I’ve made my opinion on Motorolas market strategy with the V3 RAZR pretty clear in the past. It’s a text-book case of how not to follow up a best selling product. So if Motorola were looking for any guidance as to how to avoid this in the future they might want to take a good look at how Nokia have updated their own best-seller; the Nokia N95.

Nokia announced the new Nokia N95 8GB, an update to their popular N95 device, a couple of months agao and this week it has started to hit stores. If the analysts are right it is set to become one of the most popular devices of the next few months, mirroring the success of it’s successor. There is already a lot of excitement surrounding the new device which might seem strange because at first glance it just looks like a Black N95. But Nokia isn’t pulling a Motorola-Special on us, there is a lot more to this device than the colour.

The most obvious improvement is the addition of an built-in 8GB Flash Card, clearly indicating that Nokia have taken notice of the iPhone and are trying to compete where they can (there was also another 8GB device announced at the same time). While this is an exciting addition to the old N95 what has impressed me more is the other improvements Nokia have thrown in. Instead of taking the easy road and limiting the update to 8GB of memory and a new paint-job, Nokia have taken into consideration all the main problems users have had with the original N95.

1. Under-Powered Battery: The N95 8GB has a bigger battery than it’s predecessor offering at least 25% more charge. More over hardware improvements mean that the device will use less juice so some are estimating that the battery will last about 50% longer than the original N95
2. Too Little Free Ram: The N95 suffered regular crashes when running a lot of apps at once or when opening particularly large web pages. This was due to the fact that the device had only a small amount of RAM available for applications after booting up. The N95 8GB fixes this issue by providing a massive 95MB of free RAM for applications and also incorporating Demand Paging, a first for an S60 handset.
3. Slow GPS: The N95 used to take ages to get a GPS lock and this was addressed a few months later when AGPS was added in a firmware update. As expected this technology has also found its way onto the N95 8GB and locking onto a GPS signal is now a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Of course there have been other improvements like a bigger screen, better music buttons and an improved UI but the three I’ve listed are the most important for me because they show that Nokia have listened to their Customers, Bloggers and Journalists in a way Motorola never did with the RAZR V3. This has been the most essential step in making the N95 8GB a really impressive device.

This hasn’t always been the case with Nokia. In the past they have clearly ignored customer complaints regarding the tiny amount of free RAM available on some of their S60 devices. They have also regularly ignored criticism about releasing new devices that have buggy firmware, and it remains to be seen if this will be that case with the N95 8GB. However they have recently made some great steps in the right direction.

They set up WOM World just over a year ago, a group of blogs that regularly interact with bloggers who are interested in N-Series devices even going as far as sending them phones to try out. This is a great way to gauge user reaction to their devices and to get some vital feedback on their shortcomings. The S60 Blogs have also been a fantastic addition and have opened up the world of S60 to customers, blogger, journalist and techies. Again this is a great way to get feedback, not only on devices, but on particular aspects of the S60 experience like applications, browser and usability.

Nokia clearly “get” that this sort of interaction with consumers can only help them create better phones. The fact that Motorola didn’t do the same in the past has meant they missed a great chance to grab long-term customers. So kudos to Nokia and let us hope that the other manufacturers start to take notice.