Nokia N9: the World's Most Underrated Smartphone? 176
jrepin writes "Eighteen months ago, Nokia announced a smartphone unlike any other it has produced before. It was a proper smartphone, one that looked miles away from previous Nokia phones: it was sleek, modern and simple at the same time. The hardware was pretty modern, too; no underpowered processors with severely limited RAM issues to be seen here. And, it runs on an operating system that Nokia had announced dead months before the phone's announcement. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Nokia N9."
This... is Zombo Com... (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Zombo Com!
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Damn Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
They've ruined Nokia. I loved my N900 and was planning on buying the N9 for both my wife and I, but then they shot Meego in the head. I'm OK with Android, but really loved having full GNU/Linux/X access on my phone.
While Ubuntu has made some mis-steps, I still am greatly looking forward to running Ubuntu Phone on my Galaxy Nexus.
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Android + Root + BusyBox Pro + BotBrew give a really decent experience that you might like.
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia killed Nokia, Whilst they may have made products that appealed to you specifically, they were failing spectacularly in the wider smartphone market. Staying on the same path wouldn't have improved anything, they needed a major overhaul. I'm not saying that the MS deal will save them in the long term but clearly something had to change.
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia killed Nokia, Whilst they may have made products that appealed to you specifically, they were failing spectacularly in the wider smartphone market. Staying on the same path wouldn't have improved anything, they needed a major overhaul. I'm not saying that the MS deal will save them in the long term but clearly something had to change.
Had problems deciding if I should mod you up or respond, but here goes... It's true they had to do something, but they actually already did now and then. The N9 for example was different and people liked it; so they did not sell it to people or make a new model out of it. They where already doing things, but they killed everything that could have saved them.
What really killed Nokia was the belief that years of good sales where due to them being so damn good. Internal competition combined with that attitude caused them to stagnate. "This is what they want, so we'll just keep doing the same thing over and over again". It's a perfect example of how middle management can kill a company...
So will MS phone save them? How could it? Phone manufacturing is outsourced, operating system is outsourced... The only thing left is what killed them in the first place. They might get something to work, but it will never be the same as before.
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Phone manufacturing is outsourced, operating system is outsourced...
Apple also outsources phone manufacturing, and it's not killing them.
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Nokia has always had the capacity to build great hardware. Towards the end of their reign less and less of the devices where that great though. I would go to the Nokia store to pick my phone and they would have 50 models that where pretty much the same, just different covers. Still
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
I have a N900 as my daily phone and I have yet to see any phone that comes close. I can (and do) use the touchscreen with a small-tipped stylus for greater accuracy, the hardware keyboard is the best I have ever used and I love the openness and hackability.
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However, after using it for 4 years, it's still far too often clunky, being too slow to
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Nokia N900 was AMAZING - Sure it had it's issues to be used as a phone, it simply wasn't polished properly - but that was a real proper geek style smartphone, complete with QWERTY.
I loved it's debian based. The only phone i've REALLY wanted in the last decade or so until the N950 which turned out to be justa developer phone. :(
Then they dropped the production despite demand being high
Auction prices for used N900s were same as new phones when they were last available for sometime.
N950 if sold to public i'm s
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
I think you missed the GP's point entirely, there are tons of locked-down "toy computer" phones out there, the N900 was a handheld PC that you could run anything you want on.
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libreoffice.
(Or MS Office, assuming you had the source code. I guess you could probably do it through Qemu and wine if you really wanted)
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I forgot, was the the camera where the ads used "simulated images" or something? It was so good that they dare not show it on TV?
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I forgot, was the the camera where the ads used "simulated images" or something? It was so good that they dare not show it on TV?
If you knew anything whatsover about cameras, you'd notice that Nokia wasn't the first (or last) company to use professional cameras instead of the crappychips in cellphones for their advertising.
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Funny how Apple *ONLY* uses iPhone cameras when they are showing off the iPhone camera. Truth in advertising, what a strange concept.
