The Nokia Thread

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Kobayashi: Aug 13, 2004; by Nyc_Tattoo

They may also be used to bludgeon people. I played with a few the other day and those things are bricks.

# ? Oct 13, 2010 00:57

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 09:43

HPL: Aug 28, 2002; Worst case scenario.

American Jello posted:

Yeah this is more than likely a third (business, personal) phone that sits in the center console of the Bentley so they can get tickets to that sold out opera at the last minute.

This is my theory. They use an iPhone 4 for everything and leave the Vertu sitting around for show. I mean even rich people like playing Angry Birds.

# ? Oct 13, 2010 00:59

Nut Bunnies: May 24, 2005; Fun Shoe

Ouch. http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/14/nokia-n8-review/

# ? Oct 14, 2010 17:23

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

Captain Charisma posted:

Ouch. http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/14/nokia-n8-review/

Why ouch? Seemed like a fair review. They barely went into how awful the keyboard is.

edit: oh the score. Yeah, that is pretty bad.

Dr Tran fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Oct 14, 2010

# ? Oct 14, 2010 17:46

HPL: Aug 28, 2002; Worst case scenario.

Captain Charisma posted:

Ouch. http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/14/nokia-n8-review/

I think 5/10 is a bit harsh, but the reviewer did make some good points like saying that this phone would have been king of the world if it had come out last year. I think the N8 shows that Nokia still has their game hardware-wise. If they put an 800x480 or better screen in it, it would be pretty much on par with anything else out today. I also agree that Nokia probably needs a clean break and should jump straight to MeeGo for their high-end phones instead of trying to drag Symbian kicking and screaming into the future.

Of course, knowing Nokia and the way they work with operating systems, MeeGo probably isn't anywhere near prime time yet. If they pooled their resources into one operating system, MeeGo would probably be very competitive with Android and iOS. The clean break would also mean that developers would have a fresh, clean slate to work with with a modern OS designed for phones with modern features instead of having to worry about things like supporting 320x240 screens and T9 keypads.

HPL fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 14, 2010

# ? Oct 14, 2010 17:46

Nut Bunnies: May 24, 2005; Fun Shoe

Dr Tran posted:

Why ouch? Seemed like a fair review. They barely went into how awful the keyboard is.

5/10 for a flagship/savior device? That's kind of lovely, especially with how glowing the review was for the hardware portion. It's like the hardware is a 9/10 and the software is a 2/10

I understand why they don't go with Android, but Froyo on this thing would be amazing

# ? Oct 14, 2010 17:52

WorldWarWonderful: Jul 15, 2004; Eh?

I'm still gonna get it, and still gonna love it.

Also that Engadget review was balls. Then again, why would you trust any reviewer that puts "even DSLR-like image quality" in a review for a freaking cell-phone.

# ? Oct 14, 2010 18:09

HPL: Aug 28, 2002; Worst case scenario.

Captain Charisma posted:

I understand why they don't go with Android, but Froyo on this thing would be amazing

I'm hardly a fan of the current state of Nokia, but I don't think they should be messing with Android. They have a potentially strong option with MeeGo, it's a matter of following through with it properly and fostering developer support instead of letting it become like Symbian where any software of note these days is mostly coming from Nokia itself. As blatant as Microsoft's approach is to getting apps on WP7(offering outright to pay developers to port popular apps), I think it's the right way to go to jump start a platform: get a good roster of killer apps happening so that people won't be leaving behind their favorite apps by switching platforms.

# ? Oct 14, 2010 20:31

PuTTY riot: Nov 16, 2002

WorldWarWonderful posted:

I'm still gonna get it, and still gonna love it.

Also that Engadget review was balls. Then again, why would you trust any reviewer that puts "even DSLR-like image quality" in a review for a freaking cell-phone.

I did think it was interesting that they said Nokia sells more cameras than anyone else in the world.

# ? Oct 14, 2010 21:16

CAPS LOCK BROKEN: Feb 1, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

WorldWarWonderful posted:

I'm still gonna get it, and still gonna love it.

Also that Engadget review was balls. Then again, why would you trust any reviewer that puts "even DSLR-like image quality" in a review for a freaking cell-phone.

"This Engadget review brought to you by Apple and AT&T"

# ? Oct 14, 2010 21:45

ZShakespeare: Jul 20, 2003; The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

According to the MeeGo wiki (who knows how up to date that is) They are currently a month behind schedule in beta. The netbook edition was supposed to hit this month. If the delay between netbook and handset editions is similar to where it was for 1.0, 1.1 (the "ready for public" version) will be out in January.

e: I like how the screenshot of the media player in the engadget review makes it look like the phone is straight out of 2005.

