Nokia lost the way a couple of years ago. From rock solid software and physically neigh indestructible phones that you could operate in the dark with one hand we've gone to phones that take 5 minutes to switch on, frequently crash and drop calls and explode in to a variety of parts (cover plates, batteries, main boards, buttons and so on) with normal use and that require the memorisation of insane menu structures to use.
>phones that take 5 minutes to switch on, frequently crash and drop calls and explode in to a variety of parts (cover plates, batteries, main boards, buttons and so on) with normal use.
Actually, it isn't. I have sworn my current one is my last nokia. It takes literally forever to start up, and after it seems that it has started up it is frequently still impossible to make calls or look at the call history or the sms messages section.
It crashes with some regularity (which is really annoying, because it takes a long time to start up again), it drops calls in the middle of a conversation about two or three times per week.
I've had to re-assemble the phone after just carrying it around in my pocket, not without danger because the battery easily pops out and might get shorted out by my keys. I've been a very loyal nokia customer for more than a decade with one (very short lived) excursion to Samsung, but this really is my last one.
I am a big fan of the older nokia phones, especially the ones with only two screen colours. I accidentally flung them across rooms, dropped them on sidewalks and even put one through a dryer once. They always still worked and I have only ever replaced them when other people bought me newer models.
However, my latest nokia is shocking compared to the others I have had before it. The case started falling off the back about 3 weeks into using it. It takes around 3 minutes to turn on and freezes without fail every time I try to delete my messages or have a look at my call log. A few friends of mine have experienced similar problems with their more expensive models too.
When I run out of room for messages (because I can't delete them), I'm just going to find out where I packed up my phone from 3 years ago and use that. I'd rather have no internet/camera/mms then try my luck with another new nokia.
I've actually considered reviving one of my ancient phones as well, I rarely if ever use any of the more advanced features of this phone anyway, I use mine to call and to very rarely send sms messages. I've used the browser once to see if it works (it does). So I really don't 'need' a fancy phone. I guess I shouldn't complain too much because the phone company sent it for free because they apparently make too much money on me but still, basic functionality should simply work as good or better as in a previous release, why regress ?
Yeah, I now consider the no-user-replacable-battery drawback of the iPhone as a feature. The least pieces and hatches, the better. Although, I have replaced it on my 2yo 3G, along with the screen.
What model are you using? My n900 takes about 1 minute to boot, has never (during the last 6 months) crashed or dropped a call (that's probably more of a network problem anyway) and the back cover is the only part that even can be taken off (and this far is has never come off by itself).
This is an N96, the button issues were with the previous phone, which was one of those with a little stick to direct the cursor. When it decided to lose the stick (just like that, it simply fell out) on a gravel road somewhere in Colombia it really was pretty awkward, the phone was pretty hard to use without it.
I've tried to detect a pattern in the dropped calls (make and model of the phone on the other side, network cells I'm in and so on), without any effect.
The phone has plenty of free memory, the techs in the store assure me the phone is ok (it's been back a few times already), latest firmware, and so on. The mechanical issues seem to be closely related to the way the back cover fits on, it's a very light 'snap' fit and nothing at all will make it come off. Because it's a slide phone I can't tape it in place or something like that.
It depends very much on what model you use. They have tens of models...
I don't know much about the N96, but my E72 is a good phone. As usual the Symbian firmware has some bugs, but other than that I'm getting very good internet/call quality and it has a solid build.
I used to have an E71 - dreadful OS/software. Email client formatted emails horribly. Browser was awful. I use my Android phone so much more, for web surfing etc, because the usability is lightyears ahead.
I have an E71. It's the best phone I've ever owned. The hardware is superb, and the OS is pretty solid, but Nokia's apps department has repeatedly shown that it can't code its way out of a wet paper bag, so the preinstalled apps are indeed pretty crappy. I use a third-party mail client (ProfiMail) and browser (Opera Mobile 10).
The majority of my interaction with the E71 is via third-party apps, and I'm fine with that, because they're far better than anything I've seen on iPhone or Android (and yes, I have tried both at length). I was using most of those same apps before the iPhone was released (also, get off my lawn, you darn kids).
Hardware wise, I suppose I can't fault the build quality. But the form factor and controls - a tiny screen and a NSEW joystick were very limiting. The keyboard was tiny but worked pretty well. But it was definitely the software that ruined it for me. Opera mobile wasn't terrible but it was really hobbled by the navigation hardware.
The screen and joystick are certainly inferior to a touch screen for web browsing. However, I love the keyboard, and can't see how you could have a keyboard that good with a large touch screen. (QWERTY sliders are all right, but you can't use them one-handed, and the form factor just seems less natural.)
