Interview: Jay Andolini

Jay Andolini is author of nseries-mobile and attended the N82 product launch in Finland. Read the intertview to know more about him.

Previous interviews:

–Michell Bak (MobileExpert)
–Michael Hell (Nokianblog)
-Gregory Taieb (Symbianfrance)
-James Burland (Nokiacreative)
–Ricky Cadden (Symbian-Guru)
-Phillip Schwarzman (S60)
-Rafe Blandford (Allaboutsymbian)
-Steve Litchfield (3lib)
–Mark Guim (theNokiablog)
–Phat^Trance (Dailymobile)
–PseudoFinn (NokiaUsers)
–Tarek Ghazali (Symbiano-Tek)
–Rita El Khoury (Dotsix)
–Vaibhav Sharma (The Symbian Blog)
-Devin Baltentina ( The Nokia Guide)

So, tell me something about your person.(age,hobby etc.)
I’m 36 years old, live in the UK. My hobbies are pretty ordinary; I enjoy reading, going on walks and traveling. I also like to participate in events at the Church.

How do you came to the mobile and S60 scene?
I’ve been working in the mobile industry since for over 10 years now. I started working in retail sales and after a few months I was bitten by the mobile bug. My very first mobile phone was a Samsung phone on the old analogue networks, in the days when phones were first being sold for 1 penny on contract. It was such a useless handset it needed two batteries, as one battery had a standby of about 8 hours.

I worked my way through various mobile companies, selling phones in retail and corporate markets. I now work for an online company selling phones over the internet.

I’ve been a big fan of S60 phones since the 7650, and have mainly used S60 phones, and now I like the Nokia NSeries handsets. I like the ideas Nokia promote and I like the way Nokia and S60 interact with their customers and people who blog about their products. The other manufacturers aren’t even close to matching Nokia in this regard.

Tell us something about your site.
My site is nseries-mobile.blogspot.com the main focus of the site is NSeries phones, but I also comment on S60 generally and software for the phones. I’m no journalist so the whole point of the site is to give open, honest opinion on the products I use in a manner that other users can relate to.

Why did you start blogging?
I’ve tried a couple of blogs in the past. I’ve never really kept up my personal blog, nor really the blog I have that talks about phones in general, http://www.3gsm.co.uk The NSeries blog came about because I was browsing through Google looking for some information, and there were a good number of blogs dedicated to the ESeries products, but hardly any for NSeries. So I thought I’d give it ago. I mainly concentrate on my NSeries blog and http://www.catholic-online.co.uk where I post daily homilies.

Do you have a idol?
Mmm. Not really. Plenty of people I admire within the mobile industry, companies, designers, innovators, etc, and other bloggers I read, and I do admire people who will stand up for what they believe and are prepared to do something to make a difference.

What was your first S60 phone and which device do you have at the moment?
The first S60 phone I owned was the 7650. One of the best phones of its time. I moved from there to the 6600 then through to the handset I have now, an N73. I am currently trialing an N82 and I am very impressed with the overall performance of the handset. It is strong in many areas and a very solid product.

What do you like most about S60?
I’ve always liked the way the menu is so customizable, being able to create my own folders, move things around, really make the phone my own. I can promote programs I use most often to the main menu and relegate all the stuff I don’t need to some obscure folder out of the way. Nothing comes close for flexibility in usage.

Where should S60 makes improves?
There are a few things I’d like to see. I love the Active standby plugins that you get on ESeries phones, I would like to have that option on NSeries phones too. I think the gallery can be improved upon, I’d like the folder structure for images to be respected more. I find it annoying having to troll through ALL my pictures in the gallery, when on the memory card images are stored away in folders. The email client could do with an update in this regard too, when you want to add an image to an email you trawl through everything. Profimail is much better in this regard. And finally, I would love to be able to turn of those annoying chimes when you turn on the phone. I rarely turn my phone off these days but when I do it does bug me.

~ by Norman John on January 11, 2008.