Nokia's Present & Future

[Mintmaster]

Meego was based on SW that have been used and are developer friendly (like QT, Linux and other stuff). It would also be very easy to port Android drivers to it, so Nokia would have been able to choose which components it would like to buy, unlike the current situation with WP8.

The point I was making is that the most important thing to developers is paying the bills. MS can pay a lot more devs in the early going than Nokia can, and devs will be more certain of a long term future with WP8 than Meego.

I seriously doubt component choice or driver writing is an issue for the few simple peripherals going into a smartphone, but feel free to show me some info otherwise.

 

[silent_guy]

Meego was based on SW that have been used and are developer friendly (like QT, Linux and other stuff). It would also be very easy to port Android drivers to it, so Nokia would have been able to choose which components it would like to buy, unlike the current situation with WP8.

Anyone care to explain the fascination with Qt being, back then, perceived as the solution to all problems?

I've programmed with it for desktop applications. It's a nice toolkit, no doubt, and it's used in a number of cross platform engineering apps that work fine (but always manage to feel slightly off in terms of UI.)

But what exactly was it about the mobile version (which I never used) that made it so special? What did offer more than, say, iOS or Android?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Anyone care to explain the fascination with Qt being, back then, perceived as the solution to all problems?

I've programmed with it for desktop applications. It's a nice toolkit, no doubt, and it's used in a number of cross platform engineering apps that work fine (but always manage to feel slightly off in terms of UI.)

But what exactly was it about the mobile version (which I never used) that made it so special? What did offer more than, say, iOS or Android?

I've never used it, but I have some friends who praised the fact that it was a user-friendly development platform where you write once and compile to many environments (Android ARM, Symbian ARM, MeeGo ARM, Linux ARM, Windows x86, Linux x86, etc.).

Android's SDK/NDK might be better but after you write it, it's only good for Android AFAIK.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yet, in 2011 Elop was downright obsessed in turning Nokia into an apple. He even went to the extreme of criticizing Nokia's employees for owning anything other than an iphone, because that was "what they were up against".
Elop's goal in 2011 wasn't to pull a Samsung, it was to pull an apple. And of course he couldn't beat apple at their own game. That was just another of his horribly stupid management efforts.

I agree if that's all his intentions were, then it was bound to fail. Without a mid/low end lineup of compelling phones, you aren't going to get anywhere unless you are Apple, and even Apple is finding it difficult to hold off Android (due to mid/low end phones being available and "good enough" for most people). If Apple doesn't introduce a serious mid/low end lineup (versus just discounted previous versions) it's going to continue to lose marketshare and potentially sales at some point.

But one thing to consider, MS didn't have a mid/low end phone solution available at the time Nokia started the move to Windows Phone. It wasn't until well after WP8 launched that Nokia could launch a mid/low end Windows Phone in the 620/520. Although the 520 is still probably a tad high for a low end solution (although the T-Mobile version, Lumia 521, is only 130 USD, wow).

So, it's hard to say whether Elop was really trying to turn Nokia into Apple or whether that was what he had to say because he had no options for a mid/low end WP phone.

Regards,
SB

 

[Florin]

MS developing the third ecosystem from scratch has a good chance of succeeding. Nokia doing so does not.

Mint, agree to disagree on the most points, but I just can not see how anyone would still hold that opinion.

Microsoft is the company that brought us Windows for Pen Computing, Windows CE, the Pocket PC, Tablet PC, Windows Mobile, the Auto PC, Origami, Stinger (the 'SmartPhone'), Zune, the Courier, Kin, WP7, the SuperPhone, Surface and Metro. Some of these have been launched and relaunched multiple times with new versions and another helping of enthusiasm.

Yet not a single Microsoft portable technology has ever won out in the marketplace over its contemporaries, or even made a lasting impact. We get to listen to the same story over and over: Don't you know man, this is Microsoft, they have more money, developers and market share in other areas than anyone else, surely they can't fail? But then they go ahead and do just that, every single time.

 

[hkultala]

The point I was making is that the most important thing to developers is paying the bills.

