Nokia's Present & Future

[Silent_Buddha]

Uh, like what? I'm sure you don't mean "not last a day on a charge" or "not have a user-replaceable battery" or "not access your file system" so you must mean "live" tiles and menus that swing in to the screen?

Seriously though, is there something a 920 can do that Android cannot?

Running smoothly on lower end processors?

Android has gotten better, but isn't nearly as smooth and responsive unless it has a powerful processor. WP7 and even WP8 can run very smoothly even on some quite modest ARM processors.

Regards,
SB

 

[Mize]

Running smoothly on lower end processors?

Android has gotten better, but isn't nearly as smooth and responsive unless it has a powerful processor. WP7 and even WP8 can run very smoothly even on some quite modest ARM processors.

Regards,
SB

As can froyo and honeycomb and CM7 and...and I'm imagining someone looking over his shoulder going "wow, that's a low end processor!"

ironic that one answer is directx and the next is low end hardware

 

[Jubei]

How is it easier to differentiate on WP? When a customer goes to a store, the UI looks exactly the same on all phones. The hardware is the same on all phones with minor differences, so that leaves only design as a way to differentiate. If WP grows, there is nothing stopping Samsung from stepping in and crushing Nokia through sheer economics, if WP dies so does Nokia. Thats the problem with their strategy

With Android, they could implement their own unique UI to make their phones stand out in stores, they would no longer be limited by Microsofts hardware limitations and roadmaps. Want 1080p screen to be competitive? yeah sorry you will have to wait because Microsoft doesnt support it yet, want quad-core cpu to be competitive in the marketing? Yeah sorry you will have to wait until Microsoft supports it

It doesnt matter if WP doesnt "need" these things, they sell and thats what matters

 

[eastmen]

How is it easier to differentiate on WP? When a customer goes to a store, the UI looks exactly the same on all phones. The hardware is the same on all phones with minor differences, so that leaves only design as a way to differentiate. If WP grows, there is nothing stopping Samsung from stepping in and crushing Nokia through sheer economics, if WP dies so does Nokia. Thats the problem with their strategy

With Android, they could implement their own unique UI to make their phones stand out in stores, they would no longer be limited by Microsofts hardware limitations and roadmaps. Want 1080p screen to be competitive? yeah sorry you will have to wait because Microsoft doesnt support it yet, want quad-core cpu to be competitive in the marketing? Yeah sorry you will have to wait until Microsoft supports it

It doesnt matter if WP doesnt "need" these things, they sell and thats what matters

no one wants android skins .

Aside from that android is barely smooth on a quad core cpu let alone a skinned to hell verison of android

 

[Jubei]

no one wants android skins .

Aside from that android is barely smooth on a quad core cpu let alone a skinned to hell verison of android

Yet every single feature in Samsungs commercials are about software features. It seems like the internet is an alternate reality where people love windows phones and hate Android skins and want Nexus phones.

Galaxy S4 lags even with a high end chip, yet it will outsell Nokias entire lineup 5-1. Average joe believes in the 4 cores > 2 cores. Even Apple uses the 2x gpu, 2xcpu numbers to sell hardware

Meanwhile Nokia is releasing last years hardware with a new design and selling it as new

 

[Deleted member 13524]

no one wants android skins .

Aside from that android is barely smooth on a quad core cpu let alone a skinned to hell verison of android

About the Android skins, that‘s not entirely true. Some people absolutely love MIUI, to the point of importing the chinese XIAOMI phones from China because they're the development platform for that ROM. The APEX and NOVA launchers get decent revenues in the play store and some people actually prefer the Nature UX to android vanilla.

Regarding the "barely smooth" thing, that's utter, pure bollocks.
My One X with the dual Krait + Adreno 225 with CM10 is as smooth as any WP8 or iphone 5. My One with stock Sense 5 and a S600 is equally smooth, even though it handles a 1080p UI.

The same happens with the newer mid-ranges using a MSM8x30 and Jelly Bean.
Unless there are other problems like slow I/O or severe thermal throttling, Android is smooth with practically any mid-2012 SoC and a proper Jelly Bean ROM.

 

[Mintmaster]

Nokia with android would potentially just have made them yet another me-too android phone maker, unable to distinguish themselves very much, and getting steamrollered by samsung like everybody else these days.

Bingo.

No.
People want to use android because together with iOS, it's practically omnipresent in everything, from the latest games to news channels, museum guides and even A/V receivers with their own, native apps.

I have a Galaxy Note 2, but would unquestionably have bought a Nokia equivalent (i.e. with stylus) with WP8 at a price premium, if it was available.

The apps problem is short lived. Within a year, Win8 tablets will get down in price and start eating away at Android market share, similar to how Win7/WinXP netbooks dominated Linux netbooks.

