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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#331

Post by CRConrad »

pjc50 wrote: post #298
beenBoutIT wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The scratchproof "gorilla glass" (a Dow Corning invention) is extremely shatter resistant. Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer. There was a tragic brief era when we might have had synthetic sapphire / "transparent aluminium" screens: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple... (sapphire is aluminium oxide) The 3210 era devices had easily replaceable polymer covers; they definite…

> Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer.

Yeah, but that doesn't help when the phone lands with the glass hitting something. And a heavier metal phone will have accumulated more kinetic energy during the fall than a lighter plastic one, so have a greater probability of shattering the glass.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#332

Post by CRConrad »

epx wrote: post #104
pavlov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s basically it. Instead of the perfect phone, most of Nokia wanted to build the phone that makes you want to buy another phone soon. I made them a cappuccino-themed pinball game. The underlying idea was that when the customer is bored with the autumn colors and fabric edges and whatever, they’re buying the next Nokia for the new experience. Apple made a phone whose physical form was adaptable to any software exp…

Symbian was terrible. Working with it was worse than mining asbestos.

You were still writing here, so presumably alive and breathing, as late as five days ago.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#333

Post by CRConrad »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #255
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.)

> (Oh how I hate Apple-made software.)

The oh-so-"intuitive" iOS, with all it's fucking impossible-to-remember swiping gestures this way and that. Aaaargh! Unfortunately Android has been going the same way for the last half a decade or so. :-(

(And Sailfish -- or whatever it's called nowadays -- looked like a contender at first, but then it swiftly marched into the swipey bog.)

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#334

Post by CRConrad »

kalleboo wrote: post #236
Eduard wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. I don't remember app stores or game downloads existing up until iPhone and Android, let alone being profitable. There was MIDP and J2ME, but they were so niche, and I'm only aware of them because of an practical course during university, circa 2008. But maybe yo…

They were definitely a thing, pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident. I don't think they were ever very popular with consumers but I bought a copy of Tetris and an offline travel guide from the Sony Ericsson store. Then you bought a new phone, nothing transferred over or could be redownloaded, and you said F this what a ripoff…

> pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident.

Like that fucking "Amazon Prime" (or something) button on my TV remote control, which does absolutely nothing except every now and then, when I press it by mistake, send me into an app I've never used and will in all probability never use.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#335

Post by CRConrad »

jll29 wrote: post #94
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or by Microsoft. Nokia never understood the less-is-more thing that Apple are so good at. Hundreds of phones and an overcomplicated OS wuth political and technical problems - Symbian - were the result, not the cause, of a company that lacked focus and direction.

It's interesting that Microsoft never succeeded with a smartphone, given that their other hardware products enjoy a decent reputation (keyboards, mice, tablets); I suspect it's because of the software side - stuck with the desktop metaphor and windows, which makes no sense on smartphones.

> windows, which makes no sense on smartphones.

The last version, the one on the Lumias, was actually quite OK on a phone from all I've heard -- and living in Finland, I knew more than a few people who used those back in the day.

That's preciely why Windows 8 sucked so much on the desktop; it was intended to have as much as possible of the look-and-feel of Windows Phone. Windows 8 sucked on computers; apparently not so much on phones.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#336

Post by CRConrad »

bborud wrote: post #14

Nokia could both make too many phones and fail for other reasons. The article doesn’t say Nokia failed because it made too many phones. However, I do remember the first time my wife got an iPhone. Her Nokia was breaking down and she was trying to decide which Nokia would replace it. She spent a week comparing models. In the end she said “fuck this” and got an iPhone. What’s really funny was that Malcolm Gladwell did…

> The article doesn’t say Nokia failed because it made too many phones.

As I read it that was pretty much exactly what it said.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#337

Post by CRConrad »

FpUser wrote: post #301
FpUser wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I have 3 years old Pixel 6 Pro I use as a phone, 6 years old Redmi MIUI I use to control my various gizmos and 8 years old Galaxy S6 Edge to do yet another set of gizmos. So far all work like charm. Do tell me what kool aid did I drink?

I guess downvoting confirms how superior Apple smartphones are.

Or how people disliked you going defensive over your own misreading of the comment you replied to.
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