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Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah because someone who's looking for a full GNU Linux mobile would be very interested with Windows Phone.
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I assume you belong to the Anonymous Trollers...
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Sadly, I do see a lot of people who use that word with rather mundane products all the time. I think that with people under 30, "awesome" means what everyone else calls "slightly more than adequate". As in a lunch menu item being "awesome", the new song is "awesome", the improvements of DX11.1 over DX11 is "awesome", etc.
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
That's an awesome summary of the situation.
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It's the dog's bollocks!
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Butt-weasel-troll-creature. Is that sort of like manbearbig?
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On-topic in what regards? The article talks about the N9 and you about some Lumia 920. The article is talking about a full blown linux running on the mobile device, while you talk about a crippled version of a crappy OS. If you're not an advertiser, you fail at basic reading skills.
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When you compare a brand new device vs a years old one it looks like shilling and MS loves to shill. The iPhones have never been near the high end of pixel density. They like to claim that, but it has just never been true. Even an old HTC Rezound beats the iPhone and that Nokia you are talking about.
How exactly is 60hz amazing? I think that is pretty standard.
I believe you like your device, I just think you are being a bit unfair comparing it to such old devices. I just don't see myself buying into anyone's
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I just don't see myself buying into anyone's Walled Garden much less the MS version.
And that's fine if that's your choice. I'm talking about the hardware, and that the OS itself doesn't suck at all.
And I have a free copy of Visual Studio for Windows Phone, and can side load any app I want to develop myself (and I do). So it's not *entirely* walled garden from my perspective.
But my point was that nothing "ruined Nokia". It's good, solid hardware, with a decent OS, that deserves to catch on at least as muc
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In that case you can claim the iPhone is not a walled garden. 99% of the software people want to sideload is not compiled by them. Nor will I pay protection money to be able to run my own code.
The OS still does not run skype properly because of design decisions, I call that suck.
I think by ruined Nokia they mean it is going out of business and Elop is why.
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Quit lying, dumbass. The world doesn't end at the US border, and Korean phones were way ahead of Apple. [engadget.com] (That's 333 PPI in 2008, in case you can't do the math yourself.)
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Maybe because
I cannot speak for other phones.
Why I didn't care, (Score:5, Interesting)
21 Months ago Nokia announced that my digital purchases were no longer available for me to use. This is why I never cared for the N9.
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otherwise meego would be running on more nokia devices instead of windows, and you'd still have support.
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I'm not sure if I can blame Elop about this.
Nokia announced that they were closing the NGAGE market and replacing it with the OVI market in October 2009, it was mentioned there was going to be a migration process and that by October 2010 the NGAGE website was going to be closed and purchases transferred to the new system. Elop started as the CEO for Nokia in September 2010 and by that date Nokia had enough time to prepare a migration process. The fact that they never worked out a transfer process and all pu
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I knew it was imaginary property just like my Steam purchases, or any other digital purchases I have made. But that doesn't mean I will have to deny myself the option to get it if I like it. And then be angry with a company and never deal with them again if they stop supporting something before a time I could think to be reasonable.
It really is a pity it was killed (Score:5, Informative)
I own one, and it really is very nice. It's too bad Stephen Elop intentionally refused to have it sold in most major markets; I guess he wanted his precious WinPhones in people's pockets instead.
Where-ever it was sold however, I hear it did very well among enthusiasts such as myself. The UI has been marveled about by non-geeks when they've got to play with mine.
Re:It really is a pity it was killed (Score:4, Informative)
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They are illegal to sell, and ultra rare, with mabey around 400 of them existing in the wild.
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Stephen Elop needed his company to focus on the product line. He wasn't interested in selling a few million extra phones that would divert the transition. Once they decided MeeGo was a dead end, he had to face tremendous resistance from both employees and customers who didn't think it was a dead end. Look at the lead article.
