Nokia launches Euro ANDROID invasion, quips: 'Microsoft knew what they were buying' Microsoft was aware of Nokia's plans to release a range of Android phones, the man in charge of the new range told us today. And the new Nokiadroids - of which there are more than anyone predicted - will be coming to the UK - possibly sooner than anyone realises. Timo Toikkanen, Executive Vice President of Nokia Mobile Phones …
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You mean that GUI that runs like crap and is difficult to use even on a desktop machine?
Android succeeded because it isn't KDE or Gnome bodged to work on a phone
Only an utter fool would try to make KDE or Gnome work on a mobile device with a touchscreen. There are MUCH better DEs (or, in some cases, just WMs) out there for that particular application. TWM wouldn't be a terrible option, but I think you could get better yet. Mind you I'm just going off the top of my head. I looked, briefly, at putting Debian on a phone once and decided it would be more effort than it was worth. And I wasn't even planning on still using it as a phone.
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> but with the smell of Microsoft (including an NSA fragrance), the answer has to be 'no'. A shame, since I liked the Nokias that I had.
Better hold on tight to that featurephone then.
Your alternatives are Apple (part of PRISM), Microsoft (Part of PRISM), Google (Part of PRISM and massive data-thief in their own right) or dumbphone.
Or the new Blackphone, which I am surprised to note that the Reg appears to be ignoring.
About bloody time. Or will it be too little, too late?
They really need to bring out a killer piece of kit, like the Moto G, at sub £100 to stand a chance.
It's a shame really. From 1996 to 2010 I only ever had Nokia phones, and they were all great at being phones. My trusty 6310i still comes out of retirement when I go fishing, purely for its brilliant reception. None of my smartphones have ever had a sniff of a signal at my favourite fishing spot...
From USA Today:
The Nokia X, boasts a 4-inch IPS capacitive display and 3 megapixel camera. It includes 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage, which can be expanded with a microSD card.
The Nokia X+ is almost identical to the X but comes with more storage and memory by including a 4GB microSD card and 768MB of RAM.
The Nokia XL boasts a 5-inch display with a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 768MB of RAM and a 5-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and flash. Like the X+, it too comes with a 4GB microSD card.
Nokia X, X+ and XL – priced at €89 ($122), €99 ($136) and €109 ($149) respectively. Availability is immediate.
This marls an interesting and obviously controversial tangent for Nokia, but I think its a good thing, particularly for the lower end of the market. My concern is that their 'apk' store will be as mediocre as many others that try to compete with the play store, to limited success. I'll watch with interest as to whether the play store can be easily side-loaded, and also if rooting and romming become an option. It'll be nice to have a cheap, but quality brand in the Android space to compete with the Asian megacorps and no-name outfits trying to float their elcheapo turds at this end of the market, but only if a full range of apps is available.
I also fear that Microsoft will kill or sell the X range all too quickly once their feet are properly under the table at Espoo.
Well, from what I've read in a different article, seems like Nokia's Androids will be different enough from stock that Android apps aren't guaranteed to run without a recompile, since many of Google's APIs won't be present.
In other words, it's an Android, but one that intentionally breaks compatibility with other Android devices and apps.
Nokia could save on the costs of development of the WP OS over the long run. And it doesn't appear that Microsoft is willing to put the money into their WP OS to create an ecosystem whatsoever.
I've had a Nokia WP (7.5) for over a year now, and when I first got it the thing seemed really promising... with the assumption that over time there would be improvements to the OS and that something, anything, would be done to the App Store (or Marketplace, whatever it is called.)
But now a year and a half later the app store is still crap. Windows Phone is completely ignored/overlooked by all of the major app creators.
Honestly there are some things that the phone does really well, but then the majority of the time it seems like it has been completely abandoned.
"Honestly there are some things that the phone does really well, but then the majority of the time it seems like it has been completely abandoned".
I have a Lumia 920 (WP8) and my wife has my "old" 900 (WP7). There have been barely any app updates for her, she wants to like the phone but once its renewal time she is probably going with android or iPhone because she wants to make sure she can use a fitbit and there does not seem to be a native WP app for it.
Makes no sense at all. If they are going to make cheaper phones, then make them with the Windows Phone OS. Now you have cheaper Nokias running Android and the question will be being asked, why don't the expensive ones running Android too?
Microsoft would do well to ditch Windows Phone and put their work into making an excellent Android device - I suspect having a slice of the massive Android pie will be better than having the tiny Windows pie to themselves.
"Microsoft would do well to ditch Windows Phone and put their work into making an excellent Android device - I suspect having a slice of the massive Android pie will be better than having the tiny Windows pie to themselves."
Exactly this. But when you've ditched multiple platforms already, just to go to MS WP, and fail miserably, you need a bit of an interim situation where you have 2 platforms, the new one everyone wants, and the old one which is your core strategy, all of this for ... reasons.
Then, the corporate language will evolve, during the coming year, to converge to Android only, and WP being, you known, legacy ...
> Microsoft would do well to ditch Windows Phone and put their work into making an excellent Android device - I suspect having a slice of the massive Android pie will be better than having the tiny Windows pie to themselves.
