A while back I reported on my original N900 losing its microUSB connector, then followed up by expressing disappointment in Nokia’s poor handling of the matter once many more people began experiencing the same failure.  I have intended to turn it into a trilogy for some time, waiting until the reports of Nokia claim denials dried up.

But even though unresolved complaints did dwindle down, they didn’t disappear entirely… and tonight I got to experience why complaints keep coming: yep, my replacement N900 lost its connector, too.  Despite extreme care. 

Supposedly the root cause had been corrected by Nokia and I dared hope my replacement device had been part of a post-fix batch.  However, I was skeptical even before my second N900 failed.  I still do not believe a surface-mount approach is the proper way to go here.  It certainly isn’t the best.

In order to be truly secure, a connector of this type and purpose should employ a through-hole design, where contact pins actually penetrate the printed circuit card and are soldered on top and bottom.  As both a receptacle for frequent charging and occasional data connection, the usb port endures a great deal of stress– especially given that inserted adapters tend to fit tightly.  So tightly that many N900 owners have been filing them down.

I cannot stress this enough, as a former circuit board designer and Nokia quality engineer as well as current concerned customer: Nokia, quit being so stubborn over this issue.  Switch over to through-hole design for your external connectors.  And quit allowing your Care responders to antagonize people suffering from this failure through no fault of their own.  When these connectors break, replace the devices, no questions asked.  Angering people who just want a usable N900 is a really bad idea.

You can’t afford to blow this off.  I challenge Nokia executives with the power to correct this to respond to the article.  Tell people you recognize the seriousness of the situation, and that there’s an equally serious plan to make it right.

As promised, I’m finally getting around to my final post on the Akademy 2010 experience in Tampere, Finland.  For those interested, I’ll cover most of the journey start to end.

Twitter buddy Jonathan (@atmasphere) Greene alerted me to a Wall Street Journal post today that claims Nokia is actively shopping for a new chief executive officer.  If true, this shouldn’t come to anyone as a surprising development.  The current CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (OPK), has been under fire for over a year now while Nokia has struggled against stiff competition, largely from Apple, RIM and various devices running Google’s Android.

You know, I was planning to completely avoid a post mortem on the Apple iPhone 4 antenna issues circus.  I really was.  Until I stumbled onto this hyperspinning blog article and its incredible follow-up comments.

I realize I’m courting controversy with the title, but for good reason.  I’m going to set aside any unsavory or otherwise questionable aspects of Microsoft business practices to focus on one that has worked very well for them and I believe can for MeeGo as well:

Device reviewers are an interesting bunch.  They form a fairly tight-knit community yet individually can be as competitive as any triathlon participant.  The reviewer who gets his or her hands on some heretofore unknown prototype is treated with both admiration and jealousy– and often a rallying defense by the community when one gets busted.

A long time ago in a DOS-based world far, far away, there were Play-by-Mail games.

I was involved in one called Galactic Anarchy, run by a friend and  business colleague, as a tester and (of all things) cartoonist.  The concept was simple: a turn-based space conquest game played over snail mail (and later also email) populated by several character types (“races”), filled with interesting artifacts and of course founded on certain rules.  Players examined the status of their fleets and owned worlds, and then issued commands to move, attack, defend and anything else the command set supported.

Playing was an incredible amount of fun, even with the 18-day turnaround time for player command sets.  In fact a large part of the experience was the anticipation over just what was going on between the time you submitted your instructions and the day you received the results.  Even more fun was testing the limits of the rules and discovering loopholes and quirks that the game developer had overlooked.  But then every game needs an easter egg or two.

I am revisiting this memory because I’m missing the joy of that sort of gaming and wondering if there’s a place for a revival.  Of course no one will wait 18 days for turn results, but there’s a solution.

What I’m envisioning is a turn-based game with default behaviors determined by the player.  In addition to deliberate commands, players could set certain behaviors and instructions meant to be executed if the player did not submit his commands in time.  The server would ping each player based on a predetermined or random order, and await a response.  The response time could be agreed upon in advance by all players or set by the host (it could even be an average of submitted requests).  Pinging would be conducted by any and all means that the player set: instant message, SMS, Twitter, email, etc.

This would be ideal in a mobile setting, since players would be more likely to respond quickly.  Timezones could be an issue but then that would be part of the agreed response time.

I’m throwing this out there for consideration by the development community, especially Gluon (I shared this with Leinir already).  This is the sort of “sticky” scenario that pulls in and keeps a user base.

Thoughts?

I didn’t have much to report for days 3 and 4, sorry.  I had planned to attend the Qt workshops on day 3 but got engaged in a really fascinating offline discussion with Nokia’s Knut Yrvin instead.  Day 4 I spent in my gracious host’s apartment suffering from some bug of the human variety.

This particular article has been fermenting for a while, and it took some stimulating discussion during Akademy 2010 to kick it into publication.