Anyone remember Nokia plan B?
When that came out I created nokiaplanc.com
https://web.archive.org/web/20110218174018/http://www.nokiap...
Which was then followed by others creating nokiaplane.com and so on
Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#92I liked my Nokia phones - they were ergonomic but not innovative; they were great "just a phone"-type phones. My wife even purchased a re-make of one of their classic phones recently. But I loved my BlackBerries - they were the perfect tool for email/chat/calling and nothing else, the perfect complement to a laptop, whereas iPads partially overlap with both mobile phones AND laptops in terms of functionality, which i…
Agreed on BB. I was interested when they moved to Android, and then they died. There still isn't a good, high-end Android with a keyboard from a company I know I can trust.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#93Nokia had a chance, but their developer experience was terrible. They should have invested in it. And also open source. They could have open sourced their platform and compete with Android. What did they do instead? They made an extremely stupid bet on Microsoft, which by that time was even further behind in mobile world than Nokia itself.
Symbian was open sourced at one point and before that, available for others to make phones with, SonyEricsson had a couple, I think there were one or two others as well. The Nokia linux phones were open sourceish as well, in partnership with Intel. Open or closed source wasn't the problem, really.
> I think there were one or two others as well
Motorola A925, Motorola A1000, Motorola RIZR Z8, Motorola RIZR Z10 (aka 'banana')
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Motorola+Z8&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=...
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#94I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…
I think it’s simple enough to see why Nokia thought Windows would be the right choice. It was far more polished than Android at the time. It ran well on cheap hardware. And they would have Microsoft backing them.
Elop did, Nokia engineering not so much.
Our culture was pretty much anti-MS before he came on board.
On the server side we were using HP-UX, Perl, C++, in 2005 the transition for Red-Hat Linux and Java started.
On the devices, Symbian and the Maemo (Linux based).
Symbian was finally getting usable with PIPS, Qt and Eclipse based Carbide.
I happened to be in Espoo the week after this memo was published, I haven't found anyone that agreed with it.
Everyone thought the community would never jump of joy with Microsoft technologies, and right they were.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#95Windows Phone was quite good, but Microsoft had a terrible case of chronically fucking everything up.
They made everyone buy new phones for Windows Phone 8, which did not have any user-visible changes (though it did switch the OS to NT).
They took multiple years to add basic functionality like a notification center, and by the time they did, it was too late.
They actually shot themselves in the foot and had extremely poor Office support - behind even the competitor platforms that got a proper set of apps.
They bought Nokia's phone business and then just gave up completely.
What's a shame. I liked the minimalist Zune-like UI - it was perfect for a phone. And it just looked cool.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#96Nokia N9 was the best phone I have ever owned. To these days their gesture navigation implementation is the best. And they had Swype keyboard preinstalled. Speaking of apps: Here maps, SoundHound, amazing mail client and calendar... Gosh I miss that phone. I used mine for about 3 years, I think, and sold it for more than a half of its original price in literally a couple of hours (which means my price was too low). B…
Linux and Nokia were at one point the Crown Jewels of Finnish tech. One still remains. Would’ve been a match made in heaven but I believe they needed Microsoft’s cash to keep the company running. I remember testing the N900 at their store and was really impressed but I think it was too little too late
N900 was awesome, but it wasn't what the masses wanted. It had a lot of quirks, like UI freezing when someone calls you so you couldn't answer the call and suffering from slowing down over a relatively short period of time while being price competitive with the other high end phones.
N900 was a great beta. We never got a 1.0 though.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#97>At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us. Never forget that no matter how brilliant you think your company is, there are five of those companies in China, four of which are brand new and working in…
Nokia was slow. That's part of what got them when Apple launched the iPhone.
Chinese manufacturers are already doing top quality products. Huawei phone are/we're on par with the iPhone and were selling like hot cakes until the company was stopped "by any means necessary".
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#98I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…
But N9 was not a maemo it was Meego. It was incredibly polished it definitely was on par or better than android and IOS of the time.
While some of the assessments in the memo might be correct (it took way too long to get the N9 out for example), shouting this out to the public is incredibly stupid. I mean he is lamenting the fact they only have one top of the line phone out, but then decides to completely axe the system (and the pending new tip of the line phone) for making them and only sell the Symbian version which he just decried as being for lower end phones. And then wait another year or 2 until they have a Windows phone, a platform that they don't control and where they are completely reliant on MS and which is totally unproven?
Edit: OK reading up again, it seems I misremembered. It was actually the N9 which was the Meego phone released after the memo. It was essentially released that you had to be order specifically through an online system only at Nokia. It still gained wide critical acclaim, but at that point was poised to fail already.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#99It was somewhat of a 3-body problem: carriers, oems, and developers. Carriers wanted branding and bundling. OEMs wanted to market a distinction design. Developers wanted a platform. Three cooks with competing tastes.
For example: the Moto-Q ran Windows, shoe-horned in some AT&T UX junk, and a huge nubin that stuck out in the middle. It pioneered the ever present "pocket dial." Was thinking of developing for it, but after a few dozen pocket dials, I wanted to go full Frisbee mode.
Apple cut through the 3-body problem. They controlled the UX. Such as integrated voice-mail. The carrier didn't mess with the UX. After a few months, Apple provided a decent development environment -- maybe as a response to all the jailbreak apps that we were making.
Around that time I was in a focus group. What struck me was a horror story from a Symbian developer. Their toolchain broke after an incremental update. Lost a week dealing with it. That kind-of put me off of Symbian.
Maybe the real choice for Nokia was: either the burning platform or the sharks.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s simple enough to see why Nokia thought Windows would be the right choice. It was far more polished than Android at the time. It ran well on cheap hardware. And they would have Microsoft backing them.
> I think it’s simple enough to see why Nokia thought Windows would be the right choice. It was far more polished than Android at the time Everyone knew at the time Elop had made a terrible choice crafted to sell Nokia to Microsoft. Here's a nice HN comment I saved that was written a few days after the memo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2206437 And then the Nokia transition was supposed to take two years ! Po…
Because the Nokia board had a nice bonus clause for the case he managed to sell the company, and sell he did.
He was after all reaching its targets.
https://www.slashgear.com/stephen-elops-contract-revealed-as...