About Nokia Beta Labs
We built this website to share some of the exciting new things that we at Nokia have been working on and to gather feedback about how they work in real-life situations and how they can be improved.
The items in our catalog are in the beta phase, which to us means they are:- Of reasonably good quality, but may have rough edges and occasional service breaks
- Not commercialized yet, not guaranteed, and not officially supported
- Under active development
- Free of charge
- Not be used for commercial purposes
Nokia Beta Labs is a lead-user community
Nokia Beta Labs is open for all, and there is no formal process to join the community. Keep in mind, though, that Nokia Beta Labs is designed to be a lead-user community so you’ll get the most value out of participating if the following statements apply to you:- You own a relatively new and advanced Nokia device
- You are willing to tolerate rough edges, in return for access to cool stuff
- You often get ideas how to improve the gizmos you’re using
- You want to make a difference – and are not afraid to share your opinions
How to participate
- Get a Nokia account if you haven’t done so already. You’ll need this to download applications and to contribute feedback on our site. The site also becomes more personalized when you are logged in.
- Browse the catalog. Items marked as Beta have a clear roadmap, are usually rather mature, and will likely graduate to a commercial product. Experimental items do not have a clear commercialization plan, are typically rough around the edges, and may or may not continue in the same form after the beta trial.
- Try what you like. We do our best to keep the catalog of applications fresh and interesting. If you find something you like and is compatible with your device, go ahead and download it to try it out (see site terms).
- Say what you think. After you try out an application from Beta Labs, please submit Suggestions, Bug Reports, Reviews, or questions on the application’s forums or contribute to ongoing discussion. Be as clear as you can in your feedback and explain your experiences with any relevant information (e.g. device model, software version, country, operator). We need your honest feedback, but we won’t tolerate disrespectful behavior or harsh language.
Be a superstar
If you like what you find at Nokia Beta Labs, you’ll probably want to do more. Here are some tips to get more value out of the site and make stronger connections with the community:
- Contribute to ongoing discussion. Add value and answer others' questions where you can.
- Rate others’ feedback as Helpful or Unhelpful.
- Edit your profile with an avatar and signature that will show up on all your posts
- Edit your profile to allow us to send you follow-up surveys within a certain time after downloading an application.
- Add applications to your favorites show your interest and get notified via My Feed of discussion around the app
- Check out My Feed to see responses to your posts and what discussion is happening around apps you follow
- Subscribe to RSS feeds (blog posts, blog comments, or on each application forum)
- Use our mobile site directly from your phone
- Follow us (@nokiabetalabs) on Twitter
- Check out our videos on YouTube (shared channel with Nokia Conversations)
Community members that are active on the site (over a certain threshold in the past six months) will earn the Active Contributor badge, visible in their profile and on every comment they make. Giving feedback, commenting to others' threads, and rating the helpfulness of others' posts all contribute to your reputation as an Active Contributor.
Additionally, Beta Labs community members can earn the Top Contributor badge when they are active on the site AND valued by others. Helpful ratings on posts and comments as well as selections of posts by admins to the Editors' Picks contribute to your reputation as a Top Contributor. Like with the Active Contributor badge, you'll get the badge if your reputation over the past six months is over a certain threshhold.
Once a month we also select a Contributor of the Month, someone who has contributed significant value to Beta Labs over the past month.
If you build a reputation on the site you might get more cool opportunities to participate. For example, we have invited some active contributors to serve as moderators on the site, to help the Nokia staff keep things tidy and organized in the growing volume of feedback.
Community-driven open innovation
Without the active community, we would not have a service – and we know it. We try to serve you as well as we can and try to put you first, but we are a small team with tight time resources.The developer teams behind the products vary in size from a couple to tens of people. Despite their resources to talk back, the most important requirement for them is to listen to what you say in your feedback.
Can I suggest new application ideas?
We welcome you to suggest ideas that would make existing products better. So if you have an idea of a killer feature that is missing from an application, do share that with us. However, we at Beta Labs cannot accept ideas of new applications - we simply don't have anybody to start working on them and those ideas would be wasted.
There are some other places where you can add your ideas though. We suggest you check out a place called Symbian Ideas - they welcome all new ideas, especially those concerning the underlying Symbian operating system.
Contact us
We encourage you to discuss in the public forums if possible. Beta Labs has its own forum section, which is regularly read by John, Tommi or Ilkka. We are also on Twitter. If you need to discuss something in private we can be contacted by email.