Sunday 29 May 2011

Nokia, where were you when we need you?

Apparently, Nokia is on a selling spree. First of all, they ditched the Ovi brand to "integrate" into Nokia for better branding purpose; secondly, they ditched Symbian but still remain focus on developing further with Symbian ^3 (many existing employees were either re-assigned or being redundant); thirdly, they are still committed to single core cpu although they used to be forerunners in the mobile phone market; fourthly, they are going to integrate Windows OS onto future Nokia branded mobile phones; and lastly, Nokia will be committed to Meego although it is all done and dusted ( so far, only the rumoured Nokia N9 will be the only device to support Meego and most probably be the only one for real).

I am sad. From the very first moment that I have learn about Nokia back in the days of the 3310, I have to say that Nokia was the front runner of mobile phones. They have been quite popular with new devices being launched quickly and much better each time. Unfortunately, things have not bee bed of roses lately.

The integration of the Ovi product especially the prized Ovi maps is a highly sort after product by many. It is not uncommon if the Ovi map will be integrated into Bing map or replacing Bing map all together. Many people are concern about the effects of Nokia buying into Microsoft products and I am not really sure where Nokia is heading off to. I do believe that if Ovi map is going to be integrated into Bing map, it is highly likely that the Ovi brand will disappear and so does the Nokia brand. As a result, it will just be referred as "Bing" map. What a shame if that is going to happen.

Symbian has been a front runner with majority of Nokia devices since it was born. We had the Symbian s40v6, s60v3, s60v5 and now v3. No doubt that there was progress in it but it was insufficient to take on-board other OS like Android and the iOS. You can forget about multitasking when using Symbian s40 for a start and the common problem with Symbian OS complaint is that the system is slow and buggy. No doubt that Nokia engineers have been addressing the problem as the day goes by, I don't really think that Nokia engineers should be releasing a new OS without addressing the problem with the existing OS.

Let's take Symbian s40v6 for a change. It is the latest incarnation from Nokia and it has improved on many aspect - It has quicker response compared to the earlier versions and have better UI. However, it does not support multitasking until now as it looks as if multitasking is only reserved for s60 and above. I don't get it though. Perhaps Nokia should have improved on the s40 and enable multitasking so that they do not need to diversify their resources!

At this moment, the s60 has shown its age. Having said that, I was really happy to use the E72 as the firmware was stable. Unfortunately, the capability of the E72 was hampered by the mediocre hardware. I am quite disappointed with Nokia in that aspect. Fast forward from that, they have then released the Nokia N8 a few months ago and now, the X7 and E6. If you really have a look from a user perspective, the same cpu from the N8 was reused!!! What is going on with Nokia? They should be progressing and not stagnant! It is 2011 now and not 2009! Surely Nokia will be able to release a mobile device with better hardware support, isn't it?

I am really sad with Nokia because at this moment, they are not releasing mobile devices which include better hardware inside the device. Just have a look at the N8. The only thing which is worth commenting about the device is the in build 12MP 720p Carl Zeiss wide angel digital camera. Apart from that, the Symbian ^3 PR1.2 is buggy and slow; it hangs all the time and battery life is bad when you have just one application running at the background. Having said that, Nokia have promised an upgrade of Symbian ^3 OS to PR2.0 but it has yet to materialised even though it was a talk of the town for many months since last year!

Just have a look at Google's Android OS - Although it is not as flexible as the Symbian counterpart, it is fast and less buggy!! Can Nokia match the Android OS in performance wise? I am not going to discuss about the iOS because it is the most stable OS I have ever come about. I am not ditching Nokia but they should concentrate in one thing and not releasing a new product before fixing the existing problem! Bada from Samsung is also good but lacking the X factor from Android and the iOS so nothing could be said about them. Besides that, the OS is only being installed on limited handsets.

So, Nokia, we need some assurance from you!!!

6 comments:

Joshua Lopez said...

They have long lost the market. They have sunk. It would take them a whole world of damage control, rebranding and marketing to struggle back to the top.

ぜるもう said...

In addition to that, I am not sure what Elop is trying to do with the alliance with Microsoft and focus onto the Windows Phone rather than Symbian.

Joshua Lopez said...

Whatever that Nokia has done with their latest birth of phones have been below expectation, very disappointing.

Instead of rectifying this major issue, they went into laptops and it seems to have failed even before it was brought to the world at large. Shameful & Rather Shocking!

ぜるもう said...

If I remember correctly, they have only released the Nokia Booklet 3G which was manufactured by Compel. It runs on an Intel MID cpu which users will not be able to upgrade the onboard 1GB memory as it was soldered onto the motherboard. Users, could only upgrade the hard drive to an extent. There is only one thing good about the Nokia Booklet 3G - The battery life of a single charge last for around 11 hours for me when I was using it mainly for surfing the internet and word processing. It is quiet as the cpu is passively cooled. It is still selling on ebay for around £300 which is too much to ask for these days...

Joshua Lopez said...

When i was at Nokia, they revealed to us pictures and features of their upcoming laptops but seems to me it never got released.

ぜるもう said...

The problem with Nokia is that they will never materialise anything!!! I am quite upset with the delay of the release of Anna OS...