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Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

engadget.com

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Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#131

Post by Aoyagi »

akumen wrote: post #123
Aoyagi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "featurephone" OS is S40 and it's in both "classic" phones (e.g. 515) and Ashas.... unless there is something I've missed completely. And come to think of it, I haven't heard any confirmation of closing the production of S40 phones, so I guess that'd make it 3.

The classic feature phones is an older Symbian variant and Asha Platform OS is S40 from what I can tell. Symbian is still king in a lot of countries so Nokia will have to support it for a long time. Struggle to see how this helps Nokia. Nokia Xs are smart phones at a price of a feature phone. Great! Welcome to an already very crowded low-margin market of cheap Androids in India, Brazil, China and Africa, the same mar…

Symbian isn't supported any more even today and Ovi Store has been frozen. And Symbian is much more of a "smart" phone OS than WP8. Also S40 isn't really Symbian. :)

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#133

Post by Aoyagi »

eq- wrote: post #55
Aoyagi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "featurephone" OS is S40 and it's in both "classic" phones (e.g. 515) and Ashas.... unless there is something I've missed completely. And come to think of it, I haven't heard any confirmation of closing the production of S40 phones, so I guess that'd make it 3.

The OS in the most basic of Nokia phones is commonly referred to as S30. It doesn't really need much active maintenance, though, because they mostly only change graphics and included games (and utilities) between those phones.

Huh, I didn't even know of its existence. But yeah, turns out things like Nokia 105 run on S30. I have to try that someday, heh.

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#134

Post by ZeroGravitas »

igravious wrote: post #44
m0nastic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android? By most reporting[1], the office team has already had versions of office for iOS (and presumably Android) ready for quite some time. Their lack of release has been an internal political battle at Microsoft based on whether to postpone them until after the equivalent office apps are ready for RT. This is one of the biggest examples of decision making…

Office has a huge amount of legacy. I get that porting it to iOS had to be done. Microsoft provides Office for the Mac desktop. But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else. It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day, it gave the platform instant enterprise-cred whereas before it really only had hacker-…

Currently, not being on iOS is invalidating Micrsosoft Office. It's miraculous how many things in stodgy IT Departments had to change shortly after the CEO got an iPad and iPhone. Probably a lot of those people felt they were secure with their Windows desktop only solutions, turns out they were wrong.

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#135

Post by ZeroGravitas »

quanticle wrote: post #13

Ars Technica [1] put it best. These phones are dead on arrival. This is not the first time Nokia has done something like this. It released a Meego version of the N9, its long-in-development Symbian successor, before immediately abandoning the platform and switching to Windows Phone. This isn't a sign of some deep strategy. It's just standard Nokia platform craziness. 1: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/02/nokia-to…

They kind of have to say that though, the same author wrote this:

"While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you."

And his colleague wrote an article titled: "Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable."

So they'd look a bit silly writing about this in any other way.

Maybe it will get canned, but then before today I would have said that it was only for internal purposes, so scare Microsoft into buying them. Turns out I was wrong, and they went public with it.

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#136

Post by princeyesuraj »

It should be a challenge for Nokia buy not allowing Google Play Services and Promoting Windows and Nokia based apps but this is the only way windows will allow Nokia to develop more android based devices.

As of this post from Nokia http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/02/24/nokia-x-family/

I think they still allow other 3rd-party sources for downloading the apps and there are still more Android based phones to come.

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#138

Post by aestra »

saurabhnanda wrote: post #73
spiritplumber wrote: post #60

Installing Google Play on this should be trivial anyway, what's the big deal? The problem is that it's another iphone lookalike. I WANT A DAMN KEYBOARD!

This. I just don't understand what are the benefits of a on-screen keyboard vis-a-vis a slide-out hardware qwerty keyboard. Ever tried using an on-screen keyboard with wet hands? Tried texting in class without looking? Why can't we get one, just ONE, good Android device with a hardware keyboard?

>Tried texting in class without looking?

What the hell? Are you really that addicted to your phone you can't put it away for 2 hours to pay attention to a class you are paying hundreds of dollars to attend? If anything it is incredibly rude to the professor.

I'm old and cranky.

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#139

Post by pmr_ »

> differentiated experience

I still can't believe that decision makers actually believe that customers want that. Sure, it makes for great bullet points on the packaging, but most consumer in the lower segment just want something that is familiar to all the other stuff they have. Things you will never hear an Android user say: "That Samsung Whatever Cloud App is really useful.", "That second App Store of my carrier is full with great Apps.", and "I wish those buttons were even more different from my old Android phone".

Re: Nokia announces the X and X+, its first Android phones

#140

Post by untog »

igravious wrote: post #44
m0nastic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will Microsoft not be able to develop Mobile Office for Android? By most reporting[1], the office team has already had versions of office for iOS (and presumably Android) ready for quite some time. Their lack of release has been an internal political battle at Microsoft based on whether to postpone them until after the equivalent office apps are ready for RT. This is one of the biggest examples of decision making…

Office has a huge amount of legacy. I get that porting it to iOS had to be done. Microsoft provides Office for the Mac desktop. But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else. It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day, it gave the platform instant enterprise-cred whereas before it really only had hacker-…

It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day

I'm hesitant about that comparison - server software and desktop software have little in common. Oracle could demand what OS it ran on because the server was likely doing little else - a desktop machine needs to run a wide variety of programs.

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