Sorry for the delay in writing a story about this, but here we finally are: Nokia’s MeeGo (or Maemo or whatever it’s called this hour) is getting its successor. Yes, MeeGo, the short-lived but beloved platform running on the unicorn phone, the Nokia N9, will continue onwards in a slightly different form. Its new home? Jolla – a company formed by former Nokia chief operating officer Marc Dillon, who was the principal engineer for MeeGo/Maemo at Nokia since 2006.
Jolla is more than just a software development house. The company will design, develop and sell MeeGo-based smartphones, with a team consisting of many former Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo engineers, including the brightest minds from the MeeGo/Maemo community.
“Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story,” Dillon told The Verge in a statement, “Together with international investors and partners, Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo talent to contribute to the next generation smartphone production.”
I’ve been told that Dillon has been in stealth-mode with Jolla since autumn 2011, and has already been in contact with manufacturers about building smartphones. In other words, the company didn’t just get founded this weekend; it’s been in operation for a while longer now, outside of the prying eyes of gadget reporters.
Jolla will continue the tradition of a truly open Linux stack on smartphones, just like Maemo used to be. I’m currently playing with my brother’s Nokia N900, which is a nice device hampered by truly awful software (Maemo 5 is… Frustrating, mildly put), but luckily, MeeGo on the N9 is a heck of a lot better (my brother has an N9 as well).
Jolla will build upon the work of the Mer project, which would indicate that it’s going to use Qt/QML and HTML5. The user interface won’t be the same as that of the N9, nor will the hardware look anything like it (those are Nokia products, after all), so it’s going to be interesting what they come up with.
In any case, there’s a hell of a lot of experience in this project, and thanks to the Nokia connection, these people will probably know how to work the industry. I’m very, very curious what they’re going to come up with.
I wish luck, keep the project alive.
I’m not sure what exactly you find frustrating or awful about Maemo in particular, but I know my biggest issue with the device was a hardware thing. I don’t know what the hell made Nokia think using a resistive touchscreen on such an otherwise advanced device would be a good combination. I honestly think if they had gone with a ten point capacitive screen and the appropriate drivers in Maemo, a lot more people would have loved using it.
I do love MeeGo, and I’m very happy to see those ex-employees continuing the project. I know it’s too much to hope for so soon, but a CDMA MeeGo phone would be awesome, and I’d be the first in line!
I personally prefer resistive screens. There’s environmental factors (capacitive screens are not fun to deal with in the cold) and there’s biological factors (I can’t manage to get any precision with capacitive screens ’cause I have fat fingers… my nails work fine, though.)
Other than that, I agree. A new (supported!) MeeGo phone would be a godsend.
This. And robustness. And the use of a stylus to draw chinese characters.
Don’t forget that Nokia was not an american-, not even a european-centered company. They always took a global point of view when designing a device (hence their excellent reception, multi-band radios, and localization).
That was part of the reason they dismissed the iPhone. They couldn’t imagine people would accept a phone you cannot use with your gloves on. Or that people would type on a cramped software full keyboard instead of a T9.
Edited 2012-07-11 12:48 UTC
I have a N900 and I think this is the best tablet and phone on the market currently. Actually it’s a computer. I find Maemo superior to MeeGo and resistive superior to capacitive. If there was something to improve on the N900, it’s not the perfect touchscreen or the perfect software, it is the screen. Blacks are not as black as on the latest phones. The N900 would benefit from Clear Black Display or something similar. Other than that I have yet to find a phone half as useful as the N900.
Really great development. Hopefully together with Jolla and Plasma Active, Mer will be represented on both handsets and tablets.
Will it gain any traction at all (aka having good commercial software and dropping support right after release) – NO.
Will I still be buying it – HELL YES.
Nokia N900 owner here, just can’t find any phone to replace it with (Android can go f–k itself). Was looking at Dell Venue Pro, but WP 7 wasn’t that good (I hope WP 8 will fix that).
Edited 2012-07-10 00:10 UTC
Exactly everything that I was about to say, word by word!
I too was thinking same about Wafflez’s comment, wanted to reply him, then saw your comment
Android can go f**k itself
really wonder why can’t they build a phone which behaves like a computer, which they already are!! A Nokia N900 owner.
you must be one of the few owners out there that haven’t had their n900 microusb port break. It’s a very serious widespread problem that turns a very expensive phone into a brick (or annoying battery swapper which takes FOREVER to boot and still manages to lose a bunch of settings).
Not sure what you mean by traction. Enough users to support their efforts is already traction. They don’t need to be Nokia #2 in scale of their production and sales. They need to be profitable and find their users (and they will). Open Linux devices are in demand, even if it’s not the top world market.
Edited 2012-07-10 01:06 UTC
They don’t need any “traction”. Why do people think you have to make an absurd amount of money to keep a company afloat? Not everyone needs/wants to be Google or Apple.
As a matter of fact, with digital manufacturing (3D printing) around the corner, I foresee lots of small companies and even individuals making all sorts of electronics in the not so distant future without giving a damn about “world domination”.
Creating good phone set hardware in low volume is costly in 2012. “Traction”, in other words high volume sales, reduces cost per unit and allows companies to make a small profit. I don’t think they’ll be able to touch Nokia’s original price point for unlocked hardware.
That totally depends on how big your operations costs are. I build and sell professional workstations, match Dell, HP or Lenovo prices (beat them in performance, which is really easy these days) and earn quite a happy living. No need to become a millionaire.
