There are some astonishing facts and data about Android OS. Did you know that the current Android sales outnumber the US birth rate? We make more Androids than humans, isn’t that crazy? We produce far more machines than humans and we make them faster and cheaper day by day. There’s some irony in the Android brand name not matter if it’s just a mobile operating system (for now). How about you? How do do you use Android? What do you see in the future of the platform?

Update:Soon to follow up on how the idea turned into YouTube honors and thousands of views

Nokia N8′s gorilla glass screen can really handle lots of pressure and mishandle, at least according to my test. The screen was tortured with a swiss army knife, coins, keys and a huge kitchen knife. You can see for yourself that the screen is intact and working like a charm. Sorry for the oily finger tips and please do not try this at home.

Nokia disrupted but it’s time for the Finns to disrupt others businesses as well. Here’s a humble list of 4 ideas Nokia can leverage for not only making more money but make more users happier.

Ovi Maps

Open Ovi Maps and release the API to the wild. Let developers play and integrate Ovi Maps everywhere, even out of the Symbian^3, MeeGo, Maemo ecosystem. Make it as fun, easy, silly, stupid and engaging as the other APIs out there, courtesy of Flickr, Google Maps etc. Unify the mobile and desktop experience and let people embed Ovi Maps in their blog posts and sites. Ovi Maps is brilliant, it’s accurate, it’s awesome even on a device like Nokia X6 which is more of a music device than anything else.

Other Ovi services

Remove the fat. Keep Ovi Mail for emerging markets, Ovi Maps for the whole world and that’s it. Either offer Ovi Music to every single country or kill it as well. Use 3rd party services not because they’re necessarily better or cooler but because they’ve been there before Ovi. YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter etc i’s where everyone hangs out. That’s one thing and searching, installing, using a 3rd party app on the Ovi Store it’s another.

Ovi Accessories

Or Nokia Accessories for every single Nokia phone out there. Sell license to 3rd parties to come up with whatever thy want for the hundreds of millions of Nokia devices out there. Throw in some beautiful Finn design and inspiring technology for high end user and enthusiasts / hackers. Create the Ovi Accessories ecosystem.

Hardware

Disrupt in hardware. Finns proved they can do it with the N95, the N900 etc. Bring RFIDs and tie it with Nokia Money, improved CMOS and Carl Zeiss optics for HD 1080p single tap video uploads, micro location hardware (Ovi Accessories also) etc. Make devices available a week after they’re announced. Pimp up the specs with faster CPUs and more than 256MB of RAM.

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There is one thing and one thing only that made Nokia the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phonse and there is one thing and one thing only that is currently kicking Nokia’s ass. The company culture is engineer driven, period. Everything is build upon this very perception of reality, period. This is how Nokia introduced the world’s first mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman 900, and this is why Nokia is losing market share and market value for the last couple of years.

Fredrik Idestam, Nokia’s founder, was a mining engineer back in 1865. Fast forward 145 years and you will realize that every product Nokia ever made was build upon that engineer driven mentality and Finn influence. Engineers and particularly Finn engineers, combine great talent and technology to build amazing devices but that’s all they do. They build stuff based on the engineer assumption of efficiency and evolution but they totally toss the experience. Engineers are happy when stuff work and specs are pumped even if they have to struggle with 15 different clicks and settings to get the hardware running. Finns are a special specimen of engineering force who don’t give a damn about any of the “in between nonsense” at all.

Nokia is blessed to be the world’s largest handset maker or to put it in other words, engineer driven or not what they do brings €5 billion worth of food to the table. It’s really hard to argue against an operating profit of €5 billion as of 2008 but someone actually did. Apple and Google both set the standards for the next generation of smartphone OS while Nokia is yet not ready to officially announce Symbian Foundation phone and get over the engineer driven design of the powerful N900 beast. Apple is already working on the 4th version of iPhone OS for the new iPhone to be announced June-July 2010 while Google is on speed with 4 major release of Android OS already. As of now, Nokia is doomed to fail on the developed world.

On the other hand, Finns measure tremendous growth and success in emerging markets which are now something like the holly grail of low end – S40 mobile phones sales and Ovi services. This is huge for Nokia and the stock price considering the size of the population and the opportunity for further expansion. It’s also extremely beneficial for the locals who now have access to information for the first time ever without asking for permission from the local authorities or the head of the village. This is where Nokia is doomed to succeed.

It would be interesting to see if this new path to financial success and opportunity to change the world as once happened with the Cityman mobile phone is the same path surrounded with the engineer only perception of reality which cut Nokia’s market share down to 38%.

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When i receive SMS and the sender requires a reply using the same center, that is the same SMS center he/she used to sent the message, iPhone can’t reply which is equivalent with hitting the reply button on Symbian. This is cool and nice when the sender uses another telco. Symbian fails to reply to the message too but at least, Symbian lets me compose a new SMS and send it using the my phone’s center, thus my telco’s center number.

On iPhone OS 3.0.1 when trying to compose a new text message i get back to the original SMS thread which somehow retains all the attributes from thread, including the requirement for a reply using the sender’s center. Deleting the messages from the thread doesn’t solve the problem which leaves only one option: delete the whole thread. This is nice and cool if you play flirty and stuff with the blond you met 30min ago while commuting but losing all messages and the chat / thread from a person is unacceptable, to say the least.

As i’m knew to the iPhone 3GS world i can’t really tell if this really annoying behavior is due to an iPhone OS 3.0.1 SMS bug, Apple’s KISS design philosophy or myself being blinded because of the hot blond.