Nokia's Present & Future

[eastmen]

People who encounter problems with battery life on Android phones tend to do so due to rogue apps more than anything. Plenty of apps and widgets are poorly coded and stop the phone from sleeping when idle and this, of course, can drain batteries like there is no tomorrow.

That said, I doubt that there is an Android phone around which couldn't be improved by use of one of the enthusiast ROMs which abound for most devices. The manufacturers have little interest on updating older phones to newer releases - Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) has been out for over 6 months but few older devices have any official support and many, including the Galaxy S, aren't going to get it. Samsung have spouted some bullshit about the reasons for this but the theory that the hardware isn't capable of supporting ICS is just ridiculous and there are, in fact, many very stable enthusiast ICS ROMs for this and much less powerful phones. ICS works pretty well on the crappy and cheap ZTE Blade which I bought over 18 months ago thanks to a few dedicated developers.

The fact that groups of enthusiasts (and often individuals) can produce excellent and stable ROMs despite an almost complete lack of assistance from the manufacturers indicates how relatively easy it would be to keep these phones updated with the newest versions of Android or even just produce more reliable and stable releases of the older versions. It seems too many manufacturers are just happy to hack up a barely functional release of the software (invariably adding a load of bloatware) instead of employing a couple more competent coders to do the job properly.

I'd never stick to using the stock ROM on an Android phone as I know you can improve your experience significantly with little effort.

IF this is in response to me , I have used ICS roms on my epic , all of them including the cyogan one made battery life worse.

But your basicly admiting to a broken OS and a need to fix it with custom Roms . The average user shouldn't have to wipe the phone and go rom hunting to get a good experiance on a phone . Add to that many claim the huge amount of apps on Andriod is a big plus over windows phone and yet now you have to beware of poorly programed apps?

 

[bdmosky]

But then you have no vibration call..
At least that's how it was pre-mango in early 2011. Terrifying..

Again wrong... for mango. You click the volume key, which brings down the volume menu, and you click the right icon to turn the phone on silent WITH vibration.

 

[Mariner]

IF this is in response to me , I have used ICS roms on my epic , all of them including the cyogan one made battery life worse.

But your basicly admiting to a broken OS and a need to fix it with custom Roms . The average user shouldn't have to wipe the phone and go rom hunting to get a good experiance on a phone . Add to that many claim the huge amount of apps on Andriod is a big plus over windows phone and yet now you have to beware of poorly programed apps?

I'm making a general comment about Android phones, not your case in particular.

I'm not saying it's right that this poor battery life seems to be the way things are with many stock Android ROMs, just that it is pretty commonplace and I've found that using custom ROMs invariably resolve any battery life problems.

Cyanogenmod ROMs tend to be pretty good battery-wise, providing you are using a stable version. Some of the nightlies have battery drain problems and many of the ICS ROMs are still under development to a large degree - I see the Epic 4G CM9 ROM is still in beta so poor battery life on this ROM isn't surprising to me. I don't know if you have tried a stable CM7 (Gingerbread) ROM or not but you would almost certainly experience a much better battery situation than with a Beta CM9 ROM.

That said, my brother-in-law has a Galaxy S and often complained about battery drain as he used the official OTA releases of Froyo and Gingerbread. I think he's sorted things out now after rooting the phone.

I'm currently on my third Android phone and have enjoyed good battery life on all three, so it's certainly possible. In my experience widgets tend to be bad for battery drain. Facebook used to be comically bad as well.

That's the advantage of iOS - Apple can lock things down much more easily and reject apps which might be particularly badly coded. The disadvantage, of course, is that they also reject plenty of apps which are very useful! I'd imagine WP7.5 is similarly locked down.

A good sign is that the software on the newest Android phones seems to be much improved compared to the older devices. The big problem is that the manufacturers aren't bothering to update the official software releases for the older devices in the way that Apple have.

 

[Mize]

I want an Ubuntu phone. I like flexibility plus stability. Actually I'm really enjoying my N9 MeeGo phone. I have full file system access, Linux term, real multitasking (can even watch apps running on the card view) can create hotspots at AT&T is unaware of, swype, etc. great phone for an abandoned platform. Much more polished in many respects than Android. Be nice if it had a replaceable battery though...switch back to a Pre3 for a week and actually missed some of Meego's apps and abilities.

 

[silent_guy]

I believe the lack of filesystem access has to be some feeble anti piracy thing, yes?

No, it's a sand boxing security thing. Anyone can play ripped non-DRM audio/video on their iPhone (and, I assume, on Win too.)

mkdir ./.selfshots_in_drag
mv ./*.jpg ./.selfshots_in_drag
chmod 000 ./.self*

Before loaning my phone to my Mom, then something is just wrong in the world.

I stand corrected:
It's a sand boxing thing *and* a protection against self-harm thing.