Grall put it perfectly. Nokia would have be fighting for scraps with Android. 2011 was way too late for them to even have a chance of taking on Samsung and the rapidly growing Chinese manufacturers. Nokia's only hope to remain relevant is for Win8 to succeed in the long run and be the manufacturer of choice on that platform.

Grall, you ever use MeeGo? Didn't think so.
Samsung only have one OS? Didn't think so.
Open platforms like MeeGo, Mozilla, Jolla, Ubuntu, etc, make for easy porting (html5 and Qt)? Yup.

It's called risk mitigation or, in a western idiom, "don't put all your eggs in one fucking basket"

For all intents and purposes, Samsung does have only one OS in its smartphones. They have some side projects on alternative OSes and token effort with WP8, but that's it. They want the same OS and UI on everything to keep the strength of their brand identity. Only with tablets is there a clash of worlds going on with them, as they need Win8 for laptops/hybrids and Android for their Galaxy smartphones/tablets. Nokia has no need for ambivalence.

You're deluding yourself into thinking Meego had any chance of decent adoption. The only reason WP8 has a real chance is that it has the Win8 trojan from the desktop/laptop/tablet market.

Elop made the only decision he could have if Nokia wanted to be anything more than a bit player 5+ years later. The competition is far more developed than in 2005. Nokia needs differentiation to have any chance of returning to its former glory.

 

[Mize]

Ditto on the Android not being "smooth" baloney. I love when people have to resort to subjective pseudo-bullshit to justify their emotional alliance with a technology. Hell, CM9 runs smooth on an HP touchpad of all things.

As for Meego not having a chance, etc. there's a reason Samsung has it's hands in WP8 and Tizen and that's risk mitigation. Should Google pull shenanigans, Samsung at least has something to fall back on. This is just standard business 101. Elop could easily have shut his trap about Symbian and continued to milk that cash cow while he developed a WP7/8 line and a side-project in Meego or Android. His aim could have been WP8 all the way, but he would have not taken the dramatic cash and profit hit that he caused by killing Symbian and he would have a fall-back in the event that WP8 never became a market player.

Either way, time will tell. Let's just see where Nokia is a year after Elop killed Symbian...oh we can already see that well, let's just give him another year or two.

 

[eastmen]

I have a note 2 and it lags quite often.

 

[Mize]

I have a note 2 and it lags quite often.

Yeah, multitasking OSes can lag when you run lots of apps.
I don't get lag on my Touchpad. Didn't get it on my GS3 and don't have it on my Nexus 4...strange.
Also, the Nexus 4 is a nice phone but I really hate that I can't change the battery. On business trips I can be on the phone and internet literally all day between customer visits and can run just about any phone to zero by doing that...not having user changeable batteries is a bad idea. With my GS3 I'd just swap batteries near the end of the day and be good through dinners with clients and beyond.

 

[wco81]

Actually Samsung may have more clout than Google.

Supposedly Google has been making payments to get their services on phones, similar to them paying Apple to make Google the default search.

Samsung is making money on Android, not Google. They could fork it and probably still sell phones. They are replacing some Google services, or at least featuring their versions, like their cloud services and S Voice at the expense of Google Now.

 

[silent_guy]

Ditto on the Android not being "smooth" baloney. I love when people have to resort to subjective pseudo-bullshit to justify their emotional alliance with a technology. Hell, CM9 runs smooth on an HP touchpad of all things..

I've played tons of high end Android devices, recently with an HTC One, and it's always the same: I see it stutter and lag right in front of me on the simplest of operations and the owner of said device doesn't see it. Calling it pseudo-bullshit isn't going to fix it. The current state of the art is good enough for most people, just not for me. I think Android has come a very long way in catching up to iOS and has in many ways surpassed. I want it to be without stutter. But what good are an overload of little features if the most basic operations are grating?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Grall put it perfectly. Nokia would have be fighting for scraps with Android.

And you think fighting for scraps within a platform with >70% worldwide marketshare is better than fighting for scraps within a platform with 4% worldwide marketshare, which by the way has pretty much proven itself as an absolute fail.

Care to say why?

Nokia needs differentiation to have any chance of returning to its former glory.

Yes, Nokia needs differentiation. Something that WP does NOT allow, and android does.

I've played tons of high end Android devices, recently with an HTC One, and it's always the same: I see it stutter and lag right in front of me on the simplest of operations and the owner of said device doesn't see it. Calling it pseudo-bullshit isn't going to fix it. The current state of the art is good enough for most people, just not for me. I think Android has come a very long way in catching up to iOS and has in many ways surpassed. I want it to be without stutter. But what good are an overload of little features if the most basic operations are grating?

