Nokia's Present & Future

[hoho]

The interface was awful and wasn't finger friendly.

Good thing that QT doesn't have that problem then

Only problem is Nokia hasn't pushed it into production fast enough. They should have had handsets using it out at least year ago, if not earlier.


To be honest Nokia has been the inventor/first implementer of a LOT of things but for some weird reason they've backed down on most of those things instead of extending and improving them. Yeah, some things have had setbacks but nothing bad enough they couldn't have recovered from.

 

[Tap In]

rumor:

Source: Nokia N9 Not Killed, Windows Phone 7 Tested on it

 

[hoho]

According to the same source, when the Finnish giant ran a build of MeeGo on it, the results were highly unsatisfactory, in fact, the system crashed "all the time". When they loaded Microsoft's latest smartphone operating system, the handset was working fine

That's rather weird thing to base OS decisions on. Especially considering it's working relatively well on N900 and there will be devices using it announced tomorrow:
http://www.jpubb.com/en/press/29604/

Renesas Mobile and Nomovok Show the First MeeGo™ Implementation on Renesas Mobile Application Processor at Mobile World Congress 2011

I call BS on that N9+WM7 rumor.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I don't know what Android's fate will be, but WinMo 6.5 wasn't doomed by the hardware. The interface was awful and wasn't finger friendly.

You'd be surprised of how overrated the "finger friendly UI" factor really is, these days.
Besides, have you ever tried a WM6.5 device?
Most brands put their own UI on top of the OS anyways, very few people have actually seen the WM6.5's UI (which is pretty good actually, heavily based on the Zune interface).

Take HTC, for example, they used the exact same Sense UI for both their high-end Android and WM6.5 devices, and people still complained a lot more about WM6.5's UI while claiming that Android was great. It was the same UI, for god's sake.
Samsung does the same with Touchwiz. Omnia 2 uses touchwiz, everyone says it's awful. Galaxy S uses Touchwiz, OMG it's the best phone ever!!!

Claim about responsiveness, performance, development friendliness, available software and other stuff? Sure, fair enough, I'll be right there sharing the same opinion.
But protesting about the UI?


iOS' UI is just a bunch of shortcuts in a black background. No live tiles (which the piss-poor symbian^1 handsets have had for a while), no live background, no "main screen" where you can configure shortcuts for favorite contacts with photos, no weather tiles, nothing. Just shortcuts. And a black background.
And before the 4th version (where they invented.. #gasp# folders!!) there wasn't even a way to group those shortcuts, or even label the page were in.
And yet, it's still considered the "best UI" by many reviewers.


Take all the sand from your eyes and make no mistake: "UI" is the new snake oil for measuring smartphones. Like PMP watt were for PC speaker sets a decade ago, weird contrast measurements were for LCD TVs and RAM amount is for low-end graphics cards.



So no, it wasn't the user interface that killed WM6.5. I can guarantee you that.

 

[eastmen]

Going to a third party OS might make sense for them. Its very hard to launch a new os in this market apps have become the big thing and if you can't get a large amount of apps people will pass on you.


By going with win 7 they can be one of the premier handset manufactures and most likely get ms to customise some of their stuff

 

[3dcgi]

Actually I was thinking of WinMo 6 and prior. I guess I don't remember what changed for 6.5. Say the UI is fine as you believe. In the USA I'd say what killed WinMo is how crappy the previous versions were. Not only were they not finger friendly, but they were unreliable. 6.5 was DOA.

I don't think the app launcher UI on any of these phones is anything really special, but there are subtle differences that draw people to one or another. In the end it's all about what you can do with the phone and even if the base UI is nice if the app catalog was built for a stylus it won't translate well to finger touch hardware.

There's also more to a UI than launching apps. The scrolling feel, multi touch, and click accuracy are all more important to many than the app launcher.

 

[Miksu]

Well, here's one guy hoping to see some Windows Phone 7 -related announcements from Nokia. We should know for certainty in 5 hours.

Engadget is going live with Nokia's event.

 

[Tap In]

Well, here's one guy hoping to see some Windows Phone 7 -related announcements from Nokia. We should know for certainty in 5 hours.

Engadget is going live with Nokia's event.

dang hitting the sack... guess I'll wake up and find out the news.

Go Nokia, I feel this could be a great move for both partners if it happens.

 

[hoho]

Going to a third party OS might make sense for them. Its very hard to launch a new os in this market apps have become the big thing and if you can't get a large amount of apps people will pass on you.

Technically Maemo/Meego is capable of running majority of Android apps without too much hassle

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So it's been publicly confirmed by Nokia that they'll launch WP7 devices.

Unsurprisingly though, they're still sticking with MeeGo and Symbian.
There are talks of Symbian eventually becoming a "franchise" (what waste, IMO) and WP7 becoming their main OS (what a.. waste..).

Even with today's announcements, I guess only time will tell either Nokia will launch a couple of WP7 devices just to please shareholders and gain US-centric e-press publicity and mindshare (the trolls @ engadget&gizmodo are all skyrocketting in happiness) or WP7 will really turn out to be their main OS.



No word on what'll become of OVI Store (second largest mobile app store in the world?), OVI Services and others, but I guess we'll know all that in a couple of hours.

 

[rpg.314]

WTF^2

 

[Entropy]

The stock market opinion of the revealed strategy was brutally negative.
Can't say I disagree with the "two turkeys don't make an eagle" analysis, so it makes sense to me, but I thought that Microsofts name had at least some positive weight in stack market circles. Guess not.

