Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Windows Phone Revealed
DMiax writes "Nokia's controversial CEO Stephen Elop just revealed the prototype of the next WP7 handset. The CEO asked the journalists present to turn off the cameras because the new phone was 'super confidential.' Did he really expect them to comply? After all he must know that this has the potential to hurt the sales of the recently released N9, the last non-Windows Nokia smartphone. He would never want to do that, right?"
"This phone is super secret, don't say a word!" actually means "Please, please, please, please give us some press for this. Even bad press. Just anything you can say that isn't another iPhone or Android story is great."
I find it hard to believe that something being announced to the press is "super confidential." One more subtraction from Nokia's credibility score.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Is Nokia still around?
Well... No matter how good it is, Nokia has said "it is over and we are dumping it as soon as we can. We didn't even really want to do this one, but we had to." Knowing that, does it matter how good it is? Why buy a phone that you KNOW will not be supported well, or long?
Because it's the only commonly available follow up to the N900. After that it's only devices running WP7 from Nokia, at which point I will cease ever being a customer.
At least now we know the exact terms of the deal.
At least, not any more than Elop has hurt it already. If anything, this mad scramble and poor demo was his immediate reaction to interfere with and disrupt the positive press that built around the N9 and Harmattan. It had such a good immediate demo and favorable reviews that people were quickly looking at Elop as a complete fool, instead of the mere tool that he is.
Why buy a phone that you KNOW will not be supported well, or long?
Given the open source nature of Meego, I'm guessing Nokia is expecting the community to pick up the slack here. The Nokia Qt SDK is readily available and from what I've seen in the few hours playing with it, seems like a decent framework for developing "apps" for Meego. While that's all fine and dandy, it would be nice if there was a little official support so that developers can concentrate on writing "apps" and less time fixing bugs and implementing features Nokia should be handling themselves.
The stock software on the device is a mix of the old Maemo understructure and a proprietary upper layer (the part that integrates all the social media services) that the community can't do anything with themselves.
Before long I expect MeeGo (as in, MeeGo Community Edition) to be up and running with full functionality on the device, which should be nice and fully functional by the time Nokia decides to give up the ghost completely.
On the bright side for MS, they can hardly do any worse than they did with the Kin.
That metro calendar reminds me of really shitty websites from the 90's. Calendars should be on a light background and you should use a high contrast colour for the text to stand out from the background instead of blending into it.
The entire metro "experience" reminds me of many flash websites from the late 90's to early 2000's and it will not scale well to other latin character set languages let alone non-latin ones like Chinese and Japanese.
Nokia made a huge mistake hiring Stephen Elop and going with WIndows Phone 7. They should have chosen either Maemo or Meego, ported the Symbian UI framework for backwards compatibility and developed a modern competitive UI to compete with iOS and Android.
I'll never buy a Nokia device regardless of OS.
Before you label me as a blind Nokia hater, my second cellphone was a Nokia (first being a Motorola "Brick" flip phone). I am also a Finnish citizen so I would like to see Nokia find a way to survive. I just don't see Windows Phone 7 as the right way forward.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And then? Open source is great and so - but software is nothing without hardware it can be installed on.
Mobile phones are devices, not exactly what I see as a platform to install a different OS on.
Also while it may have a nice framework for app development, with a user base of 2 there will not be many app developers interested in working on the platform. Some hobbyists maybe, but nothing to take serious.
Really without at least one major phone maker behind it, MeeGo is going to die. Open source or not, it's going to die. Sad but true. Android is the future, iOS a good second (will be second due to it's restriction to Apple devices), WP7 may survive thanks to the deep pockets of Microsoft, but for the rest... well... what rest?
The CEO asked the journalists present to turn off the cameras because the new phone was 'super confidential.'
Seriously - the guy gives a presentation to a bunch of journalists - who I assume weren't just randomly milling around on the street before the Nokia folks brought out a podium and a microphone - and says "Hey!! Here's our super-secret WINDOWS PHONE! Ssh! Don't tell anyone!" Is there anyone in the world with a greater than room temperature IQ that'd actually fall for that? (and yes, that's room temperature in Celsius)
I see the former Microsoftie has brought along those mad Microsoft advertizing skillz for which the company is renowned...
#DeleteChrome
It will run on rooted Android phones. Or will even dual-boot on them. I am sure, there will be plenty of unlockable Android phones.
You still need drivers for all the hardware, it's not just a case of loading the OS onto a different phone.
Emphasis added. This almost certainly was intentional, so I hereby coin the term Elop Effect.
Now, honest question: why in the world would someone want to dual-boot their PHONE?
For a PC I can somewhat imagine it: key applications available only on the other platform (dual booting into Windows to play games, for example, if it can't be solved by running Windows in VirtualBox like I have to do for e-banking).
