Copy of email to HMD: Sample of bugs and suggestions for all phones

madbilly

Hi everyone,

As you may know, when I was in Barcelona I mentioned to HMD people several times about the various issues with our phones and the many suggestions we have for improvements. I was asked to send an email to HMD about it, which I decided to write partly as a document you can find attached. Here's the email I wrote:

Hello [name removed],

As we discussed in Barcelona, I've compiled a sample list of all the issues and suggestions for improvement which I gathered from people before I came to Barcelona, please find it attached. I had hoped to be able to discuss these with someone in Barcelona but as you know it appeared that the right person was not present, or if they were they were too busy. In any case, you asked me to send you the list for you to discuss and share internally. I hope that these issues/suggestions can find their way to the right people in the various parts of HMD and your supplier partners and that the issues get fixed and the suggestions considered and hopefully implemented in the next months.

As I mentioned before, I think that engaging with the community is essential for HMD to promote the "just keeps getting better" message. Considering that all of these issues are raised in the community forum it's unsurprisingly difficult for people to understand why HMD apparently do nothing to address them. I think that in some cases it could be beneficial for some people from HMD, e.g. product managers, or technical support, to join in some of the conversations. I hope that HMD can do this.

As before, I'll probably post this on the forum when I get chance.

If you've any followup questions please give me a call.

Cheers,

As you can see I removed the name of the person I contacted as I don't want them to become the subject of any kind of harassment.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussions about these issues, special thanks to those who started these discussions and extra special credit to community members @navs, @nitheesh, @nitin kachare, @petrus, @singhnsk, @wilson shrestha and @wyk for helping me compile this list. We could not cover all phones nor all issues, so if you have an issue which is not included then you can post about it below.

I sent this email on Monday and haven't had a response yet, which to be honest I'm disappointed about but at least I know I'm not getting special treatment!

I remain hopeful that this email does find it's way into the hands of people who can make a difference.

Cheers

singhnsk

Thanks for the compilation, Madbilly. I'm happy to have contributed in this effort. Now all hopes on HMD to take a strong note of these and push updates taregetting these issues.

You're really making things easy for HMD. Dear HMD, research is done. Just fix these and increase user satisfaction 😊

wilson shrestha

Thanks for the credit @madbilly even if I had quite a small contribution in the compilation. 😄

I feel really sad to hear that they haven't responded to you until now. Btw, your compilation of the bugs and suggestions are perfect and I think it covers almost all the issues.

Seriously like most of us, I am just waiting for HMD to do something meaningful and game changing with all these suggestion and bugs reported to them. 
 

petrus

Oh, Nokia 8 has the longest list of bugs. 

@madbilly ;Thank you for the effort.  I hope this will help solve our problems.

TommiS

@madbilly Great work! 

I read the list kind of outsider because of my older model phone. I get a feeling that there is a huge lack of software developers OR that everybody is just focusing getting new models out. 

There should definately be a somekind of beta testing group for these major updates, it doesn't take many weeks to discover problems in everyday use. At least i would gladly wait update few more weeks to get a working software. 

I guess these could be a "small company" problems but i hope HMD finds a balance between releasing new products and taking care the old ones. I will definately follow if this letter leads to any fixes. After releasing 9 Pureview HMD is getting noticed much more around the world i think, and it would be crucial to have a working software or all the hard work in hardware developement goes down the drain. 

wyk

obliged sir... ❤️ 😊

madbilly

@singhnsk , @wilson shrestha , @petrus and @wyk , thanks again for your help.

@TommiS, I agree that it's not good reading for anyone who is considering buying a new Nokia phone. The Beta Labs programme https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/betalabs should have been getting used to find and correct these bugs prior to shipment, but as we have seen with the Nokia 8 it was not used properly - almost all of the problems which I listed were found less than one week after the update which brought the bugs, but Android 9 update was released anyway.

Other phones have had no beta labs prior to update to Android 9 at all. HMD never use beta labs for anything other than OS version updates, which IMO is a mistake - they should use it for the camera app, at least.

Yes the 9 PureView is making HMD Nokia phones higher profile again, and we know that they want to push the "just keeps getting better" concept as well as work out how to get the younger generations more interested in the new Nokia smartphones. Well, to me the answer is clear - #FixTheBugs! Nobody is going to grow attached to a phone which has problems which are never fixed. Nobody is going to recommend these phones to their friends. So, JFDI.

Anyway, maybe I'm expecting to much to get an actual reply, but at least an acknowledgement would be appreciated. More worrying is that we still haven't seen that Ask Me Anything video.

TommiS

@madbilly It will be super hard to convince a consumer to buy another Nokia device if there has been these kind of bugs/problems with the previous one. And "Just keeps getting better" concept is dangerous to promote if old problems still haunt everywhere.

I've been browsing a lot of Youtube videos and other material of the 9 Pureview and there are a lot of people already that are hoping fixes in software. Mainly for the camera app / camera performance. I hope HMD is listening and doing their best.

wyk

"Pure, Secure, Up to date"....but the last word up to date...is really pleasurable to advert .. but frustrating to users... cuz frank logic. ...any company can release a mammoth spec phone but it will be as good as plastic untill it will get proper treatment i.e. bug fixtures, issue fixtures, proper technical support time to time which HMD should've secure first. They have to clarify the logic of businesses strategy as well as proper support...for customer convenience. As u will agree @madbilly that.... we have bunch of unfixed issues with previous iteration while we are going to buy new avatars.. fully contradictory & confusing.