I love the N9. N9 was really cool. MeeGo was cool. I wish Jolla nothing but the best with Sailfish. All that being said, Elop did the right thing for Nokia.
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Elop did the right thing for Microsoft.
For Nokia, not so much. If they were ready to acknowledge that they couldn't go on with their own separate phone OS any more, they should have bitten the bullet, embraced Android, and done what Nokia do best - good hardware with good antennae.
Instead they were sold the pipe dream of remaining special and recapturing the market, which they were all too eager to buy into. A shame it was a tar baby. Microsoft will pick over the corpse of their corporation for the juicy bi
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. If they were ready to acknowledge that they couldn't go on with their own separate phone OS any more, they should have bitten the bullet, embraced Android, and done what Nokia do best - good hardware with good antennae.
Elop considered that and approached Google. Google was massive successful with Android, and didn't want a lead horse, like they eventually got with Samsung. They weren't offering Nokia anything outside the norm. Switching to Android would have meant directly competing with Asian manufa
Re:It really is a pity it was killed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Assuming that article is true, it is a flat rate of $250m. And no they aren't close to paying back the funding from Microsoft. That went out the door in restructuring costs.
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Just stop assuming Elop is lying, the board is full of fools and the other executives are to scared to say the truth. Just assume everyone is telling the true story.
The anti-Elop crowd are the people who have to postulate a weird conspiracy. My position is rather natural. Smart people handling a terrible hand, as best they knew how. Mistakes yes, but horrible stupidity and criminal conspiracies, no.
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The graph isn't right. The sharp falloff in sales starts happening 2 quarters earlier before the burning platform menu.
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The market is growing very fast at that point. Tomi is claiming there was a loss of marketshare as a result of Elop not just a decline in sales. But that is not where marketshare starts to decline.
Q2 2010 | 39%
Q3 2010 | 33% | -6 | -15%
Q4 2010 | 28% | -5 | -15%
Q1 2011 | 24% | -4 | -16%
Q2 2011 | 16% | -8 | -33%
Q3 2011 | 14% | -2 | -13%
Q4 2011 | 13% | -1 | -7%
Q1 2012 | 8% | -5 | -38%
Now even if you mean sales you are cutting it to early. Feb 11, 2011 Elop's memo hits. By Feb 11, 2011 all 1Q2011 phones are
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Just remembered a very good chart of marketshare from the time:
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4ec2c5a6eab8ea105200001b/chart-of-the-day-android-share-of-smartphone-operating-system-market-nov-14-2011.jpg [businessinsider.com]
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I don't see any evidence that the Windows OS has been harmful to Lumia. Were that the case, that the OS were subtractive there would be a good aftermarket in loading Android on Lumia and reselling them, which doesn't exist.
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I'm just playing with a new Stellarium port http://thelarge.org/stellarium-n9/ [thelarge.org] (which is awesome) and few days ago I installed a new version of Rawcam http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=85512 [maemo.org] . Many apps t
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As a Finnish guy who has been following Nokia since the 90s, yes I do have a pretty good idea.
The important part with enthusiasts is that the enthusiasts are early adopters and often developers. And I'd say that they can recognize a slick UI when they see one, and so can the rest of the population.
Re:It really is a pity it was killed (Score:4, Insightful)
do you have any idea what a marketing or sales Exec VP hears when he or she hears this ??
it translates to drop this dog as fast as possible
Don't be an idiot. N9 is popular with enthusiasts because it is Linux based and well spec'ed. I was eyeing it too.
It never became "recommended" to normal users for the simple reason that Nokia announced drop of MeeGo OS about the same time as the N9 was released.
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It's not well specced at all, though. It's got a pentile screen and a slow (even at the time of release) CPU, and the 3G speed is quite slow as well. Oh, and wifi and bluetooth share the same antenna and can't be used at the same time. The 1 GB of RAM is nice, and the polarising glass that makes the screen readable in sunlight is fantastically nice, but available on other Nokias as well, even their Windows phones.
