Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon • Hacker News Board

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#21

Post by gmuslera » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

The predecessor of the N9, the Nokia N900, with Maemo, is not even mentioned in the article, and it caused a buzz at least in the circles I were back then. And it had one of the best physical keyboards for a smartphone back then.

The N9 was pretty good, usability, design, hardware, but the apps started to weight, and it become a race between Android and iOS.

There was just one smartphone with Maemo (N900) and just one with Meego (N9). More models, letting other vendors to use them, android app compatibility compatibility and not having Elop could had saved Nokia. Now what we have is Sailfish as a descendent of them.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#22

Post by storus » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

hedgehog wrote: post #17

RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

It wouldn't necessarily have been better, a major reason the Windows phone stuff failed is it didn't have market share to justify app development. Android barely made it work as a well-funded #2. Palm WebOS, MeeGo, there were various efforts that were better than Android and even iOS in a lot of ways but app availability seems to have been the biggest factor in the lack of platform diversity. Edit: And consistent wit…

Windows Phone aesthetics was repulsive to most people at that time; we finally got TrueColor 4k screens and all MS could do was to use 10 colors everywhere and start the flat fad that destroyed UX on most systems. What a waste.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#23

Post by mempko » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

let_rec wrote: post #8

Why do people assume that MeeGo would have been a big success?

I think it would have been because it was a technically impressive OS with a beautiful UI created by at-the-time biggest smartphone maker in the world. iOS was first but that doesn't show it would win. Android now has marketshare and Android wasn't as good as MeeGo when it came out.

I believe if Nokia continued to invest, MeeGo would have even gotten better and they would have survived (note I worked at Nokia's subsidiary HERE maps at the time and saw early version of MeeGo. Also the hardware of the N9 was beautiful. It would have been a hit and in fact outsold the Lumia in the few countries it was delivered before they axed it).

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#24

Post by Diogenesian » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

The picture of the guy with his handdrawn "dream phone" is quite charming. Sort of a Homerphone, but it is drawn well.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/man-in-a-village-hol...

"Sir, please, a QWERTY keyboard would be so much -"

"No."

Homerphone reference: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#25

Post by garaetjjte » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

fineIllregister wrote: post #12

let_rec wrote: post #8

Why do people assume that MeeGo would have been a big success?

It wouldn't have been. I had an N9, it was amazing, but even before the "burning platform", it was clearly too late to the market share and app races. Consider that it didn't really have much of a head start over the Windows phone, which MS poured so much money into, and even they couldn't get their foot in the door.

Windows Phone 7 was artificially limited crap, any amount of head start wouldn't help it.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#26

Post by nextos » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

Discussed in HN many times, but worth restating once more. The N9 was fantastic. A joy to use, and in many ways the best design, both hardware and software, I've ever handled. Everything had been designed with care and some UI elements remain unmatched.

I think I was one of the first developers that got an N770 engineering sample (the first product in the N770-N9 saga) and it was really clear that they were onto something. Sadly, internal politics won over company and consumer interests. It took them extremely long to let this be a phone, not just an "Internet tablet". It was bizarre.

The same team is now behind Jolla/Sailfish. It's pretty remarkable how far they've got, but it's obviously not a perfect product given how small they are compared to the other mobile juggernauts. However, it's usable as a daily driver and, with a critical developer mass, it could get somewhere. There are already quite a few indie apps.

Crucially, I think it's the only platform that has the potential to set you truly free. GrapheneOS is the other alternative I can also endorse and tolerate, but it has a different set of compromises, and it's a bit fragile to Google pulling the plug. But it's great in its own ways.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#27

Post by sangeeth96 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

They (WP and Lumia) would've been a strong 3rd player if the right investments and care were given since MS acquisition but alas, I think I should've noticed the writing on the wall for all of MS' consumer business (Xbox, being the latest!) from the moment Satya stepped in and Nokia got cut off.

Satya was great for businesses and MS' investors, terrible for consumers.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#28

Post by pzo » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

I think they would still fail with MeeGo, same like Blackberry failed even though they had really good OS. I remember was going to their conference in amsterdam and were giving their new Blackberry Tablet for free to attract developers to make any app.

If Nokia and Blackberry team up they maybe would succeed. Nokia Mobile still could be around if instead choosing Windows Phone would release Android phone back then.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#29

Post by qwytw » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #3

rbanffy wrote: post #2

I think the biggest mistake was adopting Windows as their OS. It negated any technical advantages they could have over Android.

I'm not so sure. There will always be viable alternative histories of course but their existing Symbian OS was already long in the tooth and would have required a lot of work to catch up to the smartphone world and I'm just not convinced they had it in them. Arguably they should have just gone with Android, and it's easy to say that in hindsight. But Android was a horrible mess in its 2.x era, Windows Phone seemed li…

> Arguably they should have just gone with Android,

It's not obvious Nokia could have realistically competed with the East Asian phone manufacturers for more than a few years. It was/is a very low margin market with very cutthroat competition.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#30

Post by throwa356262 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

sangeeth96 wrote: post #27

They (WP and Lumia) would've been a strong 3rd player if the right investments and care were given since MS acquisition but alas, I think I should've noticed the writing on the wall for all of MS' consumer business (Xbox, being the latest!) from the moment Satya stepped in and Nokia got cut off. Satya was great for businesses and MS' investors, terrible for consumers.

I would love to switch back to WP.

I would love it even more if we could all go back in time and switch to meego. I used one for a short while and it felt well thought compared to the mess that was android at that time.