So I would agree that if web browsing is more important to you than typing, the E71 is not an ideal device. I do a lot of both, and find it's a great balance.
What's with the Nokia doesn't get it part? The market repositioning from smart-phone to mid-range consumer phone and delayed launch of the N8 would seem to suggest that Nokia definitely does get that the N97 was a disaster.
Look at the picture attached to the article you just posted. At the bottom of the screen 'Options, exit'. Just where the soft menu keys would have been. And the same size. And the same amount of buttons.
This is a touch phone. Why do you place on screen items like they're going to be activated by soft buttons?
The N8 is a really nice phone by 2002 standards. I used to be a big fan of Nokia because they didn't clutter up their menus so badly, or if they did you could at least remember the numbers and zip through them that way. The 8890 was the peak of Nokia, and it's all been downhill from there, trumped time and time again by Ericsson and more recently Apple.
The last Nokia phone I truly loved was the 6310i. Was using one until last year when refurbs started getting too expensive for my taste.
I now have an N900, which I also love - but I don't regard it as a phone, I regard it was a small portable Debian install that just so happens to also make phone calls :)
Options/Exit is a long time Symbian thing. Since the OS in N8 is an evolutionary step from the current version of the OS, they probably didn't want to change things too much.
Anyway, this is actually one of the least problematic aspects of Symbian and not a disaster at all.
I am eagerly waiting for the N8. It will ship for 470€. But I am a bit reluctant to buy it, when I think that the Galaxy S (420€) has tethering, better screen, better processor, better CPU, DivX support out of the box and the Nokia does not.
I really hope they get it nailed down with the N8. I don't like Big Brother Google, and the closeness of Apple. A nice, working Symbian Phone would be great. Let's see.
When contrasting Nokia to "evil corporations" such as Apple or Google, don't forget that Nokia is the number one advocate of introducing software patents in the European Union. Just sayin'.
Woah there dude. Maybe my sentence structure was off, but I know a thing or two about the difference between the two.
What I'm trying to say: at least if you're doing Java ME, the OVI store is a very closed shop, as evidenced by my unfortunate experience with it, and Android (which is not Java ME) is way more open and pleasant to deal with. I don't know as much about C++; although I think it may be less miserable in some ways than the OVI Java ME experience, although it has other, serious drawbacks.
All in all, Android is where it's at for me in the future.
Wel I guess that the problem was/is that nokia released the N97 2 years after the original iphone and around the same time as the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero. those phones are both way better than the N97 and far more in line with what people expected form there phones after the iPhone. the amazing thing is that a big company with lots of experience making phones needed 2 years to but something so shameful on the marked.
This is really old news. They've already admitted N97 was a disaster, and have since recommitted to doing everything better. At this point we're in wait-and-see mode. Revisiting old failures is not constructive.
Come on guys, keep up. We're on Internet time here.
Yeah, it doesn't receive email or allows me to browse the internet but it already crashed into the ground and got wet more times that I can count and it still works. The battery still lasts 2 weeks.
Mine eventually died of sea-water immersion - the only thing apart from a stake through the heart that can kill it.
And even then it's only the speaker that failed.
Can I buy a replacement - no it's only available in Africa!
So I had to buy a Motorola - great sales strategy Nokia.
I owned 2 of these, but sadly, both died the same way.. weird software error "CONTACT SERVICE" and failed to respond to any input. Which is sad, because one of those 2 survived a baptism in uric acid!
Nokia doesn't get that they have competition at the high end.
Selling phones that are so obviously sub-par compared to iPhone and Android, and still expecting people to fork over iPhone/Android money, is laughable.
Developers aren't going to move to writing Symbian apps, there's just too much alternative, and it's not where the reward is.
What Nokia doesn't get is that they can't market their way out of inferior products, not anymore.
They have gotten themselves blind on the quantity of phones that they sell and think that the quantity is a proof that they are doing something right. That they just need to claim to have smart phones and the market will obey.
It's really quite sad, as this company if any have the ability to be at the forefront. But such is the mechanics of The Innovators Dilemma.
Obviously Nokia used to do things right but now they are nothing but a sad sad joke.
It's not that they don't have smart people. It's that they have legacy, horrible horrible legacy and a product innovation and development structure very close to that of the most horrible parliament you can imagine.
And as we all know. Nobody ever built at statue of a committee!
It sounds like you haven't actually read or understood The Innovator's Dilemma. TID isn't about companies growing too large and making obviously idiotic mistakes - it's hardly worth a book to point out that that might not be the best way to do things.
The point of TID is that in certain situations a company can make all the right decisions and still end up losing in the long run to worse products.