It does look pretty, though, and the UI is something of a novelty (but not much better than the
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Because selling Windows Phones is working out for them real well, right?
The enthusiast crowd itself isn't enough to sell anything, but when you have a product with mainstream AND enthusiast appeal, you're in good shape. Enthusiasts tend to talk to mainstream users, and having people "in the know" tell their less savvy friends that this phone is good helps it out, particularly if it's something that actually does appeal to them already.
The inverse is also true: having enthusiasts tell people that something s
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going to an all windows shop was the biggest mistake nokia ever did. It might end the company.
Stephen Elop needs to never work as a corporate officer ever again.
Was TFA hosted on an N9? (Score:5, Funny)
Because if so, it is the world's most overrated server.
Re:Was TFA hosted on an N9? (Score:4, Funny)
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Surprisingly Competitive (Score:5, Informative)
According to communities dominate brands by Tomi Ahohen [blogs.com], the poor N9 and the outdated Symbian are expected to outsell the great savior, the Lumia Windows Phone 8 at Nokia this quarter. Not too shabby.
I would keep the N9 on my resume.
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And speaking as someone who uses a Symbian Belle device every day, Nokia *finally* got it right. Immediately after they killed the thing and drove all possible developer interest into the dirt, the schmucks.
Not underrated at all (Score:5, Informative)
The N9 has actually been rated pretty highly by people that managed to get one, and it's done really well in the market for a phone that got absolutely no corporate support at all from Nokia. Elop sent it out to die, and it didn't.... which has only made the Lumia's sales performance look bad in comparison. (Not that the Lumia's sales performance needed any help to look bad.)
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Agree - love mine, and they sold really well for the short time they were available. Yes, it has bugs - but mainly because they fired the development team before they had a chance to fix the bugs.
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As a former n900 owner and a current n9 owner, I still kinda like the previous interface better. And I really miss my physical keyboard. Such a shame the N950 had such a small release. But yes, I've been happy with both, and that's all I've ever heard from owners.
As a US N9 User... (Score:5, Informative)
I love the phone. It has some rough edges in the UI, but overall emotion = love. I have not felt that way since I got the Apple iPhone 2g. For the record I've used Android 2.3.5, 4.0 and iOS up to 4 as well.
What it does that your phone does not:
When not in a pocket or face-down it always shows the time. Always. This does not drain the battery at all.
Around the time are basic notifications - VM, facebook message, facebook notification, missed call. and there's a app for battery percentage.
My battery will last two whole days. And it completely charges in ~2 hours. Topping it off in a 1/2 ride to work in the car will keep the battery from going below 50% every day.
The swipe interface is good. You get 3 columns so swipe from the edge left/right between. Notification Feed (Facebook Twitter, RSS, etc) with weather at the top, a scrolling app icon list, and your running apps screen which shows 4 or 9 apps, which live-updates the screen. Swiping down from the top edge kills the app.
The top bar (battery indicator, WiFi, connctivity) etc is tap-able and you can change the state of what is on it. 2 taps to change your ring profile. (Android and iPhone are jarring because you have to pop to home and you have no idea if your app will be left running or killed)
All messaging services use the same messaging UI.
The phone never resets (my android did it a lot and iPhone did it occasionally)
What I don't like about it:
Some of the UI is layout less than optimally. For example in the dialer, if I bring up the number pad in-call I can't change speaker/mute without dismissing the number pad.
When reading items from my feeds list (in the application - like facebook) sometimes I get reset to the top of the list.
Lack of awesome apps. For the most part all your major services are supported by the phone and/or are free plugin download.I don't use many apps because the phone already does so much.
When calling voice mail, it shows you your voicemail number that you have to click on, rather than dialing it immediately.
What I wish:
I do wish for a dual core. it only does 720p video, and barely at that. Once in a while I'll get a force-close message but the app recovers by the time you get your finger over the button.
A better dialer UI. It's not a bad UI. It's just not "optimal".