These guys will have 100 employees by the end of this year. They don’t need to sell millions of phones to feed them. They might as well aim for high quality at some higher price.
Edited 2012-07-12 23:13 UTC
Software wise I disagree with your comment.
It is relatively easy to create a simple application that, don’t know, access to a web service, asks for the weather of some location and returns the information in a fancy way; but it takes a lot of hands to create something like Photoshop, Microsoft Word or Skype.
Creating a platform or a complex software is something terribly complex: You need to have developers, testers, graphical designers, project managers, marketing people, translators, etc. etc.
I think the “app stores” give the common people the opportunity to publish their software and earn some money with that, but also “app stores” are the responsible of the poor quality software we see in them.
Sad thing is… particularly Skype maybe even isn’t the best model to follow, original Gtalk win32 client always seemed to me a lot more pleasant.
Also much easier to install and grasp by “computer illiterates” (when guiding them via long-distance phone call, to quickly set up “free” VoIP). And it certainly had much more nimble team than Skype, also proportionally (taking into account its limited, in comparison, functionality – still, there were leaks of some internal versions with support for POTS calling; really too bad it was abandoned)
Similar with Word – with how many people seem to use it, something between Wordpad and Abiword or TeXmacs (or, even better, LyX – maybe typical documents would look better) could probably suffice…
Since I was speaking hardware wise, there’s not too much to disagree…
But since you insist: they will be using well established application frameworks for the market to develop apps. In the same way Photoshop is not developed by Apple or Microsoft, apps for MeeGo won’t be developed by Jolla Mobile. So, sorry, I don’t get your point.
It’s all about the apps.
It helps to know what you are talking about, you know. Lack of mainstream apps was only a small part of what took the company down. The built in apps alone were better than the third-party-only alternatives for Windows. There was a much wider selection of feature-complete, professional quality apps for BeOS than for GNU/Linux at the time, where everything was still at version .001 back then. Granted, the Linux devs’ focus wasn’t on mainstream desktop computing in that era, but Red Hat and Corel were working to change that.
No, it was a combination of Hitachi and Compaq being bullied out of loading the OS onto their machines by Microsoft, and Jean-Louis Gassée’s greed, that ended Be’s existence.
As for MeeGo, there is a wealth of apps from the FOSS world that are a recompile/repackage away. I certainly never had an issue finding the right apps when I ran MeeGo on my netbook.
Well, for me it was not a question of apps. I really liked/like the N9, my problem with it still is that even today I’d have to pay around 380 Euros to buy one here unlocked, and around 300 Euros with a 2 year contract (well, to be correct, there’d be one for 60 Euros with a 2 year contract but with a monthly fee of 58 Euros). So come on. I mean my current Android phone was 30 Euros with 10 Euro/month fee with a 2 year contract. I also like Aston Martins, but I live from a salary you know.
I’m right there with you. I had saved up for a couple of months for that N900 I had back in 2011, and within a month of using it I was crestfallen to find that the constant network issues due to T-Mobile USA were making it unusable.
If I wanted to change phones right now, my options would be to pay the $250 ETF to get out of my contract early and pay another $200 to start a new contract with a discounted phone, or else buy a phone outright. The only phone I would consider right now is a Nexus (and that’s with some strong reservations about Android’s reliability), and it’s nearly $500 without a contract discount.
Yeah, I’m keeping this one for a while.
The Galaxy Nexus is going to be offered at $350, unlocked, carrier-free, direct from Google.
Unfortunately that does me no good at all. Google is only selling the GSM version in the U.S., and besides at $350 I’m better off waiting until my contract is up and grabbing it for ~$150 from Sprint.
Where do you live? Are those 380 for the 64GB model? That’s a very good price…
I remember trying out BeOS R5 (still have the CD), and being disappointed with the applications available.
Sure the operating system was nice, but even the Amiga had better multimedia software at the time.
It definitely isn’t. Of course, that’s what big corporations want you to believe, but most people buy/install apps for the sake of it, without even needing them (and abandon them in a matter of weeks, if not days).
If you need your phone to stay connected, you need a handful of apps *every* OS out there already provides.
If you’re a kid and need lots of games, that’s another story, but most other “apps” are perfectly replaceable by a webapp that already exists for even dumbphones.
I disagree. There a lots of apps on my phone that I use on a regular basis. With almost all of them, I could the web version, but it’s much quicker/convenient to use them as apps.
Tripit for instance. The app autosyncs, but it also works offline, which is critical when I’m traveling internationally. I mean sure, chances are there’s some wifi (might have to pay for), and I can go through the trouble of logging into the airport wifi, log in to trippit, and check travel details. Or I could pull up the app with one press of the screen, and my full itinerary is there.
Same with Kindle. There’s the cloud reader, but having an app sync up books and such is much easier (and more convenient).
Webapps on the other hand always require connectivity, and are generally slower to bring up (logging in, etc.) and aren’t as nice to use.
I didn’t say ***YOU*** can’t enjoy your apps. I’m saying that the idea that “it’s all about the apps” is bullshit.
