It was crazy that you couldn't buy a phone with all the features. Had to find that perfect combination of features for you.
Nokia made too many phones
111–120 of 337 posts
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”. 15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.
Nokia N900 was pretty awesome and Maemo was a great OS. Unfortunately killed by internal politics.
Oh I remember having a netbook during Maemo times, as a Linux user was really hoping it would succeed and bring a true Linux experience to mobile world
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this I think is the core issue: while Nokia phones were all a bit different, they were different in superficial and frankly, low-effort ways. Form that did not follow function, phones that looked liked some flashy "original-but-not-really-original" design study straight out of a bachelor's Product Design class. They could never have invented the iPhone, even if they were organised differently. The culture just wa…
> They could never have invented the iPhone I would like to mention here though that Apple eventually introduced a fair amount of things that Nokia did first with the Nokia N9 (especially once they went buttonless with the iPhone X). Once Nokia had Apple's example to work from, they actually kind of leapt ahead of them for a brief moment, then immediately gave up.
That's kinda the problem though: the N9 was a drop in the Nokia bucket, so no one noticed.
The iPhone X's big splash is easily explained.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this I think is the core issue: while Nokia phones were all a bit different, they were different in superficial and frankly, low-effort ways. Form that did not follow function, phones that looked liked some flashy "original-but-not-really-original" design study straight out of a bachelor's Product Design class. They could never have invented the iPhone, even if they were organised differently. The culture just wa…
> They could never have invented the iPhone I would like to mention here though that Apple eventually introduced a fair amount of things that Nokia did first with the Nokia N9 (especially once they went buttonless with the iPhone X). Once Nokia had Apple's example to work from, they actually kind of leapt ahead of them for a brief moment, then immediately gave up.
I had a buddy with a Nokia Lumia Windows phone. The hardware and OS was on par or better than the most of the contemporary phones, but it suffered from a lack of third party apps. The Lumia was a pretty kickass phone stuck in a dead ecosystem.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#115There was also conventional wisdom which had to be abandoned before the iPhone came out. Nokia phones had 1 week battery life. They were extending it to one month. The iPhone had a given the app experience available on the iPhone they could live with that. This was a bet Nokia would have never made—-they were not in the user interface business. The fact that Apple—who was not in the phone business—-entered their mark…
You’re literally describing the Nokia N900. 1 days battery, many apps. They did everything, which as the article says was part of the problem.
Mine lasted close to a week on a charge. It was a great device.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
This also comes out in the Blackberry story. They were like 'AppStore' the Telcos will never allow that. And Apple just pushed the idea threw and got it done.
I remember being excited by the potential of apps when I heard about Symbian…but some part of me knew that any product named Symbian would never succeed. It’s the type of name you come up with in round 3 of a name-brainstorming session, when the perfect name will only be found in round 10. They obviously gave up too early.
> any product named Symbian
I mean, it's almost the name of a sex toy.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#117There was also conventional wisdom which had to be abandoned before the iPhone came out. Nokia phones had 1 week battery life. They were extending it to one month. The iPhone had a given the app experience available on the iPhone they could live with that. This was a bet Nokia would have never made—-they were not in the user interface business. The fact that Apple—who was not in the phone business—-entered their mark…
I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”. 15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.
I grew up on the internet in the late 90's and I have to admit I really underestimated how big of an appetite "normies" would develop for being constantly bombarded with "content".
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#118This reminds me of Dell (are they still around? :-) with a million different indistinguishable SKUs. And when you went to the web site you had to categorize yourself by their criteria before you could even look at the offerings, which always made me feel that I was going to be ripped off. How do I know if I am a small business or medium business or whatever?
Such a silly pattern. I wonder how many people just bailed out on Dell, at the very top of the sales funnel, just because those stupid segmentation questions.
Customer: I have $1,000 burning a hole in my pocket and want to buy your laptop right now!
Dell: Whoooa there, buddy, hold on. First tell me if you're a Small Business so I know what site to send you to...
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The closest competitor to Nokias during 2007-2009 I recall was the Sony Ericssons, especially the walkman phones or the slider phones. At least if you were like me and always had to have something different. I still wish I’d kept my W910i. Unreliable software that would reboot randomly, but a surprisingly sturdy piece of kit that survived many drops and skids. And it was the best camera I had for a while, delivering…
That's right, I forgot about Sony Ericsson but you're correct, very much less common among my friend group, I only recall older people having them...Was Sony Ericsson considered a more premium device?
That's interesting, I mostly remember old folks sticking to flip phones. The SEs were all that could be found among my peers. We would've been in our mid teens at the time.
Then they were supplanted by early non-Android Samsung phones with the bad touchscreens, then by 2012 everyone had either an iPhone or Android.
It was only the space of a few years but seemed much longer back then!
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#120Around 2003 I did the art direction (mostly pixel-pushing...) for a game that shipped on a Nokia model. I have no recollection of what the phone looked like, but it was part of the "lifestyle" category described in this article. It wasn't one of the craziest form factors, just a candybar phone in pretty plastic with one of those early square color screens. Nokia Design sent a massive moodboard PDF, something like 100…
> The actual phone's usability and software were a complete afterthought. Yet it seems that Nokia phones were loved for their UI. Keypad UIs are hard to create - and competitors certainly had some toxically useless UIs. Somebody at Nokia got something right somewhere along the way? Maybe the engineers? After all presumably the engineers were eating their dogfood.
> Yet it seems that Nokia phones were loved for their UI. Keypad UIs are hard to create - and competitors certainly had some toxically useless UIs.
Yes, for making calls, texting, taking pictures and changing settings, Nokia phones were really nice. The whole games (Java) and apps (WAP) side wasn't the greatest. To be fair, no one had a decent game and app experience until the iPhone and G1 (Android) hit.