I really like this phone and I look forward to trying Ubuntu's phone when this one dies.
Forgot to add (Score:3, Funny)
Unlike an iOS5 user, I have working maps. With traffic.
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Are nokia maps still updated for n9?
I know they're still updated for my symbian phone and I've been eyeballing a used N9 as my next phone when this one eventually dies.
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Yup. The app itself isn't as powerful though. Basic navigation (pedestrian, car and mass transit), maps, and city lens are available.
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I've had maps with traffic since iOS 3. There are dozens of apps on the AppStore.
I wonder... (Score:1)
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Since we started asking more from the phone. Manufacturers work hard to give us long lasting batteries but we also want big screens, fast processors, GPS, more memory, LTE and the kids want seven dancing writhing home screens.
Anyway, I don't have a problem plugging in the charger at bedtime...
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The N9 uses a clever low power mode on the AMOLED for the standby clock, which adds about 1 mA to the power drain. It's negligible. iOS could do the same, true, but no current iOS device, as they all use LCDs.
Nokia is the new, old Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, Steve Jobs was ousted by Apple's Board of Directors. He was replaced by, John Sculley, a proper CEO. Sculley had convinced Apple that he would sell a computer like a bottle of soda. He, of course, was wrong as were the following CEOs. It was only when Apple was selling at $12 a share and Apple was dead did the board bring back Jobs, his vision for the long term and the Next OS. The rest is history.
Nokia is repeating the mistakes of Apple. The Nokia board bought into the Elop burning platform. Never mind that Nokia was on the verge of a great break through in their adoption of a Linux based OS with a world class framework, Qt, to back it. Elop doesn't have the vision or the technical prowess to pull Nokia back from destruction. He is the captain of the Valdez. His oil rig is still burning and spewing oil. Maybe, just maybe, when Nokia is all but dead and irrelevant, a technically savvy CEO with a vision will come in and turn around Nokia. Until then, the N8 was my last Nokia phone.
Meego is an excellent OS platform. Had Nokia proceeded to stay the course, the N10 would have been a must have product.
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Sculley had convinced Apple that he would sell a computer like a bottle of soda.
No he didn't. Scully had convinced Apple that the right path was high margin gradual shrinkage to a niche product line. He was focused on the Newton and the PowerPC project as the direction forward.
Never mind that Nokia was on the verge of a great break through in their adoption of a Linux based OS with a world class framework, Qt, to back it
No they weren't. If they were they board wouldn't have changed horses that radic
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1. Sell N9.
2. Profit.
3. Make cheaper versions of the N9 and migrate those to the low end market.
4. Profit.
5. Keep improving MeeGo or whatever its name is today.
6. Release new top end phone.
7. Go back to step 1.
Yeah really difficult.
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Yes really difficult. They can't sell enough N9 to pay for their fixed expenses they don't profit they bleed. They can't get the N9 in quantity. They don't have a follow up strategy. There are only 4 MeeGo phones through 2014 and they get buried under fixed costs.
Instead they commit to Microsoft get subsidies that cover the restructuring costs and they get another bite at the apple. The people who run Nokia are not stupid. If your analysis involves them being too stupid to do the obvious perhaps you
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"They were Dead wrong" is begging the question.
i don't know what you mean by "missing". DEC was well aware PCs were eating their lunch. They had a PC division:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100 [wikipedia.org]
and later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStation [wikipedia.org]
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Maybe they were paid to squash it?
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No. Elop is more like the captain of the Costa Concordia, as in, 'hey let's take this ship off-roadin' onto those rocks over there, just so the folks on the island can get a really good view.
Just one missing thing (Score:3)
Physical Keyboard. The screen is superb, the swipe interface is the foundation of so many new mobile user interfaces, and have good memory/cpu/base OS. But the keyboard... thats what i miss from the N900, the one it have is not bad for being a touchscreen one, and you have a pretty translucent one for console in Fingerterm, but still not there. Too bad the N950 was just for (few) devels.