I disagree on this.

I claim the most important thing are the developers themselves.

And second most important thing are good tools/API's that make things easy and possible.


There are _lots_ of very good software written "uncommercially".

And there are _lots_ of total crap software made while spending big money doing it.

 

[tuna]

The point I was making is that the most important thing to developers is paying the bills. MS can pay a lot more devs in the early going than Nokia can, and devs will be more certain of a long term future with WP8 than Meego.

I do not see any difference in dev payability between Nokia and MS. And there were a lot of good apps for Symbian/Meego.

 

[tuna]

I seriously doubt component choice or driver writing is an issue for the few simple peripherals going into a smartphone, but feel free to show me some info otherwise.

You can take a look at the diff between Samsung's S4 Linux build (+ binaries) and Linus' Linux build to see how much work goes into that.

AFAIK there is only really one SOC family supported by WP8....

 

[tuna]

Anyone care to explain the fascination with Qt being, back then, perceived as the solution to all problems?

I've programmed with it for desktop applications. It's a nice toolkit, no doubt, and it's used in a number of cross platform engineering apps that work fine (but always manage to feel slightly off in terms of UI.)

But what exactly was it about the mobile version (which I never used) that made it so special? What did offer more than, say, iOS or Android?

It was nothing super special, but it was/is a good, tested, documented and supported cross platform toolkit. And you could use it to write apps for Symbian, Meego, Android and even iOS (I think, not 100% sure).

 

[Mintmaster]

I disagree on this.

I claim the most important thing are the developers themselves.

And second most important thing are good tools/API's that make things easy and possible.

MS has never lacked in making good tools/APIs. The devs themselves (the ones that really matter to the initial success of a platform, not indies) need to be paid off at first when competitors have >100x the installed userbase.

Mint, agree to disagree on the most points, but I just can not see how anyone would still hold that opinion.

Microsoft is the company that brought us Windows for Pen Computing, Windows CE, the Pocket PC, Tablet PC, Windows Mobile, the Auto PC, Origami, Stinger (the 'SmartPhone'), Zune, the Courier, Kin, WP7, the SuperPhone, Surface and Metro. Some of these have been launched and relaunched multiple times with new versions and another helping of enthusiasm.

Yet not a single Microsoft portable technology has ever won out in the marketplace over its contemporaries, or even made a lasting impact. We get to listen to the same story over and over: Don't you know man, this is Microsoft, they have more money, developers and market share in other areas than anyone else, surely they can't fail? But then they go ahead and do just that, every single time.

Almost all of your examples were piss-ant markets at the time, and MS didn't really care if they failed. For the others:
- Zune didn't matter, because phones were getting MP3 playback at that time
- Courier and Kin were just experiments, don't know what SuperPhone is
- If the second gen Surface doesn't sell, then you can call it a failure. It's an idea that always needed Haswell (RT was always a backup plan for MS, and they didn't even bother distributing it widely)
- Metro is a failure? MS is estimated to be the OS for 7.4% of tablet sales after just one quarter


For markets that actually matter, you're judging MS way too soon. You're also forgetting the biggest success MS has had in developing a new platform in the face of a dominant entrenched competitor and courting developers to it: XBox. Not being mobile is irrelevant.

Most dev studios had little reason to port their games to the XBox at first, because PS and PS2 comprised 95%+ of the market. MS had to pump in $4B to get people to buy their hardware and get devs on the platform, and had to execute almost flawlessly. It's very hard to break into a new market that depends on third party software for success.

There's no way Nokia could have pulled that off with Meego. It has orders of magnitude less experience with ISV relations than MS, and there's no hook like MS has with the Win 8 kernel (or PC dev -> XBox).

MS is not going to give on WP8 like it did with past experimental platforms. Well, not until 2016 at least, when MS has another opening through phones that can run fully fledged Windows 8.

 

[Mintmaster]

You can take a look at the diff between Samsung's S4 Linux build (+ binaries) and Linus' Linux build to see how much work goes into that.

AFAIK there is only really one SOC family supported by WP8....