Lots of people never use an app on their “smartphones”. Millions download them at the beginning, then never ever touch the app store again. All of these customers will buy anything that:
– is good looking
– is being properly marketed in a fashionable way
– has a big screen and a good camera
– has a good battery life
– is easy to use right out of the box
(probably in that order, but maybe not)
I’m not even sure apps come right after…
Just copy-pasting what I wrote on another forum/site…
Currently run Android on a Galaxy Nexus, but I still have my black N9. Personally, I think Meego-Harmattan is/was the most elegant and natural feeling of all the smartphone operating systems, so I was glad hearing this bit of news about Jolla Ltd the other day.
It’s gonna be a struggle, though. Meego is open source, but as far as I know, the “Harmattan” half of it is still property of Nokia. This probably means (unless I’m mistaken) that the Jolla guys won’t have rights to the Swipe-UI, an integral part of Meego-Harmattan, and the most beautiful feature of the N9, in my opinion.
There’s also the entire matter of getting developers and investors on-board. If, as rumored, they’re leveraging the work done on Meego and the Mer Project, then their foundations are pretty good ones I think; Linux, no VM, QT/QML and HTML5, proper package management, etc. Developing on them should be way less cumbersome than it is to develop for Android. Problem is integration and marketing. The N9 had great native apps, and some good samaritans made sure to contribute third-party apps whenever they could, but most developers in the mobile space (especially those that cater to enterprise) will want to monetize their wares somehow. For that to happen, they either need to see significant market penetration or money up front, I assume.
Then there’s the issue of hardware. Open development and a FOSS software stack are one thing, but convincing chipset OEMs to release specs and documentation is just as hard today as it was during the MS dominated desktop era. In fact, it’s probably harder than ever thanks to humanity-phobics like Nvidia and Broadcom having significant presence in the mobile arena. Licensing issues will also go some way in hampering the project, the vultures/lawyers will make sure of it. And then, if/when they finally release a Jolla powered handset, it’ll be a case of surviving the patent wars and pressure from various carriers.
Don’t get me wrong. As a Linux and BSD user, I really want truly open, non-bastardized platforms like Jolla and Firefox OS to succeed (will definitely throw some money if I see them on Kickstarter), but I have a habit of jinxing stuff I’m enthused about (WebOS, Playbook, Cosworth engines, hub-center steering), so I’ll keep my expectations in check till we see something more concrete.
Nonetheless, best of luck to the Jolla team.
Edited 2012-07-10 00:52 UTC
Who said they are in the open hardware business ?
They are a business and probably direct customer of the chipset producers. They would get the documentation they need, but probably under a NDA.
Yeah. Hardware is still going to be locked in binary blurbs. Too many patents and commercial secrets.
Edited 2012-07-11 12:46 UTC
Although I do get the feeling that for the people working on these products the secrets are hardly secrets, they know how the other companies do it.
I think it is management which makes a business desicion to be secretive about it.
Why would they? There is no reason to think all ideas are obvious. They are not.
Yes, that is what the patent people keep telling us. But there are really only so many way to do something.
Patents are only part of the problem. Novel ideas or code are sometime not even patented, because a patent is public and may give away ideas to competition to improve on.
Well I think you get the loon rhetoric award for the month.
Nvidia won’t bend over for Linus’ “open source or gtfo” unstable abi so it makes them have a medical fear of humanity.
Your prize is in the mail. It’s a shitty desktop.
Feels like I just got showered in unicorn sauce.
I think it´ll be hard outside geeks.
They´ll have to please the carriers. They could do things like integrate the carriers´alternative to Whatsapp (Joyn) like the N9 does for Skype.
They also should hire some Meltemi guys to have models from the low-end to the high-end.
I don´t care very much for the numbers of applications so if I can get some key ones and the price isn´t very high i will probably buy one (and there is always OpenMobile’s ACL).
Edited 2012-07-10 02:10 UTC
Honestly I don’t get why these proprietary networks like Watsapp and etc. pop out like mushrooms here and there, when there is standard XMPP and tons of servers for it.
yes, tell that to your aunt and all your friends: “Let´s use the xxx server”. It´s for them easier than simply installing an application and providing a telephone number and email.
They use different e-mail servers, and don’t even in nightmares imagine that they can’t send e-mails to users from other e-mail servers. Yet with IMs this kind of prehistoric computing age situation is a norm for some reason. XMPP is not different from e-mail in that regard, and the argument that “the aunt can’t get it” doesn’t really stand.
Edited 2012-07-10 07:32 UTC
That is one of the reasons I don’t use Facebook and others. It’s the same problem. They are all silos.
I see you’ve stayed too long in the geeksphere. E-mail is a hurdle for non-geeks. It basically is two lines of configuration with a semi-standardized format in The Netherlands (pop.< provider >.< top level domain > & smtp.< provider >.< top level domain >), but I see a lot of people struggle with it. Most of the time it has been set by someone else, many aeons ago. When they need to do that again, they have no idea what the settings are and what their account credentials were. (“Did I need to keep that letter?”) It simply worked all this time.
Asking people to think about their IM server setup is forgetting that only a small percentage of the world is geek. Whatsapp is simple. Just install it. Follow a few questions and bam! you’re connected to people you care about. All very convenient and for the low, low cost of $2 per year. Should Whatsapp fold, you simply move on to the next easy solution.
When it comes to XMPP, AFAICT, no app is braindead easy and takes care of the mundane connection settings. More importantly, nobody who anybody gives a hoot about is on an XMMP enabled network.
I have more connections to non-geeks than geeks and I have given up on trying to get “normal” people to move to “the better solution”. Where they go, I need to follow. At least if I don’t want to sit on a technologically pure but uninhabited island.