Android is running on iPhones too (and I wouldn't be surprised if someone got it working on an iPad). There are plenty of rooted iPhones. But are there really people buying an iPhone to run Android on it? Or is anyone dual-booting their iPhone?
Sorry but except for a very small group of hard-core enthusiasts I don't see this idea take off, at all.
I think you mean "runs on" as it is already booting on most ARM platforms to some degree.
The biggest hindrance to complete operation these days seems to be limited to graphics drivers.
And thankfully all hardware in Android phones has Linux drivers.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
To some degree. The drivers tend to be messes that don't ever end up in the upstream kernel so they rot as the kernel moves on. Then you have the problem of graphics drivers existing in userspace, which leaves you in a lurch with things like MeeGo that use glibc and your only graphics library is compiled against Android's Bionic.
I realize people love to dump on Microsoft, so they're going to be dismissive of Windows Phone 7 without even having tried it. It's the total opposite of how people respond to the iPhone. Anytime someone asks for suggestions for a smartphone people default to the iPhone like mindless drones.
I have an Android phone which I'm extremely happy with. However, a friend recently got a WP7 phone which finally gave me an opportunity to give it a try. I was extremely impressed. I felt like Microsoft, moreso than either Google or Apple actually put thought into usability, into how people will interact with the phone. Menus and settings are clear and better organized and the interface seems more consistent. I can navigate more efficiently and there seems to a good amount of customization. And I'll give them credit for not just going and cloning Android and iOS's look. Blackberries might offer some great functionality, but in terms of usability they aren't even in the same galaxy as their competitors.
Of course, not having to actually live with the phone I can't speak to how I'd feel about WP7 over the long run, if I'd find it as satisfying an experience as Android. My point is that Microsoft deserves quite a bit more credit than they're getting for this OS. I've found that friends of mine who've actually used a WP7 phone have been quite impressed.
Microsoft is copying Apple again and getting into the retail market with their own products.
Are you on drugs? Exactly how is Microsoft copying Apple here? Seriously. Stop doing drugs.
Apple invented mobile phones, you ignorant unbeliever.
Most applications will simply continue to be killed outright.
Most applications will NOT be killed, they will be suspended until the memory is needed by something else, then they will be pushed out of memory, gracefully, after getting a last chance to clean up.
MOST applications do not need multitasking to begin with. Of the ones that do, 99% of them can run in the background just fine in iOS.
Anything that supports "multitasking" will be working through GCD, which requires Apple approval to use.
Whoa. WTF? That's a really weird statement. It's not like Jobs is sitting in the background of GCD approving blocks that get onto queues.... Any IOS developer can use GCD, there is no need for special "Apple Approval" beyond the normal app review process.
They are "rekindling" ChevronWP7, though how it will differ from before is up in the air. Certainly, it will not be like Android where you can freely sideload apps.
I am assuming it will be exactly like that, possibly more secure though.
Then I imagine you will have to manually sign and upload software, possibly even compile and package them, as this is supposed to be a tool for developers.
WP7 developers can ALREADY deploy what they want onto phones, so obviously the effort to support the WP7 of "jail breaking" is for non-developers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They should have chosen either Maemo or Meego, ported the Symbian UI framework for backwards compatibility and developed a modern competitive UI to compete with iOS and Android.
That is pretty much what they tried to do though, and the thing is they simply could not do it. I do not understand the reasons why exactly, but it's not like Nokia did not see this same fact and try. It's sad they could not succeed at all, but WP7 really was the best path forward for Nokia - with Android they would have been a vendor very late to the game, tied to Microsoft they at least have the chance to affect development and direction of the platform as a preferred hardware vendor.
Microsoft seems like they are coming into this late but do not count them out. They have a LOT of money and they have to make something hit, and WP7 is actually a pretty decent base to build on once they catch up the internals.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like customers for your apps, for example.
Didn't spot the transparent strategy then? Hmm, Windows 8 apps look a lot like Windows Phone apps, and something similar is moving onto the XBox too...
The implication is that they intend Windows Phone apps will be the same apps you use on Windows 8 which will be the same apps you can access on XBox. The famous "three screens". And if you're not coding specifically for Windows, well standard HTML5 and Javascript apps will run just dandy on Windows 8 and the future version of Windows Phone too. I don't see there being a problem with getting apps, or with getting customers for your apps.
It's plain and simple leveraging from the PC market into the phone market. And my goodness there are a lot of Windows PC customers, and neither Google nor Apple have that advantage.
So Nokia have produced yet another generic smart phone indistinguishable from virtually every other smart phone running android or Windows Phone 7 in the last few years. Big screen, a button, camera on the back, smart phone shaped. Frontpage news.