# ? Oct 14, 2010 23:14

WorldWarWonderful: Jul 15, 2004; Eh?

I just got a new job, when's this baby coming to Canada :mad:

# ? Oct 15, 2010 02:01

Nut Bunnies: May 24, 2005; Fun Shoe

Peven Stan posted:

"This Engadget review brought to you by Apple and AT&T"

I love when people say this, especially in response to a review that pretty much says that the camera on this thing is so good that it makes you criticize the iPhone 4's, which for a few months was the current gold standard

It's like, come on dude. Put some effort into it.

# ? Oct 15, 2010 03:17

CAPS LOCK BROKEN: Feb 1, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

Captain Charisma posted:

I love when people say this, especially in response to a review that pretty much says that the camera on this thing is so good that it makes you criticize the iPhone 4's, which for a few months was the current gold standard

It's like, come on dude. Put some effort into it.

I was joking

# ? Oct 15, 2010 03:23

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

200th Poster posted:

e: I like how the screenshot of the media player in the engadget review makes it look like the phone is straight out of 2005.

If you rotate it, it becomes a cover flow ripoff. And now I notice all their screenshots are in portrait mode. Weird.

A little off topic, but is there a way to default to the mobile version of engadget when opening a link? It seems they always force you onto the full site.

edit:
I usually don't like Orlowski articles, but this one was a surprisingly good read
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/14/nokia_dilbert/

Dr Tran fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Oct 15, 2010

# ? Oct 15, 2010 08:22

Nut Bunnies: May 24, 2005; Fun Shoe

Peven Stan posted:

I was joking

Enough people say that seriously that I don't really think about it that way :shobon:

# ? Oct 15, 2010 13:00

Godzilla07: Oct 4, 2008

Dr Tran posted:

A little off topic, but is there a way to default to the mobile version of engadget when opening a link? It seems they always force you onto the full site.

Depends on the OS. It defaults to the touch site on iOS and Android, and it defaults to the mobile site on BlackBerry too if I recall correctly.

# ? Oct 15, 2010 14:02

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

Got one in my hands, if anyone has questions.

LiquidRain posted:

My #1 question that I haven't seen in any review: What happens when you receive an SMS?

This depends on where you are.
If you're in an app, a little notification pops down from the top and goes away.
If you're on the homescreen, the classic messaging notification pops up and you have to press a button to make it go away.
If you have the notifications widget on, it cancels the classic pop up.

# ? Oct 15, 2010 21:06

LiquidRain: May 21, 2007; Watch the madness!

Do the pop-ups have a message summary at all, or do I need to open up the messaging app? (I'm assuming the threaded Conversations app can replace the built-in messenger as the default SMS?)

# ? Oct 15, 2010 22:02

Septimus: Aug 30, 2003; Wasabi? Why not!

Dr Tran posted:

Got one in my hands, if anyone has questions.

Wow us with some pictures taken with its camera! I would love to see some macro stuff if possible.

# ? Oct 16, 2010 01:32

Discussion Quorum: Dec 5, 2002; Armchair Philistine

Mine arrived Wednesday. It's my first smartphone (and first Symbian phone) so I'm not sure how much I can really compare it to. The web browser is pretty bad (mobile sites look fine, but complex sites like Slashdot... Slashdot the UI) and the keyboard really is crap. Oh, and despite being WebKit, the browser doesn't support canvas, SVG, or ontouch events (= no iOS/Android-oriented web apps). But hey, um, Flash Lite!

I like the looks, the reception (it's a great phone), Ovi Maps (though the review's complaints are valid), and the camera. How the last two perform over my weekend in NOLA will determine whether this phone stays or gets sent back for a Nexus One.

LiquidRain posted:

Do the pop-ups have a message summary at all, or do I need to open up the messaging app? (I'm assuming the threaded Conversations app can replace the built-in messenger as the default SMS?)

The in-app popup tels you who the message is from and shows the first few words. It's pretty non-obtrusive and I like it. I don't recall what the notifications widget shows.

Septimus posted:

Wow us with some pictures taken with its camera! I would love to see some macro stuff if possible.

The camera was one of the big selling points for me. I'm going to New Orleans tomorrow and will be taking plenty of pictures (or at least, that's the plan).

Discussion Quorum fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 16, 2010

# ? Oct 16, 2010 03:11

PuTTY riot: Nov 16, 2002

Still no Pandora?