Anyway, could have a future, Nitdroid [nitdroid.com] enables to dual boot with Android (or run natively a few android games with Apkenv [maemo.org]), and probably will be available for it Firefox OS, Sailfish and Ubuntu mobile.
N9 = Amiga + 20 yrs. (Score:3)
The existence of things like the Nitdroid project and Jolla/Sailfish, plus the fact that N9 matched or possibly outsold the Lumia crud despite the massive disparity in corporate support, shows how good the technology was. The last time I saw this was...ooh it hurts to type this name...the Amiga. Commodore went under, not due to poor demand for the Amiga, which was profitable to the very end, but due to massive losses in PC clones that led them to credit default with their suppliers. They couldn't get par
I have an N9 (Score:3)
It;s wonderful. The interface is the best that has ever been made. Sad to see innovation die with Nokia.
N9 vs. iPhone (Score:5, Funny)
The N9 would smash an iPhone the way the Hulk smashed Loki. Pick it up by its leg and fling into the floor, left, right, left, right, leaving iPhone-sized dents in the floor, then grunt "Puny phone" and lumber away.
Of course the iPhone, being a god, would get up, shake itself off, and go on about its business plaguing the earth.
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It could probably be used as a hammer to break an iPhone. A Gorilla Glass vs. whatever it is that Apple uses match would be interesting...
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It could probably be used as a hammer to break an iPhone. A Gorilla Glass vs. whatever it is that Apple uses match would be interesting...
That would be Gorilla Glass vs. Gorilla Glass. Which was resurrected and promoted by Corning because Steve Jobs asked them to. [wired.com]
N770, N810 Lines (Score:3)
It's not underrated and here's why. (Score:2)
Nokia is stupid.
We are beyond Symbian. When the world left Symbian behind, Nokia just didn't get it. And they were left behind.
They then tried their own day late, dollar short version of Linux. Enormous mistake. The world left them behind. That and the $800 n-series phones. What a mistake.
Now, it's either android or ios. Nothing else is relevant. And before you say, windows phone, the dude who uses that still wears camouflage cargo shorts. Irrelevant.
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It's not entirely about operating systems, it's about user interfaces and internal competition.
When Apple effectually revolutionized the smartphone industry, Nokia and Microsoft said it'd never succeed and they ignored it for the longest time.
Google, who had Android based on by then suddenly antiquated phone UI concepts (Blackberry like) thought "that's the future" and revamped the UI in less than a year. As a developer I remember anticipating 1.6 with software keyboard to put on the e reader I was making.
S
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That and the $800 n-series phones.
So now we have 800€ Samsung flagships, 1000€+ iPhones...
Not underrated, just not sold (Score:1)
my N9 rules! (Score:2)
I bought my N9 before the Nokia-Microsoft deal and have been happy with it, though disappointed that it was a product dead-end. I had an N900 before that and was happy with that too.
Nokia selling up? (Score:2)
Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013 [yahoo.com]
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Not happening. Especially not to Huawei. Why would they need Nokia's assets?
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Consider Sony buying Ericsson's mobile business (so to speak). The name had vaue.
Re:Fuck Nokia and Fuck Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares about this obvious fucking advertisement?
Fuck dice.com and their dumb corporate partners.
If it's an advertisement, it's timed rather poorly. Unless it's supposed to gin up sales on used phones.
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I wish it was an advertisement ... I'd buy one. They way it's looking right now, I'll probably buy a Nexus 4 if I can manage to get my hands on one. If Ubuntu gets a decent Linux phone out soon enough without screwing it up I might buy one of those.
Re:Fuck Nokia and Fuck Phones (Score:5, Informative)
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Carriers didn't want Nokia Meego phones mainly because of [currently Microsoft] Skype. Had Nokia reconsidered their embracement and evangelism for Skype this might have been a deciding factor with the carriers you suggest as the problem.