I was yesterday night with an iphone 5 and it's always the same. I found it to be slower than my HTC One at loading webpages, loading heavier games, loading music from the cloud and scrolling through videos.
The One is just not as fast at scrolling through widgets.. because the ios doesn't have any.
The current state-of-the-art on ios (which btw has an UI that stopped in time since 2007) may be enough for a lot of people, but it's just not for me.
Or maybe I'm resorting to subjective pseudo-bullshit to justify my emotional alliance to a technology. Who knows.

 

[Jubei]

Actually Samsung may have more clout than Google.

Supposedly Google has been making payments to get their services on phones, similar to them paying Apple to make Google the default search.

Samsung is making money on Android, not Google. They could fork it and probably still sell phones. They are replacing some Google services, or at least featuring their versions, like their cloud services and S Voice at the expense of Google Now.

While i would agree that Samsung is avoiding to market their phones as Android phones, i dont think its likely they could fork Android, they simply dont have the infrastructure in place or the ability to make one, they are a hardware company with very little software experience. Regardless of the doomsday trolling for site hits by tech bloggers, Samsung needs Google as much as Google needs Samsung, that they both have backup plans in place is only smart business (pun intended Nokia)

Without Play store, you have Bada and we saw how that went

 

[Mize]

I've played tons of high end Android devices, recently with an HTC One, and it's always the same: I see it stutter and lag right in front of me on the simplest of operations and the owner of said device doesn't see it. Calling it pseudo-bullshit isn't going to fix it. The current state of the art is good enough for most people, just not for me. I think Android has come a very long way in catching up to iOS and has in many ways surpassed. I want it to be without stutter. But what good are an overload of little features if the most basic operations are grating?

Please cite and example. I just moved and entire product line from windows embedded to linux and it screams post change. What lag am I missing? Why do seconds counted off a clock count less than the thing you can see but nobody else can?

 

[Helmore]

I get your question Mize, but your comparison holds little value in this discussion.

For me personally it was about getting good value for my money and in my case that just happened to be a WP. Mine is more than 2 years old now though. Still running as smooth as they day I bought it actually and never had any problems with it.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Bada went really well. Its devices sold more than all WP7 combined while spending close to zero in marketing and with flexible hardware requirements.

 

[Mize]

I get your question Mize, but your comparison holds little value in this discussion.

For me personally it was about getting good value for my money and in my case that just happened to be a WP. Mine is more than 2 years old now though. Still running as smooth as they day I bought it actually and never had any problems with it.

Sure, but then you clearly don't need OpenVPN to access corporate servers, or file system access to move and manipulate files (ahem, yes, sometimes email to app isn't enough) and you didn't need all-day performance away from a charger or manipulation of non-MS file formats. For example, can you receive a file on email or SMS, save it, rename it , edit it, save it and transfer it to a non-web-connected device? Even Android is bad at this and WP8 is a non-starter (webOS or MeeGo, on the other hand, can manage it with their eyes closed). I'm sure WP8 is a neato phone that can play games. For many people, however, more functionality is needed and Android, however kludgey (but not laggy) is currently the only option.

 

[Mize]

I get your question Mize, but your comparison holds little value in this discussion.

For me personally it was about getting good value for my money and in my case that just happened to be a WP. Mine is more than 2 years old now though. Still running as smooth as they day I bought it actually and never had any problems with it.

I have a Nokia E72 that runs as smoothly as day 0, can create a wifi hotspot, has file system access, has offline maps and navigation for the entire world, has one of the best push-email (IMAP) apps ever (profimail, not Nokia email) and has a battery that will last more than a full day and can be changed out in a matter of seconds to go longer. So Symbian is as good as WP?

I think, in the end and so far, WP is a pretty but less functional Symbian. Ooh! So enticed.

Sorry to edit twice, but the other thing about WP and W8 that I really hate is Metro. What a gawdawful HMI. Sure, it's different (to a degree) from icons of apps, but it's downright ugly and non-functional. Why else are "make it look like W7" apps doing so well?

 

[wco81]

While i would agree that Samsung is avoiding to market their phones as Android phones, i dont think its likely they could fork Android, they simply dont have the infrastructure in place or the ability to make one, they are a hardware company with very little software experience. Regardless of the doomsday trolling for site hits by tech bloggers, Samsung needs Google as much as Google needs Samsung, that they both have backup plans in place is only smart business (pun intended Nokia)

Without Play store, you have Bada and we saw how that went

Do apps really sell phones?

Why is Samsung successful? Bigger marketing budget than other Android OEMs and cost advantages from owning the supply chain?

But they've Also been branding the Galaxy line with various software/hardware features to differentiate itself.

A big part of the Android installed base is still on Gingerbread, supposedly. If they wanted to, they could fork Jelly Bean or stay on JB and just update the hardware and continue developing their proprietary shell and apps.

By that time HTC and some other OEMs may be dead.