With your logic you need to follow people on all these walled gardens, registering everywhere. I gave up on that, and told people if they want to connect – let them use XMPP (which supports federation). Watsapp is just one example, there are many others and it’s just not practical to register on every one of them. In the old days e-mails weren’t much better. Users of AOL couldn’t send mail to users of Compuserve and etc. This idiocy is long gone with e-mail. Yet with IMs it’s pretty hard to get rid of it.
Edited 2012-07-10 14:45 UTC
DNS.
email uses MX records (albeit for s2s comms), XMPP uses SRV Records (for c2s and s2s)
you’re asked for your credentials for your XMPP account (Let’s call it “FooBar IM” or “Google Talk”). Your client looks up the service based on the domain portion of your account through DNS.
Go ahead, try this:
dig SRV _xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com
[snip]
;; ANSWER SECTION:
_xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com. 900 IN SRV 20 0 5222 alt4.xmpp.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com. 900 IN SRV 20 0 5222 alt2.xmpp.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com. 900 IN SRV 5 0 5222 xmpp.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com. 900 IN SRV 20 0 5222 alt1.xmpp.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com. 900 IN SRV 20 0 5222 alt3.xmpp.l.google.com.
[snip]
We have the technology. It’s up to clients and providers to use it.
As noted above, modern clients can detect most settings just from the user name (i.e. e-mail, or Jabber ID for XMPP which contain the domain for example) after connecting to the server. Try setting up an IMAP account in Thunderbird – it just takes a few clicks for the basic default setup. Same story with XMPP.
So it’s not the ease of use that drives these IM walled gardens these days. But possibly just greed and desire for domination over users (i.e. precisely the notion of not letting them to communicate with users from other servers).
Edited 2012-07-10 14:51 UTC
Just tell them to use their gmail account and presto. That’s not precisely “niche” and fully supports the XMPP protocol.
Not quite fully …there are sometimes some weird lingering issues with transports for example, or even with authorisation (when adding contacts using 3rd party servers).
And anyway, Google is sabotaging it a bit – they basically stopped developing, retired their very nice desktop client (while other Jabber clients are mostly so-so, in context).
OK. “Fully enough”.
Because no one has made XMPP easy and consumable. Sure, you can go on into a multi comment rant about how it in theory can be easy, but no one has done it, packaged it up, and put it on an app store.
That’s the difference between these theoretical innovations everyone goes on about, and people like WhatsApp actually going out and solving problems.
XMPP is almost a textbook example of having confusing branding. No one understands that shit, and anyone I’ve ever seen explain it does a terrible job at it.
Really those people who have no clue about what is a browser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ) don’t care about branding. They just want a good service. There are good XMPP clients. But the question was addressed to those who create walled garden networks (like Whatsapp) with inflexible clients and no federation. Why aren’t they using federated XMPP for their offerings? XMPP is a protocol, not a client or server. Those who create real services (and run IM servers) can create clients using it. Yet at this day and age they don’t and push the braindead walled garden approach again and again.
Edited 2012-07-10 22:27 UTC
Well decentralized messaging isn’t a new or interesting problem, yet XMPP manages to take it and make it insanely confusing.
Just because XMPP is a standard, doesn’t mean its a very good one. I’m all for the ideals XMPP supports, but its just not something I’d even consider wasting time with were I in charge of such things.
If you look at it this way, e-mail is also far from ideal (not secure enough, prone to identity spoofing, spamming and etc.). But since it’s a standard – the benefit of interoperability outweighs other things, and providers work on filters and other fixes for the flaws in e-mail design in order not to get into the walled garden mess again. May be XMPP is not ideal, but it’s the only common and open standard so far.
I’d much prefer someone comes up with an approach with clear improvements and then submit it as a standard. I just think it could use a lot more thought than currently exists.
Especially when inefficiencies translate into monetary costs I can’t blame some companies for being anemic about implementing them.
Google Talk uses XMPP. WhatsApp uses XMPP. Idiot.
It uses federated and standard XMPP and works with any XMPP complaint client. Allows you to communicate with any user from other federated XMPP servers. Bingo, that’s what’s expected from decent IM service.
Doesn’t use standard XMPP, doesn’t work with any XMPP complaint client, not federated. Doesn’t allow you to communicate with anyone except for users from Whatsapp. Who cares what they use inside, if their external communication is not compatible with anything. The result is a walled garden and proprietary network.
Edited 2012-07-12 16:45 UTC
But both definitely defeat the idea that “no one has made XMPP easy and consumable”.
No one needs to publicly announce what protocol they use. It’s good enough that we nerds know about it.
BTW, the fact that XMPP is used in WhatsApp helped a lot to implement a non-official client on the N9. I doubt they could have done it otherwise.
Edited 2012-07-12 23:33 UTC
Still what prevented them from using regular XMPP with federation? I see no technical reasons, only political. Normal IM services using federated protocol promote open communication. Walled gardens promote only themselves. Yes, Whatsapp protocol was reconstructed for N9, but if instead it was using regular XMPP, one could just use any client out there without efforts to unscramble custom changes. And the lack of federation defeats the purpose. Non federated XMPP while being XMPP is a wall. Facebook for example is not federated, even though it uses standard protocol.
Edited 2012-07-13 04:01 UTC
Google Talk.
It’s right there on every Android phone and every N9 too. Probably others.
You honestly don’t get something like that?