This was a company internal presentation, not for journalists. If you watch the whole video, it becomes clear that this was not a controlled leak, there are other references to ongoing work which I seriously doubt Elop wants to have out in public.
Nokia has been struggling, new ex Microsoft CEO was brought in, makes 100% turn by axing the entire software division and handing it over to Microsoft. The platform Nokia has been working on for three years finally is released (probabyl also due to contractual obligations) and gets raving reviews.
Ceo who killed literally every other road for Microsoft by telling upfront, forget about Symbian forget about Maemo stands upfront a crowd one day after the N9 is released and almost 100% raving reviews come in and he has nothing better to do after day one of the raving reviews to show his Windows 7 version of the same phone "accidentally". Ooops a leak, oh well never mind.
If this guy is not a Microsoft juggernaut than what. He damages his own divisions by using the old dont buy that we have something else in the line tactics, Microsoft used successfully in the 90s to kill off competition. But he is applying the tactics internally probably to kill of the Maemo division which if the N9 would have become successful could cause his pro Microsoft course to be questioned again and in the end his job.
The Microsoft Vaporware tactic used to be following:
Usually if a product had mediocre success, they instantly launched a press release usually showing some images of vaporware with the message dont buy from them we have something in the line. If the other product was killed then often nothing came from Microsoft if the product stayed on the market then Microsoft usually shoved a half working clone out in the wild with that and the back then we buy only from Microsoft crowd this was enough most times to kill the product. The prime example for that tactics was Borland C++ and their excellent Windows UI classlib and also the Star Division C++ UI Classlib, which went down the gutters when Microsoft forced anyone to the absymality MFC.
Another prime example was the famouse Cairo operating system which they instantly announced when Next showed off NextStep. They never could pull it off basically thanks to their broken COM component model which they shoved literally upon poor developers. The same they tried with Corba which they positioned their back then not even working DCom against. When they sold DCom as Corba competitior even their own examples they delivered with it did not work.
So to sum this up, accidentally leaked. Definitely not. This seems like a last stroke against the Maemo division to me so that they cannot gain control by releasing a successful (qualitywise they seem to have gotten their act right) product. If anything else did not show it this, action clearly showed that Nokia is fucked as long as this guy is at the helm, this is a juggernaut Microsoft sellout nothing more nothing less. Every sane CEO simply would have tried to keep multiple platforms, probably putting symbian on the roast releasing a Windows Mobile product and Android and given the state of the N9 also Maemo as successor to Symbian. Just as basically HTC and Samsung do it.
Elop is an idiot because he certainly is favoring the interests of his former employer over the interests of his current one.
there you go, fixed that :)
The idea that going Android would have made Nokia into a 'me-too' re-branding phone company, but going with WP7 somehow makes them unique is an interesting concept. Unless Microsoft gives Nokia special privileges, whereupon they kill all the their other existing phone partners. Not that those partners will care too much, having sold so pathetically few WP7 phones.
Just for reference, I'm no Microsoft fan (Linux guy) and Android is my current choice of mobile OS.
But the above statement strikes me as rather pathetic trolling - in the history of new computing devices, has there ever been a wealth of software sat there waiting for its release day ready to install on it?
If you are talking about, say, a new games console platform, then at £50 a game a developer with millions in the bank can maybe afford to take a risk and have a game or two ready to buy and run on a console on release day.
But for mobile apps that average £2-£3 in price where you are more than likely a small or independent developer, are you really going to want to take the risk of having stuff ready on release day if you end up only selling a few hundred copies of your app?
I too believe Microsoft have an uphill struggle with WP7 but, like Apple, they are exceedingly good at marketing and pulling rabbits out of hats, so now is not the time to start shouting "FAIL".
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I used to work with Nokia. I was with a company that would work towards delivering software for 5-15 Nokia devices at a time. They were so secretive about each of their products that the developers working on these different projects were not allowed to communicate with one another. We had to have separate bug databases even though bugs for one were bugs for all. We had to have separate code repositories even though the code should have been common to all. The reason was... they wanted to make sure that no person had enough information available to them to leak information about more than one product.
Let's be realistic here. The handset market is very simple these days. You make a device, you choose an OS, you differentiate yourself with a new skin, maybe add some value adds, you ship.
1) You make a device.
You can either buy a reference design from a hundred different companies and add to it, or you can develop it in house... or you can combine the two. With a reference design, you really only need to put a logo on the case. If you design it in house, you're spending tons of time and money on something that will make your device not that much more interesting than the other guys. You better have an awesome idea to differentiate yourselves from the other guy if you design your own, otherwise you're spend a few million bucks that was just a waste of time because "We're special, we design all our stuff inhouse".