 

[Mize]

You can sandbox without denying all file system access. Also, they need real multitasking. Not being able to do anything during video uploads or even exit and resume a game are some pretty big flaws even for low geek users.

 

[Miksu]

about accessible filesystem:

Of course Windows 8 has it:
http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/1122#14

And Windows RT will have it too:

If Windows Phone 8 is Windows RT + phone, then it will have it too, for sure.

I actually was talking about apps and the accessible filesystem through them. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing in here.

 

[dagamer]

I actually was talking about apps and the accessible filesystem through them. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing in here.

Apps have access to files on the system, but they have to use an API. No direct reading of file structures.

 

[hkultala]

• Multitasking
  
  Windows Phone got the multitasking in Mango-update. Though the apps are only left in the memory but don't get any processor time.

• 
  
  Even DOS has multitasking with the same definition of multitasking.
  
  What I need is ability to have multiple processes running simultaneously and doing things like:
  1) transferring data over tcp (not limited to http) connections
  2) reading gps
  3) This should work automatically for any apps, without putting extra burden to the programmer to create extra threads and handle synchronization with them to be able to multitask.
  
  Mango has some kind of background threads which can play music on the background, but not transfer data over network. I can do same on DOS with TSR's, though if DOS had a tcp/ip stack it could also transfer data over network with tsr apps. And both need similar amount extra hazzle from the programmer to implement.

 

[wco81]

So Nokia's future looks cloudy. Major layoffs announced, forecasts cut back.

Will it be in condition to produce flagship Windows 8 phones?

 

[Mize]

So Nokia's future looks cloudy. Major layoffs announced, forecasts cut back.

Will it be in condition to produce flagship Windows 8 phones?

Slashing R&D is no way to be in condition to produce anything "flagship" worthy.

 

[Gubbi]

Or, maybe they are trimming fat to make them a take over target.

Nokia is already at a bargain basement price, with a market cap of $10.5 billion for a company that had sales of $49 billion last year.

With a 35% premium MS could buy a controlling stake for just $7 billion. Of course with Elop in charge, they already have control

Cheers

 

[babybumb]

These cuts are all legacy stuff. The money they used for software R&D cost until now was a sick joke with no results

Meltemi was finally deemed DOA and cut

 

[Mize]

Unless MS gives Nokia some sort of sweetheart - or exclusive - deal on WP8 then Nokia is faced with simply duking it out with other hardware manufacturers who can leverage revenue streams from other market segments (Android) to offer comparable hardare at lower prices. Nokia has bet everything on WP8 and outsourcing manufacturing to China so it can chase the low-end of the smartphone market.

You know, that part of the market with the lowest margins. There's a reason their share price has dropped over 40% since Elop took over.

 

[wco81]

So how long can they sustain development of WP phones without more subsidies from MS?

 

[Mize]

Wow.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...structuringbre85e12u-20120615,0,4791000.story

Shares down 80% since Elop announced the WP or nothing strategy...huge cash problems and debt rated at junk.

 

[french toast]

Elop should be strung up for this, they are only selling and laying off because of poor sales and slow uptake of wp7.

Both could have been avoided with a multi os strategy ala samsung.

Bringing in wp7 slowly maybe starting off as a couple of media centric devices for the weston market with symbian st the bottom and meego for high end.

Announcing to the world your going down the plug hole, your products that are still selling well in a very tough climate are crap and you will be completely ditching them for an unproven platform is suicide.

Especially when you have a mahussive ip portfolio, factories, unique workforce, 2 in house operating systems (one of which was awesome, the other selling well) and near 10$ billion in cash.

Picking wp7 was the right thing to do for the weston market, but not like that.

Forecasts point to that once mammoth cash reserve being depleted in 5 quaters flat if they keep losing money like this.

If eflop was brought in ad a trojan horse to devalue and prep for sale he is a genius.

 

[wco81]

Bazille, Lazardis, Elop are all Canadians?

Elop will walk away with tens of millions, like the other two.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Announcing to the world your going down the plug hole, your products that are still selling well in a very tough climate are crap and you will be completely ditching them for an unproven platform is suicide.

Especially when you have a mahussive ip portfolio, factories, unique workforce, 2 in house operating systems (one of which was awesome, the other selling well) and near 10$ billion in cash.

Especially when you have to pay the salaries of 125 000 people...

If eflop was brought in ad a trojan horse to devalue and prep for sale he is a genius.

Given that he's now hiring his fellows from Microsoft while at the same time firing most of the executives over at Nokia, that's not even a "secret" by now.

Elop will walk away with tens of millions, like the other two.

Assuming he won't get arrested for purposedly destroying Finnish/European patrimony.
Everything Nokia's BoD does right now is so blatantly destructive that someone is eventually going to get into trouble.

 

[Jubei]

Is it possible that mondays event will be about MS buying Nokia? They threw it together with 4 days notice so it doesnt seem to be something that could have been planned months in advance