All right, let me explain… see, it’s hardly about the technology – more what network effects (the people, societal kind) tend to largely promote.
People care what their buddies use (which gives kinda random dynamics), not about openness.
Nearby you point out email, how XMPP works similarly to it – thing it, it’s perhaps too much like email, which auntie can really barely do – there is a notable (and frustrating…) shift of many people to communicating via FB or other social networks, and they don’t see a problem with it. They don’t even really seem have a concept of email as a network of separate mail servers.
(oh, and choosing exactly the same format as emails was not the best choice, it confuses people, they’re used to @ meaning email)
Existence of many XMPP servers is irrelevant to them – especially with small servers which constantly disappear, people don’t want to bother with such crap.
But you should care ( http://www.osnews.com/permalink?526550 ) even about “closed” XMPP – if Whatsapp essentially uses XMPP, they can as well open one day (three IM networks local to my country did that; not the by far dominant one which is a proprietary in every way monstrosity, and those three are largely abandoned, but still…)
Edited 2012-07-17 00:19 UTC
A large part of the world, you buy non-subsidised phones. And it is spreading (in France for example): people begin to realize they were ripped off, and that it is better to buy by themselves an unlocked phone, even if that means more money upfront.
i have used the N8 N9 and Lumia Nokia phones, the N8 has the best features, High Def camera, FM Transmitter (one of the best features) and large storage, but the symbian OS was a bit crappy, the N9 MEEGO OS is great and easy to use, but i missed the features of the N8, the handset was a step back in my opinion, and now the Lumia…..What a chunk of crap! it is glitchy and the navigation is awful. when you bring out your next phone, for it to be successful, it will need to have following features :
1. FM Transmitter – this is one of the smartest features of any phone. and a must for those who use the phone as a media player. in the car, turn on the transmitter and listen to your music while driving.
2. HD camera– at least 8MP at the very min 12MP preferable. phone photography and facebook are becoming a normal part of everyday life.
3. tough case / Waterproof – the phone must be durable and the technology is available and cheep to make phones waterproof so why arnt they? water is the biggest killer of handsets.
4. GPS and quality navigation software – this must be free to use once purchased otherwise people wont go for it.
5. large internal storage – 64gb min or expandable memory. once again a must for those who use their phone to watch movies or listen to music.
6. the most important a decent battery – nothing more frustrating than a phone that goes flat all the time, lets face it the N9 eats batteries.
7. Flash player, a must for internet usage.
8. plus all the usual bluetooth and stuff.
people are after a single product that does the lot, it has to be much more than a smart phone, its a music player, a pc ,a GPS for the car, and a memory stick all in one. and a quality look and feel is also a must. you might think this is over the top but it is what people want…..Quality
i guarantee if you can meet these specs, with the MEEGO os you will be on a winner
…Your thoughts?
Edited 2012-07-10 03:08 UTC
Flashplayer is not a must. Even Google plans to drop it from Android.
Thankfully Adobe has killed off development/support of their Flash player for mobile devices/embedded devices and Linux. Seeing as MeeGo is both Linux and an OS that runs on mobile devices there is a good chance (and again good) that won’t happen.
That’s interesting, everyone ive met with a Lumia loved their phone. It has a 96% satisfaction rating.
Maybe because there are just two kind of people who buy WP: Windows & Nokia employees
Possibly
Although I went into a Nokia store here in Ireland not so long ago, and once I asked about the N9, the guy in the shop’s tone changed, and suddenly a bitterness he had been hiding under the salesman speak came to the surface and he ranted about how Nokia gave up on a good thing (MeeGo) to replace it with “that Microsoft rubbish”. And he wasn’t going for the geek sale line either, he couldn’t actually get an N9 for me as they’re not officially on sale here…
The user satisfaction ratings for WP7 phones are actually pretty high. Windows 8 reviews for the most part have been negative which says a lot.
Nokia has more of a problem with marketing and convincing people to try something other than iPhone and Android. Verizon isn’t helping either.
http://wmpoweruser.com/yankee-group-find-att-nokia-lumia-900-custom…
“Yankee Group find AT&T Nokia Lumia 900 customer satisfaction very low”
Maybe different for those lucky guys who bought a Lumia on Amazon bundled with a free xbox?
Edited 2012-07-10 09:05 UTC
Yeah, no. Lumias have sky high satisfaction be it on Amazon, ATT, or Nielsen’s own findings.
There are some news about Lumia´s high return rates.
In fact the highest return rates in Nokia history.
The thing is that whatever satisfactions-rate you may come up as advertising method, its the number of sold phones and the profit you made with them that counts at the end of the day.
Just some days more and Nokia is going to publish the Q2 financial numbers. Prepare for the truth.
Edited 2012-07-10 10:55 UTC
Source? Because the two sides to the story don’t seem to mesh. There can’t be both sky high satisfaction and high return rates.
Given that Windows Phone have traditionally always had great satisfaction rates, I’d be interested in seeing how what you say is true.
WP7 has high satisfaction rates but it’s also possible that return rates are high due to some people expecting the same app selection that they see on their friend’s iphone.
Im still waiting for source
Source of what? My own speculation? It came from me.
It’s also possible that
note the word: possible
P.S. I own a Windows phone so don’t bother shilling to me. I really like it actually so save your breath.
Not you, on the commenter who I asked for a source initially. Relax.
As I wrote its very likely an advertising method.
