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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#251

Post by [deleted] »

marttt wrote: post #244
zokier wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a weirdo who has intentionally never owned a smartphone, so "using up" old dumb phones found in our family has been a fun hobby for roughly two decades. Longest streak was using a 3310 for 12-or-so years, starting when I went to gymnasium and letting it go in late 20s when I was about to become a father. Man, that was one hell of a phone (also serving as a beer bottle opener, etc for many students back in the day…

[deleted]

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#252

Post by romwell »

pavlov wrote: post #19

Around 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…

>Everyone knows what happened next.

...Microsoft did a hostile takeover with the help of an "ex"-Microsoft Elop being appointed Nokia CEO? Might I say, MS and Nokia eloped.

Oh, and cancelled the very much beloved Linux-based handset without even advertising it.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#253

Post by seba_dos1 »

marttt wrote: post #244
zokier wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a weirdo who has intentionally never owned a smartphone, so "using up" old dumb phones found in our family has been a fun hobby for roughly two decades. Longest streak was using a 3310 for 12-or-so years, starting when I went to gymnasium and letting it go in late 20s when I was about to become a father. Man, that was one hell of a phone (also serving as a beer bottle opener, etc for many students back in the day…

> I'm currently using a Nokia 2600 Classic [1] with Symbian

There's no Symbian on that phone. Symbian was pretty much a smartphone OS that didn't really show up on feature phones. It had a full-blown WebKit browser, native apps, multitasking, productivity suites... you could even install Python interpreter and play with writing apps this way on Symbian phones from around that time (which is what I kept borrowing my mom's E65 for). Later versions even had Qt built-in.

Nokia 2600 Classic used one of the iterations of Series 40. Looking at the videos, it indeed appears rather slow on this phone.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#254

Post by simfree »

phowat wrote: post #241
Steltek wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N95 was a god-like phone of the pre-iPhone era. * 5MP camera with an amazing lens and dedicated shutter button * 8GB(?) of flash and dedicated music controls * Internet Hotspot * Copy and paste (zing!) I loved it then and yet I was still awful at making use of its potential.

I remember it also had native SIP support and you could configure an account to connect automatically only when the phone connected to a certain wifi network. So I had my work extension on when I connected to the work wifi. It was really nice

Now even Google has dropped the (rarely functional) SIP support in the dialer despite almost all voice traversing SIP to smartphones today.

Everyone has their silo'ed version of SIP plus a few extra features resold & repackaged as something unique and new to the market.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#255

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

pavlov wrote: post #19

Around 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…

> Unfortunately their design department seemed consumed by becoming a fashion brand and forgot that they're still a technology company.

Worked for Apple, though. (Oh how I hate Apple-made software.)

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#256

Post by seba_dos1 »

loosescrews wrote: post #115
badgersnake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mine still lasts 4 days or so.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#257

Post by seba_dos1 »

benrutter wrote: post #53

> Not only the variety of devices was creating an incoherent user experience, but it also made it almost impossible to create an app market. I'm not sure I agree with this take - it seems to be based on the idea of comparing Nokia phones to something like the iPhone. But at the time these phones were all made, the experience of using a phone was: - Answer or reject incoming calls with the "answer/decline" button - Re…

> Which is a really long way of saying, Nokia phones where just a different category of things to iPhones, and we shouldn't compare them.

Except they weren't and we should.

Nokia had very popular feature phones with S40 and that's what most people likely remember about it, but it was also a huge player on the smartphone market with Symbian - and those smartphones were proper pocket computers with native apps, web browser, multitasking, messaging etc. years before iPhone. As a teenager I have myself played with Python on a Nokia E65 months before the first iPhone was released.

Pretty much the only thing they lacked compared to the first iPhone was a touchscreen (even though Nokia made some attempts years before as well, see Nokia 7710 for example). iPhones didn't even let you install apps at that point (that ability only came in 2nd gen), and let's not even talk about multitasking. Nokia smartphones were doing that for years at that point.

Also, let's not forget that Nokia N800 with Maemo was initially supposed to be a smartphone, and that was already before the iPhone as well. It ended up not being one because of internal politics between Maemo and Symbian teams, so the first actual Maemo phone (rather than merely an "Internet Tablet") was N900 two years later. As a "touch screen computer", iPhone was laughable compared to Maemo.

Nokia lost to Android, not Apple. iPhone merely acted as a catalyst, and certainly did not define a new "device category" in any technical sense. It accelerated trends that caused regular people to start moving from feature phones to smartphones (a market segment that was previously reserved to high-end and business-class models), at which point Nokia was already left behind by Android.

If anything, iPhones harmed Nokia indirectly by making Google redesign Android's UI before it first shipped, while Nokia was too busy enjoying its market leader position and in-fighting to notice what was going on around them.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#258

Post by pritambarhate »

benedictevans wrote: post #127

Nokia thought that phones would be like cars. Most car companies have dozens of models with different characteristics and prices, and that's fine. Even BMW has 20(!) top-level model categories. Nokia was selling devices all the way from high-end camera/phones for $$$ right down to $10 (unsubsidised) with two week battery life for emerging markets. I think you can argue that 50 was too many, but 10 or 20 was reasonabl…

Samsung is successfully using this car company strategy and they have a phone in almost every price band. Just look at sheer number different SKUs they have: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung-phones-9.php

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#259

Post by bloopernova »

mjcohen wrote: post #243
bloopernova wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like something like that navi-roller below my spacebars on my keyboard, to use as a way to select from drop-downs and push to enter. Unfortunately keyboard navigation of graphical elements is really lacking these days.

A google search for "keyboard with roller" brings up a lot of options.

I didn't phrase it very well, sorry about that. I meant that display managers, UI toolkits, and browsers don't support the keyboard as much as I'd like.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#260

Post by int_19h »

bloopernova wrote: post #183
selcuka wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 would really like something like that navi-roller below my spacebars on my keyboard, to use as a way to select from drop-downs and push to enter. Unfortunately keyboard navigation of graphical elements is really lacking these days.

Some Symbian PDAs had a similar scroll wheel on the side, similar to the volume rocker, but more versatile.
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