While I think that would be a good thing, it would not be be good for Microsoft. MS already have a history of dumped mobile platforms: WM6.x, Kin, WP7. If they dump WP8 then they will lose all credibility in mobile. People may buy Nokia Androids and not care too much, but only if they are cheap enough. Then, just like other cheap Androids, they will not spend money on apps and MS services. They will not 'invest' in it because it may become another dumped product.
The OEMs, those making the other 10% of WP phones, would also defect. They are more likely to make real Androids than MS nearly-Androids (unless they too are bunged a $billion). Then they may try Android other things or even ChromeOS and Linux.
"Microsoft would do well to ditch Windows Phone and put their work into making an excellent Android device"
That seems unlikely - Microsoft have a substantially more secure, efficient and powerful OS than Android in Windows Phone. This gives them significant advantage in the corporate world which is one of Microsoft's key targets...
I wonder if there's any chance they'll produce a Here maps for (generic) Android. The ability to get mapping and routing without a data connection is something Google maps is sadly missing, and most (all?) of the decent full-blown satnav replacements are too expensive for my infrequent usage requirements.
navfree has decent maps (from openstreetmap.org) and can be made to work on even my quite feeble small form-factor droid although it is by no means slick and the ui is a little odd.
The permissions, as is becoming sadly commonplace for android apps, are absurd: it wants to read my contacts list? Will that help it work out where I am?
Hehehe. Microsoft has pulled one on Google.
Google will have to keep working on Androids lower levels, Microsoft was already making money on the patents, and now Microsoft will replace the high end Googly bits with the stuff that is on WP too.
Essentially, Microsoft is still reaping the benefits of owning a closed source OS, but with somebody else paying for the stuff OEM's won't buy from Microsoft anymore.
If Ballmer planned this, he's brilliant. If he planted Elop in Nokia to make this work, he's out of this world.
Or maybe it's damage control:
Knowing that Nokia is headed, at least in part, towards Android, and will bring unwelcome comparison and competition to WP, Microsoft had to buy Nokia to control the future, to kill Android on the Nokia platform.
Just my jaundiced view of the whole saga.
Hopefully the phones will fail big time and then all the "should have gone Android" commentards will STFU.
Trouble is, this isn't the kind of Android they were referring to, so even if these Nokia Forked Android phones fall it still doesn't answer the question of what would have happened had Nokia launched "true" Google Android devices.
"still doesn't answer the question of what would have happened had Nokia launched "true" Google Android devices."
Easy - you would have had your every move monitored, read and profiled by Google.
Not to say that the same won't happen with Nokia and Microsoft, but I feel a lot more confident about not having my emails read by them.
But what is the advantage of one of these "reduced" Androids, if you and I can buy a bloat free Moto G quad core "proper" Android with a gig of RAM for the same price?
The Nokia badge?
Sorry, but they really need to OUTDO current, as you call them, "landfill Androids" to win in this cut-throat business.
Don't get me wrong, I was a BIG fan of Nokia, but they really backed the wrong horse in Microsoft.
Orlovski FAIL.
"Later, when Microsoft wanted to sell it off"
I still to this day do not understand even a glimmer of the logic behind that. When they flogged it to SCO in 1987 Windows was a piss poor character based "graphics" shell on top of a piss poor monitor program called DOS. Yet they kept that pule of dung in preference to a protected memory, fully pre-emptive simultanious multi user multi tasking OS where they could have shoved a decent graphic shell on top of X windows or even rolled their own Apple style. Un-fucking-believable. And it took them until Windows 7 in 2007 - 20 years later - to come up with something as reliable. If anyone ever wanted to see just how dingbat bloody clueless Microsoft can be that would be Exhibit A.
"a Google-phone crammed with Google apps and services and plastered with Android widgets, looking like a child has tipped several different jigsaws onto a glass table"
LOL - Whereas a collection of squares on a black table is so much better! Glad to see the author still knows who butters his bread.
…it risks becoming the Aga or Zimmer of technology industry - a brand trusted by old people, but not used by anyone else.
Wut?
Aga is a brand fetishised by rich people of all ages. Zimmer is a brand required by people whose legs don't work too well (many of whom happen to be elderly, I will grant you). The vast majority of people can't afford the former, and don't have any use for the latter.
A better example might have been Cliff Richard: there's no reason young people can't buy his records, they just ... don't.
Damn' straight the punter knows the difference between a "subsidised" phone (i.e. one that comes with a contract to pay monthly for a minimum time) and one that you actually get to buy outright. And if they don't, the sales staff will spend time explaining it to them. Because not doing that would seriously jeopardise their trading license.
That £70 price tag was for an unlocked, SIM free 520 from Amazon a few months back (other places actually managed a little cheaper). No hint of a carrier subsidy. The price still bounces between that and £90 with no ongoing commitment.
I can very easily believe management at Nokia were unaware they were almost giving the stock away ;)
Nokia were complete idiots for dumping Symbian. Symbian was the first truly multi-tasking mobile OS, and invented the concept of an App store long before the iPhone was even a twinkle in Apple's eye. Nokia dumping Symbian was the reason I switched from Nokia to Samsung. I had been a loyal Nokia customer for over 10 years. The latest and last Symbian phone was actually very cool, if they had carried on with that line they would be in charge of their own destiny. Switching to Android now makes sense but it is far too little too late.
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