Usually only a single digit percent of those who bought a Lumia care to give feedback, to participate at surveys or rate them in web formulas.
An example would be the 90% satisfaction-rate for Lumia sold in the Chinese market which was the result of only 16 people giving feedback at all (single digit % of the very less who bought the Lumia indicating that the whole “Lumia sells better then iphone in China” story is bs, just another advertising method).
I would not go as far to suggest that anyone, Nokia or Microsoft, would manipulate them. But I think hard-core fanboys, employees and partners[1], etc. may a bigger chunk of those who care to rate.
Or do you think all those who bring back there Lumia to the shops and get e.g. an Android as replacement bother to spend later time rating the Lumia?
I think hard numbers, like return rates or sells, are way more accurate then web formula surveys. Also cause the last time I did participate at such a survey it was enough to press the reload-button on my browser to vote multiple times as single person. Let alone that I did not even had to prove that I was using the product I voted for.
Just have a look at the Lumia sells and you get an impression how well it does in the market, how well its received and how satisfied users are[2]. That is not only more accurate but also what counts at the end of the day. When you do so also not forget that currently Lumia are very cheap (1 cent at amazon whereas it was 100 Dollar some months ago), do not forget the Lumia discount, the free xbox bundled with them or the millions of $ spend on advertising.
Soon Nokia will publish there Q2 numbers and then we have the hard facts. Expect the worst.
[1] A very big contingent of Lumia where given away to employees and ATT sales dudes for free. I think I would be satisfied with a free Lumia too but would be rather upset when paying hundreds of $ to realize some weeks afterwards that my shiny new toy is already outdated, unsupported and won’t get the super-great new Windows 8 all are talking about.
[2] A good satisfaction would mean people would suggest the Lumia to there friends which would increase sells. Those writing articles reviewing the Lumia would be satisfied too (or are they so different from “normal customers” that they get totaly another impression?) and would write very good reviews. Neither happened.
Edited 2012-07-12 08:25 UTC
I think in general, overall there have been high satisfaction rates with Windows Phone, naturally extending to the Lumia line. I question the wisdom of dismissing it as too small a sample to be statistically relevant.
And I don’t think I even specified China, and in fact, wasn’t even aware of that. A sample that small would be misleading, sure, but that’s the exact opposite of what I did.
I think this is starting to get a little too conspiracy theory-ish for my tastes.
I still think you should provide a source for the supposed “high return rates” you keep citing. I caution you though, I did a search for such a source and turned up nothing which led back to hard numbers.
In fact, there is actually an article in the UK quoting an Operator Exec saying that Windows Phone had the lowest return rates of all mobile OSes.
I think sales are just what’s most numerically convenient for you. Sales of Lumia devices have been growing Quarter over Quarter since they’ve been announced, and next week is expected to show that they grew again in Q2.
Here’s what I expect:
They will announce Lumia sales have grown (which all tea leaves point to that being true) and that their profit has fallen off of a cliff. That much is obvious. They’ve been on this trajectory since 2010 (Since before Elop was even a CEO long enough to have an effect)
All this means is they still have work to do. Doesn’t really say much about the Lumia line.
Actually, maybe it does. It says hey, the Lumia isn’t as strong enough a performer to offset the complete and utter collapse of Symbian sales.
Its a painful transition, but it’d probably happened with the Android, MeeGo, or anyone else. Look at the 2010/2011 figures and you’ll see just the dire situation Nokia was in. It was a full on nosedive.
Completely unrelated to Windows Phone or the Lumia series, and to say anything contrary is being intellectually dishonest.
So you’re saying that this number (in the tens of thousands) is statistically relevant when talking about millions of devices?
The Lumia has reviewed decently well, and most reviews point out shortcomings in Windows Phone, not something inherent to the design of the Lumia itself. These are things that have been known.
Sales, in particular the mobile sales channel, is a very complex beast. Smartphones hardly ever win on merit in this cutthroat market. Its a combination of a lot of things.
Yep, that is an awesome feature alright, but then again, many car stereos support bluetooth streaming which is even better, so it’s not a high priority for me. Works like the FM transmitter on my stereo except no interference and I can skip tracks, pause etc. without taking the phone out of my pocket.
Hmmm… 12MP? Really? For what? All it means is larger grains in an otherwise horrible quality photo. Any old 5MP Coolpix camera will take better photos than a 12MP camera on a phone. It’s not about the megapixels, it’s about the quality of the sensor, and current manufacturing methods dictate that a decent quality sensor is too big to fit in a phone.
Besides, how many pixels can you fit on a Facebook photo? Take it at 1 or 2MP, there’ll be less noise, it’ll upload quicker, and the end result will be the same size anyway. 5MP for example is already too many pixels to display on any normal monitor (yes, even HD), so why not use a 5MP sensor with better sensitivity, so you get better quality photographs in the pub (which is probably where the camera will be used most anyway). Going for higher megapixels on a phone is buying into marketing figures without any consideration for what you actually want.
Indeed. I’ve got an N9 on order at the moment, but I’m really gonna miss the week-long battery life of my E52. To be able to go away for a weekend and not have to think about bringing chargers and international adaptors is fantastic. But the N9 isn’t alone there – any phone with a big screen and fast CPU/GPU is gonna eat the battery. Nothing you can do abou it but make the phone bigger for a higher capacity battery. And the market doesn’t want that.
