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I had the president of the company I worked for (Lee Bright, Eldorado Electrodata) break a desk phone receiver over the edge of his desk. Not a cheap new phone, but a 1970’s vintage AT&T office phone. He broke the receiver in two pieces, so he had to hold one piece to his ear and the other to his mouth.He told me to ship incomplete computers to a big customer since he had promised delivery on a Monday, but it was Friday and they weren’t ready to ship. I told the shipper that the machines were not ready (they weren’t even fully assembled) and that we wouldn’t be shipping until late next week, which is when it had been planned.On Monday morning, I got called into the President’s office, saw the phone, and then got demoted from manager to developer. Someone else was a manager, and I didn’t have any duties. I think he expected me to resign, but I didn’t.So, I went out into the lab and noticed that one of the techs was testing out a disk controller for a new Diablo drive. This was new equipment that I wanted to explore, so I asked the tech if he would mind having me set up a terminal on his test machine and start building a disk operating system, and I would write tests for him for the new drive. Over the next couple of months, I got the DOS to run and had a background print spooler running, and I kept working at refining what I had.A stranger walked into the lab a bit later and introduced himself as the new Manager of Marketing. He had heard about the DOS, which I now called Diskos, and asked if he could have a demo. I did that, and by that evening, I had my software manager’s job back, with all my team, now reporting to the Manager of Marketing.

In order of their relevance to your interest:Do research with a professor. Best way to approach a professor about doing research: Knock on their door. People often have spam filters, so emailing somebody you don't know personally isn't always effective.Undergrad research programs at other schools - they sometimes offer scholarships. They are usually very prestigious and difficult to attain.Intern at a professional research lab - Microsoft Research, AT&T, Nasa/DoJ/DoE.Take some classes. Relevant & difficult classes. If there are grad classes offered, this is the perfect time to take them.Google summer of code.Internship with a tech company. Not sure if it helps (recs maybe? good backup plan) , but better to do this than to do nothing.Try to work with people you'd want a grad school rec from.You should also always be working on your own projects on the side. This keeps you sharp at programming, thinking & research, helps the community (open source it), helps your resume (open source it), keeps your from sleeping too much, and helps to refine your interests.

There are two things, is the phone really good? And will it be a market success?For the first question, yeah the phone is really good. Nokia is constantly refining mobile camera technology to the point that others are far behind now. And putting all this technology in something lighter than the Lumia 920 is an awesome achievement for the Nokia engineers. WP is also evolving, though at a slower pace. Still it has most big apps now (except instagram) and WP8.1 is around the corner. So anyone who buys this phone will mostly be a happy customer.For the second part, I dont think it will sell for few reasons.AT&T exclusivity. AT&T is an iPhone hub and Nokia is practically limiting its US market to 1/4 of the available market.Tech critics still dont like WP, so they will pull their reviews down for the phone.Its a little costly. $299 on contract means it sits there with the iPhone 32GB. Most people will buy the iPhone at that level.