# ? Oct 16, 2010 07:24

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

American Jello posted:

Still no Pandora?

Still no 99% of the popular stuff on Android/iOS
I saw Angry Birds, but I haven't installed it yet.

Requested macro:

And here's the Griffith Observatory

# ? Oct 16, 2010 19:26

Star War Sex Parrot: Oct 2, 2003

This article about Nokia is both massive and awesome. It's filled with some pretty ridiculous quotes from senior management. The Register sums it up:

quote:

You may have had your fill of Nokia analysis and features, but I'd like to draw your attention to one more - one that's very special. The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat has published a report based on 15 interviews with senior staff. It reads like the transcript to an Oscar-winning documentary where the narrative thread is held together entirely by the talking heads.

The report is very long on detail and short on opinionising - and for those of you fascinated by technology and bureaucracy, something quite interesting emerges. What we learn is that the company's current predicament was fated in 2003, when a re-organisation split Nokia's all-conquering mobile phones division into three units. The architect was Jorma Ollila, Nokia's most successful ever CEO, and a popular figure - who steered the company from crisis in 1992 to market leadership in mobile phones - and who as chairman oversaw the ousting of Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo this year.

In Ollila's reshuffle, Nokia made a transition from an agile, highly reactive product-focused company to one that managed a matrix, or portfolio. The phone division was split into three: Multimedia, Enterprise and Phones, and the divisions were encouraged to compete for staff and resources. The first Nokia made very few products to a very high standard. But after the reshuffle, which took effect on 1 January 2004, the in-fighting became entrenched, and the company being increasingly bureaucratic. The results were pure Dilbert material.

For example, have a look at the section which starts here, with "A novel application or feature has been dreamed up that should end up installed in a phone a year from now. This is the beginning of a long day's journey to nowhere."

Innovations produced by the R&D department and designers could no longer be implemented quickly - one example should have taken just a couple of weeks, but instead took months to be incorporated into phones.

Executive managers interviewed note how the result was a large number of indifferent products.

Another consequence was also predictable. It's what political writers call the most morally corrupting effect of bureaucracies: nobody takes responsibility. With the three divisions covering their own backsides, nobody wanted to make the long-term strategic investments necessary to keep platform software up-to-date. This resulted in the Symbian user interface being neglected. Nokia had developed a touch screen UI called Hildon, which became Series 90, starting in 2001 - and that should have been the basis for Nokia's iPhone competitors today. But it was canned in 2005.

"We produced a quite enormous number of rather average products. It would have been smarter to make fewer - and better," says one interviewee.

The masterplan was ripped up by Ollila's successor, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, in 2007, but by then the units had become enormously wealthy fiefdoms, and many of the problems remained. Lots of people could veto a decision, but the leadership required to drive one through was absent. Nokia's product pipeline all but dried up in 2009.

Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Oct 17, 2010

# ? Oct 17, 2010 00:51

CAPS LOCK BROKEN: Feb 1, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

Further proof that dividing your company up and pitting each department against each other in some bizzaro social darwinist competition only makes it less efficient and able to tackle the big problems.

# ? Oct 17, 2010 01:22

Discussion Quorum: Dec 5, 2002; Armchair Philistine

edit: Actually, I'll just cross-post my Amazon review.

I wanted to like this phone so badly. It looks like it was designed by brilliant engineers, only to be taken away and ruined at the last minute by a horde of clueless pencil-pushers.

This would be an amazing $350 phone. The form factor and build quality must be seen to be believed, and it does the basics very well (HDMI/composite out is a really cool feature but useless for me). But for the same price as the latest Android/iPhone? No way.

The camera, while excellent, has a huge Achilles heel: no lens cover, and no included lens cloth. What good is a Zeiss Tessar lens when it's covered with fingerprints and pocket fuzz (and just you wait until it gets scratched!)? Also, you can't silence the shutter tone (great for weddings!). The touchscreen can be buggy after unlocking via the slider - half the time you can't swipe from one home screen to the next, or it goes out of order.

The default GMail app can't archive. No touch events/HTML5 for the Web browser, which is a moot point because even moderately intensive sites like Sladshdot slow the phone to an unbearable crawl. No multitouch at all besides pinch/zoom in the browser and photo viewer. I described my feelings on the phone to my girlfriend, a teacher, who compared it to a C student who gets A+'s on his exams but never does his homework. That's fairly apt, I think.

I went by Best Buy and bought a Galaxy S. The difference is night and day. I'm calling Nokia for an RMA tomorrow.

