Last week I had the opportunity to spend the day with other mobile researchers at the semi-annual Nokia University Relations Forum here in Vancouver. Nokia’s Vancouver group (developers of the N96, among other interesting new devices) hosts the event every year in June and December and researchers from around BC participate, sharing the latest on their research activities.

Nokia also provided a bit of insight into their thinking and directions to the future. Nothing “off the record,” but it is still nice to get the update from a real person rather than gleaned from various rumour and news sites. The essence of the update from Nokia was that their business is big and getting bigger, that the multimedia segment is growing quickly, that the competition from RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone is actually helping Nokia by getting people to consider a “smartphone.”

We also saw a bit of a demo of the N96, which although not released has been announced, and I got to play with the one being carried by the fellow sitting next to me - the TV reception (Nokia runs a local version of DVB-H inside the building) was crisp and clear and the phone itself is a nice evolution of the N95 that preceded it.

The research presentations ranged from the extremely technical (e.g., a mathematical / theoretical analysis of the effects of signal propagation along the surface of the body [related research from Ireland]), to the applied (heart and other body function monitoring tools that can be connected wirelessly to a phone, and a radio signal analysis vehicle recently purchased by UBC). There was a description of research into message passing between mobile vehicles (sort of a “moving mesh”), and a couple of student projects including a “Guitar Hero” clone for the N810 written by two students from University of Victoria.

Several presentations looked at the way mobiles are used in computer science and engineering education, and one demonstrated remote teaching techniques for a mobile and wireless engineering course.

Nokia donates a small number of handsets and some cash as well to help these projects along, but they are largely funded either through bigger grants from NSERC and others or from the researcher’s own passion and interest in the field.

MobileMUSE’s David Vogt made a short presentation on that project’s latest round of activities and he encouraged local researchers to get involved with the project through their prototype development fund.

All in all it was a fascinating look at what is going on in mobile research locally. There is a lot more than you think, and it is clear - as the Nokia managers were proud to point out - that we researchers often don’t know about each other unless we come to this event.

My own work on the user experience of rich media mobile devices was not on the agenda this time - I presented at the last meeting, in December 2007 - but I hope to present again in the upcoming one in December 2008.