2) You choose and OS.
Android, Windows Phone, Palm... whatever. Any company who wants it can put Android or Windows Phone on their device. Palm, BlackBerry, iOS are developed in house by the phone makers, but really, Nokia has already proven they can't make their own OS, so it's better off they simply use someone elses.
3) You differentiate yourself
"Special Nokia Apps" are just plain stupid anymore. Use the ones built into the store or give away some of your inhouse developed ones, but sell them on the store to people with other phones. Don't waste your time making ones that only run on your phones... it's stupid and nearly impossible to maintain long term.
Make a skin. Well, you always have the default skins on the phone, but the user will want to install their own. So, if you're trying to have some fun while you make your phone... sure make a skin.. but don't interfere with the user's ability to change it. It's like when you buy a computer.. the default wallpaper might say Toshiba, Sony or HP on it. But you can change the desktop picture of your brother's computer to a picture of your bare hairy butt if you want.
4) Ship the thing
This is probably the hardest job in the business these days... managing the manufacturing and supply chain effectively.
But let's get to the point... Nokia will probably manufacture a slew of low cost, nifty little Windows Phone telephones and get them into the pockets and purses of millions of grandmothers across the world. But as far as being an innovator.... they should know by now... that's not their role in the tech world.
OK, the conspiracy theories are getting ridiculous now. Full disclaimer: I'm an (ex)Nokia employee and was caught up in the great purge of developers following the feb11 announcement. So I'll very soon be out of a job (but as the redundancy package for all the employees at my site is extremely sweet, I'm very happy to bail -- plus this is not the company I joined all those years ago) Even as an employee, I could see that there is no consumer device they have released in the last 4years (since the N95) that I actually cared about (except the N900; which is not really a consumer device, but it's certainly the best mobile computer on the planet! :)
Anyway, back to the article; that video was available on the Nokia intranet for employees worldwide to watch. The event was not filled with journalists/bloggers but employees (inside a Nokia site). This is not a vast conspiracy to hurt the N9 (as there are tons of similar videos released internally every week whenever an exec speaks "publicly" at a nokia site; that obviously no one bothered to leak) -- the difference this time is that there are a massive number of disgruntled employees worldwide who have been told their role is terminating/moved to Accenture/projects canceled etc. I assume a random employee leaked this.
You could still say that it's stupid to have confidential videos available to employees worldwide, but that's just how Nokia operates. There is a large amount of trust towards the employees (which is regularly broken), and they've resisted from turning into a massively secret organisation in full lockdown mode (& this is one of the things that makes it a wonderful place to work)
The above is not meant to be taken as me standing up for Elop. I disagree vehemently with his strategy; but there are parts of it that are yet to be made public (well, it is public now, but no one has joined the dots yet :). It'll make more sense in the next 12 months. It's extremely high risk and not guaranteed to succeed). But there is one thing most employees agreed with before he took centre stage; and that is Nokia's strategy before Feb11 was fucked.
Of course, it's still possible Elop's an MS stooge trying to run the company to the ground. If so, he's doing an amazingly good job of hiding it (internally; where the strategy is known). The only really stupid (public) mistake he's done so far is to EOL Symbian before the successor was in place. I have no idea why, but I assume MS gave Nokia a billion reasons to force him to make that statement.
Anyway, I think Nokia's finished. I'm glad the N9 is out. Full linux distro, root access with a shell out of the box (OK, you need to enable dev mode which is just a UI toggle) -- I have a phone for the next 3 years and a large payout & couldn't care less about what happens to the company
But do keep the conspiracy theories reasonable, guys :)
I just noticed an interesting difference between Apple and the rest of the cell phone market. When Apple announced the iPhone, or announces a new iPhone, it's available the minute the announcement leaves Steve's lips, or at least pre-orders are available for delivery in a few weeks etc. None of this "coming soon" or six months from now or "coming real soon" crap.
People watching the demo know that what they see is exactly what they will get, can get, right now. No vaporware, no feature cuts before launch, no failure to deliver, no cancellations. I wonder why more companies haven't found themselves forced to take on that sort of schedule?
Is it not that important? Are people just willing to take whatever they can get when it actually shows up, and treat announcements like this as teasers? And if a company can keep development under wraps anywhere near as well as Apple usually does, there's none of this sillyness of "no pictures please!"
No pictures? Ya, right. new product press conference and you really don't expect anyone to take pictures? that's a laugh, that was said for show purposes, nobody with two brain cells to rub together actually expected no pictures to be taken, they expected it and just said that to try to stir up hype. Anyone that didn't actually "sneak" a picture or two there was an idiot, that's part of what you were there for.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.