Having had my E52 for almost 3 years, I can honestly say I’ve used the Flash player about twice. The Youtube app can be launched from the browser for a much nicer viewing experience on webpages (as nice as it can be on a small screen anyway), and I can’t think of any other Flash content which I would want to access on my phone. Horses for courses though, some people can’t seem to live without Flash games and so on…
Edited 2012-07-10 07:51 UTC
How about using the N9 in similar way as you used your E52? I enjoy an E52 as well and it’s never online-by-default. Of course I uninstalled Whatsapp because it wanted my phone to be connected to the 3G network permanently, destroying its battery life (well, also because I hate the constant buzz of people disturbing with the most irrelevant issues). I just connect on demand. Current smartphones want to be permanently online and that must hurt battery life a lot.
I also plan to get an N9, but I’ll definitely won’t be keeping it online all the time. I bet it won’t be much much worse than the E52. (Of course the screen is a battery eater, but on AMOLEDs black themes and proper usage will help a lot).
[qHow about using the N9 in similar way as you used your E52? I enjoy an E52 as well and it’s never online-by-default. Of course I uninstalled Whatsapp because it wanted my phone to be connected to the 3G network permanently, destroying its battery life [/q]
Well, I sometimes have my E52 online constantly for getting emails, and still get 4-5 days out of the battery. Was never bothered with Whatsapp though – if I wanna chat I’ll use eBuddy or Skype, but like yourself, I’m not a fan of being *that* contactable.
So, no Liveleak, no Google video, no VEVO, etc? You know, it’s only Youtube that has videos…
Though “many” doesn’t really describe the situation accurately, people don’t replace car stereos all that often…
BTW those using smartphones in their cars do have some holder for it quite often, since it’s usually also a good GPS.
The N9’s camera is 8 megapixels, and unimpressive. The Lumia, from what I’ve seen, is even worse (despite having the same(?) Carl Zeiss lens). There’s much more to a camera than megapixels. The Galaxy III takes very nice pictures with 8 megapixels.
Spotify and other streaming services are taking over for local storage.
Battery drainage depends so much on use with smartphones. If you use all kinds of push sevices and stay connected to Google Talk all the time, it will drain your batteries a bit. Do the same in an area with flaky GSM reception, and the N9 with gulp down the battery juice in no time. Others will do the same, but YMMV.
As for Flash, it’s available for Meego but I haven’t bothered with installing it after reflashing the latest firmware. The sooner it dies, the better.
True. My Defy w/ CM7 and a vm_size set to 8k lasts a week in standby. However, I don’t think it would last two hours if I started to play.
Why such low vmsize? Aren’t apps crashing with this?
Sorry, the name of the parameter is vm.min_free_kbytes. I had to modify it because Maps (or only Navigation?) was crashing after I had used it for ~30 minutes. I googled up the problem, and according to several sites, the solution was to increase it from 1024/2048 to 4096. And so I did.
What’s great is that battery life increased from 4 days to 7 (less GC?). On the downside, Navigation now crashes after about 5-10 minutes.
Do you have any idea what’s the right setting for this parameter?
You must be spoiled by all those dumbed down phone OS’s. The only really frustrating things of the N900 are its lack of RAM and weak battery. The software is in the same league as Meego Harmattan, only much more open. You are in a process of change!
One problem though… Capital?
http://www.intomobile.com/2012/07/09/former-nokia-employees-respons…
“They’re backed by investors”
I think there are lot of investors out there who see the potential the N9 had and who think a MeeGo phone would bring enough money in to make profit with the investment.
Back then Nokia, while loosing marketshare, was still one itch below the top rating meaning a positive investment rating. They did only fall down to junk-state (“do not invest cause you will lose money”) once switching strategy to WP7-only and killing of everything else including there cash-cow.
Edited 2012-07-10 09:17 UTC
http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-gifts-meego-patents-to-jolla-startup…
Nice move on Nokia’s part.
*cough* this is what IBM should have done with OS/2 instead of letting it fade into obscurity.*
Nokia’s Back-Up Plan?
Would be nice if they could get Swipe as well.
That’s what happens when you use SlashGear as a viable source.
One way I see it is that the company is a nice way to pool Maemo 6 devs. Nokia managed to build a really dedicated team. Given a proposal to continue in the project instead of looking for a job overseas I think many devs didn’t have to wonder for long.
I see it as a semi official spin-off. The role for the company is to keeps the team together in semi self-sustainable manner. When the Nokia BOD finally comes to its senses after Elop fiasco, they will be a nice target to acquire. Of course if Nokia will exist by then, and if Samsung won’t get them faster.
Of course if the split went out in more hostile manner, Nokia can easily crush them with their IP.
I understand the geek appeal but MeeGo lost its window of opportunity. It wasn’t ready when it needed to be and Android is now an established brand.
There are no consumer selling points with MeeGo. All the benefits are for developers and open source fans. Sure it could pick up some weekend developers but the big game companies make decisions based on economics. Handset companies won’t care about it either. Why bother when Android is free? Hell a company like Samsung could probably get WP7 for negative dollars. It’s just not happening.
Sorry guys but the window closed on this one.
With this logic nothing new can ever be produced. It’s the mood of total stagnation. Jolla are right to innovate. They have expertise, they have previous accumulated effort (in Mer/Qt and open source community). Those who don’t want can stay behind.
Who said? Jolla already found partners amongst ODMs.
