[digg-me]Greeting from all of us here at Mobonoid, here’s wishing you a spectacular New Year. The year 2008 was something of a mixed bag, while we did not see earth shattering technologies, it did throw out some really well balanced devices (Read E71 and N85). On the whole it was the year that the technologies consolidated and innovation seemed to take a pause, at least from what the consumer could see.

However in reality, it was probably as fast as it ever has been for phones have long inception cycles and what we see announced today probably was in the pipeline since a year. Just when we thought 2008 would have no more surprises, Nokia dropped the N97, unexpected to say the least. The device wasn’t unexpected, but the timing was, for Nokia World hadn’t been a platform for device announcements before.

2008 seemed slow and from all indications it seems that 2009 might just be the opposite. After having sufferred somewhat of a hit on the ‘touch’ front, Nokia seems all geared up to strike back. The 5800 is already shipping, the N97 is coming and so are other touch device for sure. Nokia clearly recognises that useful or not, touch sure seems to have enamoured people and if that’s what they want – it will give to them. We will most probably see a complete touch based device and a few other T9 and QWERTY touch devices as that’s clearly the way to go.

My thinking is that this year will be the year of better form factors and service integration rather than cutting edge features. The base configuration for cameras in high end phones will hit 8MP, we’ll see large hi-res screens, more memory and so on, but the built in projector phone from Nokia is still another year or more away. In order to succeed, manufacturers will have to make sure that the software and the hardware on their device don’t let each other down.

The mobile phone will become a tool for social network presence as individuals will want to be even more reachable, but without it being an intrusion. I already spend a chunk of my mobile browsing time on sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Jaiku and will surely jump to something that makes the experience seamless.

Nokia, to its credit sure seems to be on the right path with devices such as the N97, the facebook phone. Bringing all that a modern day consumer wants to the home screen is a smart move. We will soon see a world where prior to calling me, a friend will simply be able to look at his phone which will be displaying my ’status update’ and decide whether or not its a good time. Despite not speaking to each other for days, we’ll know exactly what’s happenning in each other’s lives (Although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing!). That’s the level of seamless integration I am looking forward too.

Its going to be an interesting time ahead, what do you think?