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Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#121

Post by prox »

RajT88 wrote: post #70
koiueo wrote: post #38

Nokia 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…

Symbian was the biggest problem with Nokia phones. The hardware was always amazing. I owned a Communicator 9290, and have yet to have a phone that performed as well on speaker. Bar none. Noise cancelling and volume both. I had an e90, and although it was less amazing on that front, the build quality, and look at feel just was... Great! I'd pay iPhone Pro prices for (basically) an e90 running Android with a decent cam…

I wonder if we ever going to see anything other than Android or iOS. A third ecosystem wouldn’t be so bad.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#122

Post by cycomanic »

majormajor wrote: post #33
skavi wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

WP7 was more polished than Android - I went from an HTC Evo to a Lumia - but a lot of that polish was in the same style as early-iOS: fewer features and capabilities, just done well and with better consistency. I think betting on either (a) MS beating Apple at their own game or (b) there being room in the market for two premium-limited-but-smoother-UX systems was a dicey call. Nokia's hardware design advantage over t…

But that was at least a year after the memo. They already had an incredibly polished system, Meego. Now Meego like WP7 had the problem of limited apps for the platform, but there were quite a bit more than WP still, largely due to significant OSS apps having been ported. There was also a good development story using the qt framework.

Also at the time of this memo, WP was essentially nonexistent. It was with Nokias switch that they gained some momentum and polish.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#123

Post by prox »

majormajor wrote: post #9
asveikau wrote: post #5

Here's a contemporaneous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195520 I'm surprised how positive HN was about this. I don't remember reading any positive coverage at the time. I personally thought the guy was an idiot. He wound up performing worse than my expectations.

Looks like that discussion was before Windows Phone was announced as the replacement. E.g. " The idea of a Nokia device running Android is pretty appealing. They've always had good hardware, but Symbian has become a develpment dead-end, and Meego isn't yet here. " Symbian definitely wasn't the way forward. MeeGo wasn't looking like it was gonna be an iOS or Android killer. Elop was right about needing to change horse…

Couldn’t they have gone for both? Say an Android line and a Win line?

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#124

Post by metacritic12 »

phasersout wrote: post #82

I covered quite a few Nokia reviews back in the day and Nokia was by far the most arrogant company to deal with. Every company has it's rules and regulations regarding review devices but with Nokia you had to sign up to three forms just to do your work. Partly with ridiculous rules like a missing charger or cable was up to 50 Euros or so. And they let you very much know where in the pecking order you were regarding y…

To dogpile into this, in ~2005 I had one of the worst preseed round experiences raising from Nokia.

They clearly had a mandate to make some moves in mobile, so we were in their target sphere. But the investor was just so slow about moving, lackadaisical in personality, and seemed like he was more paid to come into the office versus actually achieve results (regardless of whether they funded us).

I later read Clayton Christianson and immediately knew what he was talking about with old dinosaurs resting on their laurels.

Good riddance. Market forces don't always act in the interest of society, but when it does like this (v Apple, Android) it's refreshing to see.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#125

Post by metacritic12 »

pjmlp wrote: post #119
KennyBlanken wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's obvious is that you still don't Get It. Your experience as an employee is completely irrelevant to how Nokia treated the press. Plenty of companies have workforces that treat each other well but treat their customers, vendors, press, etc like they're subhuman annoyances.

I do get it alright. Some people had a bad experience with a couple of folks and decided to extrapolate to everyone in the company. Every single company has such pearls. If they don't, they aren't yet big enough.

No you still don't. It's not about which Nokia employee. It's about whether they were external vs internal facing.

E.g. I can perfectly believe the employees of the DMV are super sweet to each other, while being the bane of customers.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#126

Post by mariusor »

koiueo wrote: post #38

Nokia 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…

Did you try the Jolla phones? They tried to carry the Meego torch in their Sailfish OS (which currently works well with "last year's" Sony phones). Even though it has different UI decisions than the N9 I found it reasonably good over time, and today some of it's decisions (like using swipes for navigation) made their way into other mainstream mobile OSes.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#127

Post by idonotknowwhy »

koiueo wrote: post #38

Nokia 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…

Agreed. I loved my Nokia N9. The software was great! The Nokia N9 alarm clock was the best alarm clock app I've ever used.

Android have copied some elements of this but it's nowhere near as simple!

The hardware was fantastic as well. I dropped mine several times without a case and it never broke.

The TI dac sounded great with my Sony XBA-3 iems I had at the time.

I did hate the USB port cover though. And hated that they didn't have a dedicated camera button like the N8 and n97.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#128

Post by idonotknowwhy »

mariusor wrote: post #126
koiueo wrote: post #38

Nokia 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…

Did you try the Jolla phones? They tried to carry the Meego torch in their Sailfish OS (which currently works well with "last year's" Sony phones). Even though it has different UI decisions than the N9 I found it reasonably good over time, and today some of it's decisions (like using swipes for navigation) made their way into other mainstream mobile OSes.

I bought the Xperia X and paid for Jolla with android support.

It's a horrible buggy mess. Nothing like the smooth experience of the meego/Maemo n9

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#129

Post by enjo »

musesum wrote: post #99

It 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 a…

I worked an application that was distributed as part of the OS for pretty much every nokia symbian phone. We hired quite a few folks who had worked directly for Symbian. The stories were crazy.

There were major components people refused to even touch (like messaging) because the code was basically unmaintainable. An aggressive refactor of the entire OS was needed but they never really got comfortable with that. Symbian was originally essentially an operating system targeted at a calculator that outgrew itself several times over.

The first modern slab phone I ever saw wasn’t an iPhone… it was a Nokia prototype in like 2005. If they had a real operating system in place maybe Nokia is the world’s most valuable company today.

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