Nokia Spinning Featurephones as Smartphones

zacharye writes with an excerpt from BGR: "One reason for Nokia's surprisingly strong share price rebound over the past two weeks is the success of its new Asha feature phones in Asia. According to our sources in Delhi, the Asha 305 sold out in several stores soon after its debut even before the marketing campaign kicked in. Is it a coincidence that major Asian newspapers like The Philippine Star and Singapore's The Sun Daily describe Nokia's new Asha models as 'smartphones'? No. Nokia has done its very best to dress up its cheap new feature phones as something far more aspirational — to the extent that devices like Asha 305 are now widely depicted as smartphones across Asia and Africa. This is a critically important maneuver.." Of course, maybe they are smartphones; the Asha appears to be speced better than the HTC Dream (1Ghz processor, albeit with only 128M of RAM), and they've added a lot of new features to Series40. But then it's still Series40 with JavaME.

Comments

What is the difference to the end user?

[siddesu]

As long as the features the phones provide to the users are comparable, who cares what virtual machine runs the software?

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[JMonty42]

I would say the defining feature of a smartphone would be the ability to install apps to expand its capabilities.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the defining feature of a smartphone would be the ability to install apps to expand its capabilities.

You can do that on Series 40, installing Java ME apps has been possible for a long time now.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[starworks5]

With that logic, you couldn't have any strongly secured android or IOS phones! Smart phones are about having multiple uses, as opposed to several features, or just being able to make a phonecall.

Here is an excerpt from nokia in the TFA

James from Nokia here. One thing this piece overlooks is the web-browsing tech that comes as standard on our Asha models, including the Asha 305 mentioned here. Every time you access FB or Twitter or whatever else, the webpages are rendered in the cloud to keep data traffic very small and browsing fast. This of course does wonders for your phone bill (the Nokia Browser uses up to 85% less data than a competitor’s phone) and tells a little bit more about our strategy with Asha: making the Internet more accessible for people.

I would consider this as being smart, especially given the region and infrastructure available there.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of those reasons why I'm always annoyed by the generally American idea that "smartphone" == iPhone and later devices. Nokia has essentially been producing "smartphones" for ages before the iPhone; installilng third-party applications onto phones has been possible since, what, the year 2000?

The only thing the iPhone brought into the picture was the touchscreen and the centralized application store.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Clarious]

Opera mini does the same, that is why it is so lightweight and can render (albeit sometimes incorrectly) fairly complex webpages on very weak phones, it even re-encode images to webp format to reduce file size. Amazon Silk also does that too, so it is nothing new.
Back to the topic, for the same price for a Asha 303, you could get something like a Samsung Galaxy Pocket, which has GPS and double amount of RAM. In my country (Vietnam, a 3rd world one) Android is gaining market, even at the lower end segment while Nokia is losing out rapidly. I was surprised that if someone I know has proper web-browsing capability now, then it is most likely to be an Android phone or, sigh, iPhone.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The only thing the iPhone brought into the picture

Another major factor is that Apple is an American company. Compare with Samsung, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson.

Yes, I know about Motorola. So does Lara Croft.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Lots of phone makers were making phones that had Java apps on them before the iPhone. Most of those apps were garbage, though, and seemed mainly designed to provide the carrier with more cash.

So when it comes to smartphones - maybe "smart" refers not to the phone, but to the phone's owner. As in, they were smart enough not to buy a phone filled with those crappy Java apps.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[ChunderDownunder]

My previous phone was Symbian. There's a world of difference between what Nokia were selling as an app platform with Qt/S60 native applications and Java ME.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Clarious]

Us Asian all have small finger, that helps a bit with the typing, and there are some Android phones with qwerty keyboard too.
Regarding to speed, I agree that Symbian feels much faster, still I hate how they only includea minimal amount of RAM in their phone, my last phone (a Nokia 5230 with 128 Mb RAM, before I dropped it to death) could only open ~3 tabs with Opera Mobile before running out of memory. Nevertheless it was a good phone. But now Nokia has declared Symbian to be a burning ship, I see no reason to use it anymore. That, and with my personal hatred to Nokia for killing off Meego/Meltemi/Qt and then siding with Microsoft make that 5230 the last Nokia phone I buy.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of phone makers were making phones that had Java apps on them before the iPhone. Most of those apps were garbage, though, and seemed mainly designed to provide the carrier with more cash.