Qualcomm's SoC family is the best available, so that isn't an issue even if it was true, which I doubt given the use of Tegra 3 in Surface.

 

[tuna]

Qualcomm's SoC family is the best available, so that isn't an issue even if it was true, which I doubt given the use of Tegra 3 in Surface.

Do you mean the Surface RT? And if Qualcomm's SOCs are so great, why does not everybody use them?

 

[Mintmaster]

Do you mean the Surface RT? And if Qualcomm's SOCs are so great, why does not everybody use them?

Yeah, the Surface RT. Drivers would be almost identical for a Tegra 3 phone if MS/Nokia wanted to make one, so I have little doubt that NVidia has a driver stack for WP8.

Who doesn't use Qualcomm? Apple uses their own SoC, Samsung splits between their own and Qualcomm's (and judging by the other threads on B3D, Exynos has a lot of issues), and those aren't choices for Nokia anyway. Almost everyone else uses Qualcomm. Sony, LG, HTC, Motorola, Blackberry, etc. Qualcomm has most of the non-Samsung-produced SoC market, and NVidia has a good chunk of the rest:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...hipments_Drop_Below_Qualcomm_and_Samsung.html

Nokia has no issues in SoC choice by going down the WP path.

 

[tuna]

Yeah, the Surface RT. Drivers would be almost identical for a Tegra 3 phone if MS/Nokia wanted to make one, so I have little doubt that NVidia has a driver stack for WP8.

I have great doubt that nVidia has a driver stack for WP8. If that was the case, wouldn't MS have told people?

 

[tuna]

Nokia has no issues in SoC choice by going down the WP path.

Yeah, no choice, no problem

 

[Mintmaster]

Anyway, putting this Elop stuff aside, the first reviews of the Lumia 1020 have been coming out in the last day, and as expected, the camera is proving to be outstanding:

dpreview only has a preview so far, but they have a nice low light comparison scene with other cameras:
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/1305711237/lumia-1020?page=4 (make sure you move the box around to see how much more detail is captured by the 5MP downsampled 1020 pic versus the 8MP iPhone and 13MP Samsung).

Ars has some pics up in his preview:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/the-first-few-hours-with-the-lumia-1020s-camera/
He took some pictures of a geode in low light at a museum, and with image stabilization got decent shots even with 1/4s exposure:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/geode-1020-binned1.jpg
Compare that to 1/15s iPhone:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/geode-iphone-5.jpg
Of course, the 1020 can't compare to an APS-C DSLR in these conditions, but in brighter lighting the 34/38MP images have serious detail.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-phone/nokia-lumia-1020-review
Bit of a biased review, but I like this photo:

Last weekend, for example, I went on a lengthy walk around Dedham and in doing so came across a bumblebee on a plant leaf. With a dedicated camera I would simply zoom in on the creature to get a close-up shot. But I had the 1020, so I just took a normal picture. The result is this.

Looks like your typical smart phone shot, eh? Well, it’s not. Because this 16:9 image uses 33 megapixels of data (7712 x 4352), you can zoom in (on-camera or after downloading to your PC) and see an exquisite amount of detail. You see, the bee actually looks like this.

And this isn’t a particularly good shot, it’s just a representative shot.

Amazing.

 

[Mintmaster]

I have great doubt that nVidia has a driver stack for WP8. If that was the case, wouldn't MS have told people?

What purpose would such an announcement serve? Neither MS nor Nokia have any plans to build a Tegra based phone.

Yeah, no choice, no problem

Why don't you tell me what choice they are lacking from the broad Qualcomm SoC lineup? What other SoC is better for Nokia in any way?

 

[Mariner]

I wonder if we'll end up seeing this type of super high-res sensor in slim point and shoot cameras before too long?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I wonder if we'll end up seeing this type of super high-res sensor in slim point and shoot cameras before too long?

There's no need. Point and shoot cameras can use larger sensors and optical zoom.

Unless you mean cheap point and shoot cameras, to which I'd say maybe, in a couple of years.

 

[Mize]

It is a sweet camera...would like to see more low light (restaurant at night, etc.) photos...