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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#201

Post by scarface_74 »

pjc50 wrote: post #41
hasmanean wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the breakthrough happened when Apple shrunk the computer into a phone, not when Nokia grew the phone…? Interesting. I remember writing apps for the iPhone and the biggest hurdle to getting it submitted was sizing the screens for the display variants. There would have been no chance of developing an app for the Nokia ecosystem with all the different screen sizes your app would have to support. Even downloading an a…

> So the breakthrough happened when Apple shrunk the computer into a phone, not when Nokia grew the phone…? I think the true breakthrough was actually the iPod; the true "first" Apple phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR#E1 was a flop, partly because they allowed the various collaboration partners to hamstring its features. The iPhone took everything in-house. > Even downloading an app or ringtone requir…

People could care less about the app stores 30% cut. Developers care. Even then 90% of App Store revenue comes from pay to win games and whales buying loot boxes and coins.

You’ll have to excuse me if I can’t manage a tear for them.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#202

Post by sundvor »

selcuka wrote: post #182
robocat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Keypad UIs are hard to create - and competitors certainly had some toxically useless UIs. I still think that the wheel (navi-roller) they introduced with 7710 [1] was revolutionary and they should have used it in other phones they made. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7110

I had that phone; such a great design of simplicity and function.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#203

Post by seba_dos1 »

zokier wrote: post #153
robocat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, the classic UI in 3310 etc ("Series 20") was great, and even "Series 30" was okay. But Series 40 and especially Series 60 were distinctly less well received.

S30 came years after S40 and only targeted low-end. S40 was a rather well-received UI, but neither it nor S30 were ever used on smartphones. The only UI used with Symbian from what you mentioned was S60 and yes, it didn't have a reputation of being particularly clean.

That said, S40 was being used on feature phones for more than a decade (from Nokia 7110 in 1999 up to Nokia 515 from 2013), so it spanned across multiple UI generations and while it was very successful initially, at the end of its lifespan it didn't do particularly well when put on models with big touchscreens.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#204

Post by mbreese »

al_borland wrote: post #162
rvense wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Facebook played a huge role in that. The growth of Facebook happened at the perfect time with the iPhone, where I think they really helped each other grow. Zuckerberg said Photos was the killer app inside of Facebook that really made it blow up. Smart phones are the perfect device to feed photo sharing sites.

That dovetails nicely with the trends in cameras. When Flickr first started, all of the most popular cameras were DLSRs. Cameraphones were around, but not as common (and Nokia is on that list!). However, as soon as smart phones (iPhones) became popular, they then started to dominate the rankings. In 2010, the iPhone 3G was the most popular camera, with traditional DSLRs right behind. Today, the top 5 are all different models of iPhones.

One comment I remember (but don't remember when/where I read it) was that the best camera was the one you already had with you. If you want to take a picture, but don't have a camera, you're out of luck. But when you carry a smart phone around with you at all times, that becomes your go-to camera.

2006 - https://web.archive.org/web/20061123164557/http://flickr.com...

2010 - https://web.archive.org/web/20100130213746/http://www.flickr...

2024 - https://www.flickr.com/cameras

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#205

Post by kilroy123 »

thih9 wrote: post #34

A different POV, I'm bored of today's uniform, do-it-all smartphones and I enjoy using limited-purpose ergonomic devices with character. I often carry a dedicated camera, an e-ink reader, or a handheld console. I liked the colorful iPhone 5C, or smartphones with hardware keyboard - I miss this sometimes.

Yup, I agree. I have an iPhone and it's no big deal. A bit yawn at this point.

One of my all time favorite phones was the sidekick ii. Such a fun phone with character.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#206

Post by Zigurd »

fckgw wrote: post #197
Zigurd wrote: post #172

This is debatable for a couple reasons: First, it is similar to saying Toyota makes too many cars. Nokia, like Toyota, made phones that fit a wide range of markets, and in each Nokia series, the insides and software were the same. Second, Nokia's problems crescendoed with Stephen Elop and the not-ready-for-prime-time Windows phone OSs that Elop insisted replace viable alternatives Nokia developed in-house. In light o…

If Toyota had 57 different models we would all be saying Toyota has too many cars.

I didn't count them all. But between Toyota Daihatsu Hino and Lexus, of the 9.2 million vehicles they will make, there are more than 57 models.

At its peak Nokia manufactured more than one phone per second, 24/7/365. I bet there were more than 57 models.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#207

Post by Paianni »

ssivark wrote: post #49

I’m very suspicious of some post-hoc generalization that rhymes a little too conveniently with modern fads. Nokia made great phones during the mid/late 2000s. The N9 was a piece of beauty that continued to have a more cohesive and thought out experience than Android (and even iOS, in some ways) well into the mid 2010s. It was simply a joy to use. Why Nokia then fell apart might have a little something to do with Step…

S60 5th edition was a disaster for Symbian's and Nokia's reputation, especially the N97 incarnation. Its main issue was a lack of GPU acceleration for the GUI which wasn't really resolved until the Belle era, by which point it was far too late to resurrect.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#208

Post by [deleted] »

nikau wrote: post #193
kiwijamo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got the nicer Androids. Most of the Androids on the market unfourtently aren't very good in terms of using modern hardware, using the latest Android OS (shops continue to sell Android phones running versions of Android several years out of date), receiving security updates, etc. My experience of Android had been incredibly poor until I got my S21. My S21 is the first Android phone I've owned (out of several from…

Ah the old compare expensive iPhone to bare bones android comparison

[deleted]

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#209

Post by rappr »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #161
hasmanean wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They brought a plastic case to a machined metal fight.

Unlike Apple Nokia built their devices to resist breaking and be 100% serviceable down to the smallest parts. Apple uses metal because it's significantly heavier than plastic and makes phones heavy enough to shatter glass screens and damage their internals when dropped. Any iPhone could replace its metal housing with an equally strong polymer and become exponentially more difficult to break.

They tried that a few years ago with the iPhone 5C. We saw no difference in repair rates at the time.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#210

Post by vitorgrs »

IshKebab wrote: post #176
kipchak wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the user interface was a huge difference, but Nokia did have high spec-ed and priced battery burners like the N95. They even sold quite well, for example over their lifetimes there were 10 million N95s sold and 6 million iPhone 1s.

I mean, presumably because it was the last smartphone Nokia made and Nokia was an established name, whereas the iPhone was new and the iPhone 3G was released after only a year. In other words, it didn't sell more because it was actually viable competition. It sold more because of brand momentum and because it was on sale for longer.

What? Nokia continued to make smartphones.

There was Nokia N96, N97, N8 (which was nice), N900, Nokia 5800... Let alone N9. There was also Nokia 808, which used basically the same camera sensor as Lumia 1020.

(will exclude here the Windows Phone devices of course...).

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