Edited 2012-07-12 04:04 UTC
ODMs dont have much to lose, they get paid either way.
Heads they win, tails Jolla writes off unsold inventory.
You know, come to think of it… what we can be certain of, is they have a lot of experience at missing targets.
And generally, from history, it shouldn’t surprise us if, once some players are properly established, then later efforts won’t fare so well (like it was with desktop OS)
Still, I’m looking forward to you having the same “let’s try new stuff!” anti-stagnation approach WRT Metro.
Edited 2012-07-17 00:05 UTC
I really hate having to agree with you.
Yes, of course. if you’re not a billion dollar company what’s the point?
Seriously, get it in to your damn heads that you don’t have to be a multi-national mega corporation to be successful.
Why? What changed since then?
The argument when Nokia was switching to WP was, that there is a demand for a 3th ecosystem. WP was not able to fill that demand. Its, what?, 7th ecosystem so small that Forbes and others to not even bother to split the CE and WP marketshares any longer.
Since then there was exactly no other system which took over, which was able to fill that demand. Maybe Tizen will, end of the year. Maybe Blackberry 10 will, beginning of next year, maybe WP8 will, end of this year OR maybe Jolla will end of this year. See, how all the alternates are expected to hit market the same time? See how none of them made it to the market since MeeGo got killed? See that the only alternate to MeeGo was WP7 and, rather then WP, it indeed could have filled that demand. Yes, MeeGo was ahead of time. That is lost now. Now its only on time.
Will be an interesting race to follow. I bet my money on Jolla but maybe Tizen or Blackberry 10 would do too. Maybe even more then one does just like for example Bada filled a demand. Its not decided yet.
Are you living under a rock? Android was a established brand last year already and some would say even before.
Customers see that different. There are reasons why the N9 sold better then Lumia even under that conditions.
You can say the same about Android and it would be as wrong. Only because it uses open source does not mean its only of interest for open source hackers. Give the N9 a try and you will notice how much it is target to the mass-market (no terminal except you activate the developer-mode, no filesystem-hierachy except you install 3th party filebrowser, no feature-blood except you install all kind of 3th party feature-apps and so on). In its defauylt configuration that device does target far less developers then average users.
For the same reason Samsung does Tizen. For the same reason people agree that there is demand for a theird ecosystem beside iphone and Android.
Samsung does WP7!![1] and offers phones running WP7 and they pay license fees like everybody else. But just like for every other WP vendor the Samsung WP does not sell. Hey, we are talking about Samsung. If Samsung cannot sell WP nobody can. But Samsung was clever enough to not put all on WP but also do Android. That is the difference between Samsung and Nokia, between success and failure.
[1] http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/omnia7/
Edited 2012-07-12 09:00 UTC
Samsung does WP7!![1] and offers phones running WP7 and they pay license fees like everybody else. But just like for every other WP vendor the Samsung WP does not sell. Hey, we are talking about Samsung. If Samsung cannot sell WP nobody can. But Samsung was clever enough to not put all on WP but also do Android. That is the difference between Samsung and Nokia, between success and failure.
The fact that Windows Phone can’t get traction and Blackberry is falling seems to suggest that the market only has room for two phone OSes. There are only so many choices the average person can handle. And in the case of an OS, two very well could be the maximum. Throw in the “thousands of apps” impediment to new entrants and it’s even worse news for someone trying to break in.
Edited 2012-07-13 06:12 UTC
Arguably, nothing. If Jolla can create a compelling ecosystem (a big, huge, gargantuan IF) then maybe they can be competitive.
Nothing in MeeGo was ever intrinsically terrible, except for the fact that Nokia could not bootstrap an ecosystem in time.
It was prohibitively expensive in both time and money.
Windows Phone IS the third ecosystem. Sales be damned, the ecosystem is growing at an astonishing rate (outpacing Android even). It has amassed over 100,000 apps and over 20,000 developers in 18 months.
To understate that is dishonest.
I agree here, BB10, WP8, and MeeGo (I highly doubt they’ll hit market before 2013) have opportunities (though WP8 looks a lot better in this regard, BB10 will also miss 2012).
Tizen, is for all intents and purposes, to me, never coming out. Seriously. How long has this shit been going on already?
Um, Bada sales fell off of a cliff. In fact, Bada probably serves as a case study for what would’ve happened to the N9. Strong initial sales, but the lack of an ecosystem would’ve crushed it.
Have you heard anything on the Bada SDK recently? No? Me either.
That’s interesting, because there are no N9 sales numbers. The “numbers” posted from the Symbian Forum was already shown to be misleading and inaccurate. There is simply no way to gauge N9 sales.
Except that Nokia has sold more Lumias in less than a year than Samsung has sold Windows Phones.
So, someone can actually sell Windows Phone. There is just an upper limit on sales by the dynamics of the sales channel.
Its more of a B2B issue in the channel than an issue of merit. Windows Phone isn’t inherently bad, less capable, or less suited to be the Smartphone king. It just is coming up against a really entrenched competitor with a strong headwind.
Samsung had nothing more than token gestures on Windows Phone. Anyone can see that.
Well, if they do that, they can sell the phone online, with $300 price, and they still have quite large margin. Don’t believe? Go to http://www.ainol-novo.com. Lookie there. With the spec like that, they still can sell their stuff much cheaper over samsung etc..
I wish they luck. And I wish someone make a truly linux phone, like ubuntu or the like. terminal included