIT in Vietnam this coming May.

Most of my students at AIT have been Asian scholarship students who have been really motivated and excellent learners.

Thailand, of course is the land of smiles, and who wouldn’t like smiles…

I will now move to the second part of the interview, which consists of questions on the mobile phone industry.

Having such an important position at Forum Nokia, you surely must have played with the upcoming jewels, Nokia N96 and Nokia N78. What can you tell us about these phones?

One thing which I really liked with the upcoming models is that there are two very different design patterns, so if you don’t like one, changes are that you will like the other. My personal opinion on the design point of view is that I find the 6220 & 6210 devices rather nice, and probably one of them is going to be my next device I would carry 24/7 with me.

Samsung released their TouchWIZ, HTC has their TouchFLO, and Windows Mobile just got “flashy”. Why do you think Nokia released N96 as a flagship phone, and not Touch UI at this stage?

It’s not my job to wonder “why”, so I can not really answer that question. Anyway, N96 is great device as it is, S60 UIs are easy to handle without touch screen.

What can you tell us about this upcoming platform (Touch UI)? We do know that there will be a touch screen and accelerometer implementations, but what else can we expect?

We can expect that all necessary information will be made public on time, so remember to check out www.forum.nokia.con and www.S60.com time-to-time for more information. Also my favourite news service www.AllAboutsymbian.com most likely will publish reviews and details as soon as they come out.

Recent problems with Symbian Signed have triggered outcries from Symbian phone enthusiasts. Why is the system so restrictive, and what changes should be made so that users can easily and quickly get unsigned applications working on their phones?

As a former developer, in commercial application developer’s point of view, I think most of the changes were good. The system tackles cracked software pretty well now, but of course nothing is perfect.

In general, there should not be need to end-user to sign applications, the signing should be taken care by the developer. Though with current system, freeware developers could have been taken care better, but I’m sure there will be improvements as soon as they are possible.

To Open Source, or to not Open Source, that is the question. Google decided to fight Symbian with its Linux customization, which we know better as Google Android. This is mainly important for developers, but over 40 companies are betting on Google’s new trick. How will Symbian retaliate from the technical point of view? Give more code to the programming community? Crush them with hardware innovations? Create a fund for best programmers, like Apple and Google? What can you tell us?

Symbian OS is very secure OS in many perspectives, and it is also as open as secure mobile OS can be. You can obtain quite many private S60 APIs for many use cases when you have a real business case for them, As well as you can get access to Symbian internal APIs by partnering with Symbian.

That is all, thank you. Many intriguing questions have been answered, and now we can have a positive view of Nokia’s, Symbian’s, and the mobile phone industry’s future. My sincere thanks to Dr Jukka Silvennoinen for his time and the Nokia Press for this opportunity. Within the following weeks you will be able to inform yourself with more interviews and insight of the mobile world. I advise you to subscribe to our RSS feeds. Thanks to all our loyal readers for their support!

New Innovations in S60 UI
While the S60 design is kept familiar and consistent S60 renews and innovates to fill different user needs and provides alternatives for developers, manufacturers and Operators to design new type of applications, mobile devices and services. Now S60 expands the UI offering by Touch UI with tactile feedback to create new type of devices and applications and by UI Accelerator Toolkit to create graphically stunning applications.

Advanced sensors and sensor framework
S60 UI expands with sensors and advanced sensor framework. Sensors provide easy and entertaining way to engage with your devices while sensor framework opens this new exiting world to developers and licensees for new innovations.

Full Web browsing experience on S60
Web Browser for S60 provides best-in-class full web browsing experience on smartphones. Recent enhancements in this area - e.g. support for commonly used Flash Video content type and improved content download support - provide an even more desktop-like browsing experience.

Bring your Internet innovation to S60
Developers and designers can create exciting ways to connect and share using well-known desktop-class technologies (HTML, CSS, Flash) combined with the power of Internet information.

Powerful technology to create innovative experiences
Experienced developers can expand the capabilities of mobile devices and leverage the creativity of open source communities using powerful runtime technologies (C++, Open C, Java, Python).

S60 and Internet Community Services
A growing number of popular Internet community services are being mobilized on the open S60 platform. Optimized and integrated in-device client applications provide excellent user experience for users to connect to services that are relevant to them. They can also take advantage of device functionalities - such as GPS for location information - to go even beyond the desktop PC user experience.

S60 Device Showcase
The latest S60 devices at your finger tips.

Tune my S60
Let’s tune your S60 device and open it for new features! Decorate your personal S60 device with some free and funky add-on applications such as themes, wallpapers and ringtones. Match your own S60 handset to your style!

On other words, Nokia has taken down notes from the success of programs like Nokmote and RotateMe from Samir, and also ShakeSMS and FlipSilent from Tong Ren. Of course some of these features were inspired from Nokia themselves, but the customizing and finer details were taken in account and it is probable that we see them included in future S60 devices, as soon as 11 February, at the S60 stand.

Besides these advancements, Nokia plans on adding User Friendly applications, as reported on their website, using your phone as a text recognition tool was reported few days back in Symbian-Freak, where a N83 was a tool that helped blind people listen to words.

Picture:GSM Help Desk, Tekit

Source: IntoMobile , S60 Blog, Nokia MWC