Mañana: Nokia’s in no hurry to go back to phones Nokia CEO said the company could return to making mobile devices this year or next, but isn’t in a hurry. “There’s no specific timeframe. We don’t need to be in a rush. We will explore this with the right partner or partners, depending on the case,” said chief exec Rajeev Suri at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “It might …
They should just rescue Jolla and push ahead with Sailfish OS and the existing phone and tablet. The design has already been done for them, both devices are stylish and quite different from the rest of the stuff on the market. Also, Sailfish OS would set them apart from the rest of the crowd.
Yes, it's true, it is a niche OS - but then again, most of the heavy lifting is already done - they wouldn't have to start from scratch with the design, branding and execution. Win-win for everybody. Even if Jolla/Sailfish don't become mainstream in any way, surely with the relatively small investment/startup costs, it would be worth the bother, no?
Unfortunately I think they need large numbers of units shifted to make it work, hence the risk. Both Nokia and Microsoft found that having the best phone camera by a country mile didn't do much for sales because most people only care about a good enough camera.
I can only wish and hope that Nokia get behind Sailfish and give us a chance of a good phone OS rather than the dross offerings available now.
I think some folks at Jolla might rather implode than have that happen but Nokia should defenitely evaluate that route. Even if they do not buy the company they should license the OS and thereby keep them good people afloat. Put that stuff on a decent range of devices made in oldendays Nokia quality and we're talking.
There is zero use in a Nokia branded phone that is simply another faceless rebadged droid. It needs to be a _real_ Nokia.
"Even if Jolla/Sailfish don't become mainstream in any way, surely with the relatively small investment/startup costs, it would be worth the bother, no?"
People need paying. Development to launch is 10% of lifetime cost. Who gets sued when your customers lose all their banking details due to an exploit that your 200 sales didn't generate enough revenue from to pay a developer to keep the thing sailing true?
I think the risks are huge and there's no upside at all. They'd be better off launching a new range of Windows devices.
This is sad because the situation we have is that a very shabby phone OS and the worst of the three main offerings is dominant and it seems that people are going to keep buying it and keep it dominant despite its crapiness.
So unless an organisation is prepared to risk billions of $, the consumer has to keep eating the same old shit. I guess the public gets what it deserves for tolerating such junk.
This is sad because the situation we have is that a very shabby phone OS and the worst of the three main offerings is dominant
What's the story with the old Nokia OSes - S60 in particular? Do they still own it, or did that get transferred to MS too? Do I remember something about Open Source?
I know that it's long in the tooth by now but S60 was perfectly sufficient for a "feature" type phone, and there is definitely a gap in the market between the very low-end phones and the cheaper smartphones. #2 son has a Samsung Xcover 550 which is somewhere in that gap (sorry, but I couldn't find the thing on Samsung's English-language website) and it's a more than capable device other than the distinctly poor camera.
Differentiate a new phone by - oh, I dunno - having a decent camera with a lens cover and a dedicated shutter button and a screen that won't crack when you sit on it in your back pocket, and a battery that lasts at least a week(*) and I know a few people who would happily ditch their awkward, over-powerful, battery-munching, expensive-to-replace smartphones. Perhaps make a cheap "external screen" for it, or would it be possible to "screencast" to a tablet, so that people who want to use their phones for GPS or game playing have the option - dumb screen in a cradle in the car, driven from the phone which can stay in the coat pocket so you don't forget to take it with you.
Over time, if the concept works, develop the OS, or build a new one, or something else (I'm not at all well-informed in this field, can you tell?).
Of course if Nokia doesn't still own S60 then it's somewhat more expensive to get going again, but the smartphone market is absolutely cutthroat these days, particularly now that the manufacturers are effectively selling direct.
TL;DR: I want my "featurephone" back.
M.
(*)That said, by turning data off, and only on again when I need it, and deactivating all the things I will never use, my Moto G (the first and, hopefully, last touchscreen phone I've ever owned) will last 8 to 10 days between charges
S60 being one of the user interfaces along with S90 and UIQ etc that sat on top of Symbian OS.
Symbian was architecturally struggling to keep up and would have needed a thorough going over.
Under Nokia custodianship the code base seems to have suffered a chaotic development away from its Psion EPOC origins and become a monster. It was hard work for developers before QT was ported to it, and Nokia offloaded maintenance to Accenture.
The attempt to open source didn't go so well and it was brought back under closed source, and I think Nokia still have it in a drawer somewhere in Espoo.
I do wonder if its EKA2 kernel, which is a RTOS, could be dusted off for some of this IoT stuff.
S60 being one of the user interfaces along with S90 and UIQ etc that sat on top of Symbian OS.
Ok, thanks for the correction. Symbian is probably what I meant, and I did understand that one of the reasons they ditched it before the MS takeover was that it was becoming a pig to maintain, but surely if what they want is a cheap "toe in the water", an easy starting point if you will, they could resurrect it and see if whatever form factor hardware they come up with is accepted?
That said, having owned both a Psion Series 3 and a 5mx, I really miss EPOC ;-)
M.
I don't think Nokia want a toe in the water. Cheap or otherwise. I suspect they want to sell (well rent) their name and reputation for a bit of easy cash.
After all, they only just sold the whole phone division to Microsoft.
Getting a toe in the water is pointless. Blackberry are nearly dead, Palm/WebOS/HP fell by the wayside, as did all the versions of Symbian and from the amount of effort Microsoft are making, who knows if they aren't about to go the same way? Samsung barely even bothered to release Tizen. And you can tell it's Tizen, when your eyes are shut!
If' you've not got volume, nobody will write apps for you. If you've not got apps, you won't get customers.
This is nothing new either. I had the excellent Sony Ericsson P800, back in 2003. In some utterly insane dispute with Nokia, they ended up using a different version of Symbian. An incompatible one. Doh! So although I got a Symbian phone, it wouldn't actually run any Symbian apps. Every time I read a review, or found an interesting app, it was always for S60, and not UIQ. Then Sony Ericsson gave up.
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