Dirk is the Senior Vice President (SVP) in charge of Mobile Phones’ research and development, based in Beijing, China. He spends a lot of his time looking at technologies that are five years ahead of current specs. 

So what space-age wonder has he chosen as his favourite among the current Mobile Phone range?

It’s the Nokia Asha 308.

Who in your family would you recommend this phone to?

My 12-year-old son Maxime, who is really into instant messaging. He would love the perfect balance of size and input with very responsive touch.

What do you think is the one unique feature in this phone?

There’s not just one single unique feature: it’s the overall package, which allows us – Nokia – to offer such a great user experience at such an affordable price. Even from within the industry, people cannot believe that we are able to deliver such a smooth experience in the UI and touch at such low price points. You couldn’t get any better value for money.

What’s the killer app you recommend on this phone?

This clearly depends on what you are into. If you like social messaging, then all the global and local clients are the key (e.g. Facebook and Twitter for global appeal or in China – as an example – Kaixing or Tencent QQ IM, which comes in its very latest version and runs in the background – even on the DualSIM version).

Or the 40 free EA games, if you fancy entertainment, or the Nokia Xpress Browser, with its web apps and discovery features, which not only let you browse the Web but also saves significant time/money due to the Nokia Cloud technology employed, which compresses up to 90% of the data.

Believe it or not, though, the “app” which I  appreciate most myself in the 308 is the standard SMS: the virtual keyboard and the responsive UI/touch lets me write my messages quickly and accurately, which makes one of my most-used, everyday features in a smartphone just the way it should be.