 

[rpg.314]

The stock market opinion of the revealed strategy was brutally negative.

It's hard for me to see why not?

Their existing OS, Symbian dead.

The thing they had bet so much on, Meego, dead.

They decide to use, of all things, WP7, and they barely have any place to differentiate, same hw, same UI. Hell, switching to android would have made more sense.

Intel had bet a lot on Meego, seems like that is dead too.

 

[Tchock]

^ those were going to be dead weights anyway.

I am utterly unconvinced by Nokia's internal Symbian/Meego team to execute, especially for the latter.

This feels like a smart investment in ways. MS has more efficiency and direction on the software stack whilst Nokia can retain its hardware team whilst removing the hardware dictatorship that compromised the N97 and henceforth.

MS? Gets Nokia's reach. Which is by far the most comprehensive of a singular company.
Motorola doesn't even reach countries like Latvia or Singapore with depth, whilst Nokia has pretty much comprehensive coverage over all locales due to its previously built momentum.

MS also gets carrier billing, which will be a boon - as they seem to really struggle with billing and accounts compared to Apple/Google. Agreements like these will probably open up WP7 to markets where MS doesn't have much influence/capital reach to, like Malaysia/Portugal (WP7 there but no Marketplace)


It smells very much like a HP-Palm complementary deal, but probably nets results faster. Since they don't have anything in the software stack to worry about WRT WP7, phones out this summer/fall, targeted globally?

 

[rpg.314]

This feels like a smart investment in ways. MS has more efficiency and direction on the software stack whilst Nokia can retain its hardware team whilst removing the hardware dictatorship that compromised the N97 and henceforth.

MS? Gets Nokia's reach. Which is by far the most comprehensive of a singular company.
Motorola doesn't even reach countries like Latvia or Singapore with depth, whilst Nokia has pretty much comprehensive coverage over all locales due to its previously built momentum.

MS also gets carrier billing, which will be a boon - as they seem to really struggle with billing and accounts compared to Apple/Google. Agreements like these will probably open up WP7 to markets where MS doesn't have much influence/capital reach to, like Malaysia/Portugal (WP7 there but no Marketplace)

It seems to me that MS is getting more stuff than Nokia at this point. It's not obvious what are the incremental benefits to Nokia from adopting WP7 over android.

 

[hoho]

Their existing OS, Symbian dead.

It was actually pretty decent in N8.

The thing they had bet so much on, Meego, dead.

Works relatively stable on N900 even considering it has half the recommended RAM.

Also, QT is by FAR best platform for development on any platform. It's a pretty nasty blow to developers. I've seen/tried a few others and nothing comes even remotely close.


Basically it seems like the new boss came in, saw that nokia had invested billions into Symbian/QT/Meego over past couple of years with little to no return and decided to scrap it without realizing that it wasn't supposed to be generating any profits/revenue before this year when the devices with it would be coming out. They could have adapted the Symbian from N8 to other phones while finishing up Meego in background. Going with WM7 means they'll be stuck with MS with no escape. They'll be depending on them in pretty much all their future decisions.

 

[rpg.314]

Going with WM7 means they'll be stuck with MS with no escape. They'll be depending on them in pretty much all their future decisions.

Exactly, it appears that would have been a lot better with android.

With WP7, you are little more than a dell or acer of the PC world.

 

[Tchock]

It seems to me that MS is getting more stuff than Nokia at this point. It's not obvious what are the incremental benefits to Nokia from adopting WP7 over android.

TTM!
Getting an Android device would mean hardware evaluation (and you have to cram a Tegra2 in it or nerds/blogosphere would dismiss it) + software evaluation + UI customization.

And Nokia's not really good at UI. If they release anything turdy on Android, that's really it.

WP7 kind of sidesteps everything. Chuck a snapdragon, do life checks, done. The first WP7 OEMs were rather quick at finalizing their phones because everything lowlevel was much done by them. Nokia probably just needs to handle imaging components and some engineering aspects, but none of the requirements to touch drivers, UI and gritty stuff that requires real man-hours, unlike the ones the Symbian team seems to be churning out.


Plus, Nokia gets to be the *definitive* WP7 partner, just as how Motorola was for the Droid and HTC was for the NX1- after that it kinda fell apart though; but if they really can sell one model anywhere, everywhere, you're seeing a kind of momentum that was last brought by the Galaxy S.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

WP7, WP7, WP7.
No more QT efforts, Symbian will fade away, MeeGo will be pushed aside for niche markets (like Maemo was before it).

Nokia is going for WP7 exclusively, WP7 is not exclusive to Nokia. Nokia is now officially another of Microsoft's bitches, and the plumetting stocks from this morning are just another proof of it.

I say only this:
- Symbian^3 was launched in Q4'10, along with 3 devices from one handset maker. 5 million handsets were sold.
- WP7 was launched in the same Q4'10, along with 10 devices from 4 handset makers. 1.5 million handsets were sold.

How in hell does someone reach the conclusion that WP7 will be any better?


Oh well, better sell off this dreaded N8 fast because there'll be no more product support and firmware updates. They just said publicly that all Symbian engineers are now working on some unexisting\far-from-being-on-sale WP7 devices.

It's a sad day for the open source community.
Damn, how could everything turn out so wrong?

 

[hoho]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-notifies-developers-that-qt-is-out-for-windows-phone-devel/

Are they deliberately trying to commit suicide by having two completely different OS'es with incompatible tools, api and toolkits? At least with symbian/maemo/meego your QT apps would work on everything with minimal to no modifications.