Discussion Quorum fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Oct 18, 2010

# ? Oct 18, 2010 04:49

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

I'm wondering if there are Made in Finland vs China build issues again. I can't replicate buggy touchscreen after unlock.

My N8 has an option to silence the capture tone.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 05:30

Discussion Quorum: Dec 5, 2002; Armchair Philistine

My N8 was indeed made in China.

Wonder if the camera tone is a country issue - are you in the US? I can choose a different capture tone in the camera settings, but even with the phone set to "silent" it plays the click/film winding sound.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 06:23

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

Mine is a trial from UK. Made in Finland.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 07:07

CAPS LOCK BROKEN: Feb 1, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

Morris posted:

My N8 was indeed made in China.

Wonder if the camera tone is a country issue - are you in the US? I can choose a different capture tone in the camera settings, but even with the phone set to "silent" it plays the click/film winding sound.

I think phones sold in the US have a mandatory camera noise.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 08:22

big mean giraffe: Dec 13, 2003; Eat Shit and Die; Lipstick Apathy

Peven Stan posted:

I think phones sold in the US have a mandatory camera noise.

Fortunately at least with Android you can root and just delete the .ogg file. There has to be some sort of equivalent for this phone, right?

# ? Oct 18, 2010 14:12

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

big mean giraffe posted:

Fortunately at least with Android you can root and just delete the .ogg file. There has to be some sort of equivalent for this phone, right?

Change the product code to UK firmware with NSS and reflash.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 17:36

ZShakespeare: Jul 20, 2003; The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

I signed up to attend a Nokia QT developer conference in Vancouver. Everyone gets an N8 development kit. Hopefully it includes a phone, It'd be pretty pro if I could use it for my software engineering class project. Typically every just makes iPhone apps for it.

# ? Oct 18, 2010 19:30

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

200th Poster posted:

I signed up to attend a Nokia QT developer conference in Vancouver. Everyone gets an N8 development kit. Hopefully it includes a phone, It'd be pretty pro if I could use it for my software engineering class project. Typically every just makes iPhone apps for it.

I signed up for the one in LA. I'm not sure they're gonna give away dev kits like they did at CTIA, but I sure do hope so.

If you need more incentive to develop for Symbian, there's a $250000 grand prize and
$10 million dollars total in prizes to be had. More info here: http://www.callingallinnovators.com/10M/

# ? Oct 18, 2010 20:53

EssEssEssErr: Jul 14, 2007; W: "What're you rebelling against, Johnny?"
M: "What've you got?"

Totally contemplating leaving Sprint and getting an iPhone 4 on contract then selling on eBay for assloads in order to fund an N8 purchase. Oh Symbian, how I missed thee.

# ? Oct 19, 2010 01:39

HPL: Aug 28, 2002; Worst case scenario.

More Nokia-related drama:

"Symbian boss steps down effective immediately"

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/19/symbian-boss-steps-down-effective-immediately/

# ? Oct 19, 2010 20:17

ZShakespeare: Jul 20, 2003; The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!

Dr Tran posted:

I signed up for the one in LA. I'm not sure they're gonna give away dev kits like they did at CTIA, but I sure do hope so.

If you need more incentive to develop for Symbian, there's a $250000 grand prize and
$10 million dollars total in prizes to be had. More info here: http://www.callingallinnovators.com/10M/

Yeah but there's no way in hell I'm going to drop cash for a phone I'm never going to use in day to day life for a remote chance to win a boatload of cash. I'm not a betting man.

# ? Oct 20, 2010 16:13

Dr Tran: Dec 17, 2002; HE'S GOT A PH.D. IN
KICKING YOUR ASS!

Symbian is dead. Long live Symbian
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/10/symbian-is-dead-long-live-symbian/

# ? Oct 23, 2010 18:54

HPL: Aug 28, 2002; Worst case scenario.

All these changes and announcements are a big reason why I won't be buying a high-end Nokia any time in the next two or three years because anything they put out in the near future will be transition pieces, not finished products. Management seems to be doing the right things(Qt, future support for handsets, cleaning house), but the problem is that at this point, anyone can say anything, and it sounds good, but nothing has actually been done to the product yet, so while the future has the potential to look bright, I'm not going to be investing hundreds of dollars into stop-gap handsets that will be tomorrow's red-headed stepchildren.

# ? Oct 23, 2010 19:35

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 09:43

sweat poteto: Feb 16, 2006; Everybody's gotta learn sometime

I'd like a nokia s60v3 mapping/gsp app that supports gpx import. Anyone know of one? Google maps is great and all but I really need to import a route overlay.

# ? Oct 24, 2010 01:00

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