An industry that's being disrupted is one with higher-end customers served by successful businesses with expensive, high-margin, high-quality products, and less demanding customers being served by businesses with cheaper, lower-margin, inferior products, where the product quality of both segments grows at a faster rate than what the market demands. When the worse product becomes good enough for a large enough segment of the market, the industry swings - disruption.
The "Innovator's Dilemma" is that at any given time prior to the disruption, the right decision for the successful high-end company appears to be to not enter the lower end of the market, because the same investment applied to the current business will yield continued higher return.
Nokia doesn't have an innovator's dilemma here, they have a shitty product that nobody wants.
In what possible way can making a shitty phone and then lying about its capabilities in marketing materials be considered 'making the "right" decisions'?
That's not what I was referring to with my TID comment but the focus on selling large quantities of "dumb" phones because that is where the largest revenue (still) is.
This affect their lack off proper focus on the smart phones. They can't get exited about the numbers so to speak.
But as I said, it might be a stretch to use that term here, I still stand by it.
It's not that Nokia doesn't get it, they just have some catching up to do. Just from understanding what you need to do you can not launch a high tech product over night.
The problem with Nokia is they have a huge sunk cost in Symbian and it will never be able to compete in the high-end. They'll never catch up because of that. Going to Linux is an interesting choice, but they have to develop that platform and ecosystem as well. It will be difficult for them to catch up when they're starting 2 steps behind.
People forget Nokia doesn't sell phones to their users. They sell phones to telcos. Telcos really don't care whether your phone takes 5 minutes to start or crashes frequently, as long as you pay your monthly bills and buy another subsidized phone down the line extending your contract before you move to a competitor.
Telcos profit from crappy phones.
And that's why it's important to support a market for unlocked phones and standards like GSM.
Actually, this only happens in the US. In the EU (and most countries) you can get any phone unlocked and without a contract straight from the telco stores or independent stores.
That might be the case in the US, but the world is so much larger. In Scandinavia (and elsewhere, surely), every manufacturer also sell their phones "bare" (not coupled with a GSM subscription) directly to customers via a million different outlets.
It's the same here in Brazil - they are even required to unlock your phone on purchase, if you so demand. Subsidies are tied to contracts, so, if you rescind the contract you pay part of the discount you got.
The problem is that the US is a huge market and that distorts the forces that generate products.
And, sure, Nokia seems lost. They should give up software and differentiate on hardware. I am sure the N97 would be a fine Android phone.
This is why I so glad HTC exists. They seem to be able to compete at a fairly good level with the iPhone. Motorolla is shooting themselves in the foot all the time, and Nokia hasn't really produce any real competition lately.
There have always been lies, then advertising, and they deserve to be taken to task for that, but what I find surreal is how much computing power in our hands that we take for granted these days.
I guess one day kids will complain their microsd sized devices don't project holograms bright enough or in enough colors.
It’s all relative. The N97 certainly would be a awesome phone if there were no Android phones or iPhone. Complaining about something which other companies have no problems achieving is not unreasonable.
> how much computing power in our hands that we take for granted these days.
On my mid-range Nokia phone, I have a Commodore 64 emulator.
I find that fairly amazing, given that the original C64 was more expensive than my phone when it came out.
If the CPU power really is there, then at least the good news is the software can be fixed over time. Early adopters typically suffer in any technical realm.
That is a very funny video. As someone who recently downgraded to the tremendously slow on iPhone 3G iOS 4, it brightened my day to realize that things could be worse.
I'm not saying iPhone is as bad. When I saw the N97 video it immediately reminded me of how my iPhone 3G started behaving after upgrading it to iOS 4 -- lagging, not responding to taps, etc. My response was tongue in cheek.
I'm a happy iPhone 4 user now and would never switch to any other "smartphone", let alone Nokia.
People were laughing at Nokia when they said they wanted to start making mobile phones. At that time, they only made tyres, galoshes and toilet paper.
Now, if Nokia keeps this quality and price on their mobile phones (if this really is what you get), I myself would recommend them to either fire their hackers or go back to the rubber production.
Hopefully though, they see that this is not going to work and that they have to do something about it.
At that time, they only made tyres, galoshes and toilet paper.
Eh? I don't think that's true. Nokia, just like Ericsson, made telephone switches and was involved in NMT, back in the 80s, when they started to make phones.
Of course it's not true, it's not even a hyperbole, it's simply completely false. Nokia was, for most of the 20th century, large industrial group, making many various things, consumer electronics and telecommunications equipment included. It wasn't like some backward poor finnish rubber-makers in the late 70's or 80's decided to get in a new business, not even remotely.
What a waste of a very good brand image.