And I suppose every single app in Apple's app store is a shining jewel of quality and innovation?

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[arose]

My current "featurephone" happily runs J2ME apps in the background, the switching is a touch clunky, but it works ok for switching between Google Maps (really well done app BTW), Opera Mini and the phone itself. Dunno how recent of a thing that is though.

Re:What is the difference to the end user?

[Luckyo]

There is. OS itself. It requires a lot more hardware resources then S40.

So, can someone explain...

[cupantae]

What's the difference between a feature phone and smartphone? For someone who uses strong words such as "trick" and "phony" about this, he certainly doesn't make the distinction clear.

Windows Phone has its issues, but Featurephone?

[RanCossack]

That's too cruel, really.

(Just reading the headline and wildly assuming is fine, right?)

Re:Windows Phone has its issues, but Featurephone?

[dbIII]

It's not a Windows phone. You can tell because people are buying them.
At this point Windows phones are doomed no matter how good they are because the phone networks hate Microsoft with a passion. Microsoft now owns Skype which the networks see as robbing them of their birthright. Until that can be dealt with Windows phones will not be bundled with network deals and to this point they do not have enough features for people to want to buy them outright instead of on a plan.

Re:Windows Phone has its issues, but Featurephone?

[jbernardo]

I wouldn't say it is too cruel. There are many similarities between my lumia 800 and my old nokia 6600 (the small S40 slider one).

- I only use any of them to receive calls or sms with a SIM from countries where I used to live;

- 5MP, average camera

- dumbed down, but fast, interface

- some apps (including maps) but more expensive and less flexible than "smartphone" ones; also a lot less variety than Android or iOS;

- smaller resolution screens than the medium end smartphones, at their release

Differences:

- the old 6600 was actually fun to use, the lumia I am always fighting the artificial restraints;

- expandable memory on the 6600 slide, with standard uSD cards

- touch screen on the lumia, also much larger and higher resolution than the 6600 slide

- keyboard on the 6600 slide

- "social media integration" on the lumia - I never used it much, I rather use the facebook/linkedin/twitter clients or go to the sites directly;

So, what makes the lumia a smartphone instead of a featurephone, like the S40 ones?

"Featurephones as Smartphones"

[l3v1]

"Featurephones as Smartphones"

I don't get it. It seems these days smarta**es want "smartphone" to mean only something with ios, android, wp, etc. on it. It's not the OS that makes a smartphone "smart". Granted, it doesn't have a GPS receiver, but otherwise it's not a bad phone [1] for the price, and I wouldn't blame Nokia for marketing it with the goal of selling it - you know, that's the point.

[1] http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_asha_305-review-792.php

SAAS - smart as a service

[twl]

What Nokia are doing is moving the 'smart' into the cloud. Seems smart enough to me. Not everyone wants a $600 phone...

Re:SAAS - smart as a service

[bickerdyke]

What makes the phone itself dumber, actually.

This just in

[wonkey_monkey]

Company uses vague buzzwords to engage in nefarious tactic known as "marketing".

Re:What's the difference?

[Vintermann]

Applications are definitively sandboxed on Android and iOS too. It's probably possible to install non-java ME apps on these phones too, it's just that since the environments aren't standardized, no one bothers.

The distinction between feature phones and smartphones is largely a product of successful marketing. If Java ME hadn't been such a train wreck, we would just have viewed it as another smartphone platform, along with Android (which would probably have used it instead of Dalvik then), iOS and Blackberry's OS.

Re:What's the difference?

[bickerdyke]

iPhone: Apps strictly gates by Apple
javaME: I can install any ME app I can find...

try again.

Needless to say...

[Tough Love]

Needless to say, these are outselling Lumia/Windows phones by a fat country mile.

Re:Needless to say...

[21mhz]

Needless to say, these are outselling Lumia/Windows phones by a fat country mile.

Similarly, dirt-cheap Android phones outsell high-end Android models. Your point being?

Re:Needless to say...

[Patch86]

1: Android sells on cheap phones.
2: Android sells on expensive phones.
3: Android makers profit.

1: Symbian sells on cheap phones.
2: Symbian does not sell on expensive phones.
3: Nokia profits.

1: iOS does not sell on cheap phones.
2: iOS sells on expensive phones.
3: Apple profits.

1: Windows doesn't sell on cheap phones.
2: Windows doesn't sell on expensive phones.
3: Microsoft does not profit.

2 out of 2 is good. 1 out of 2 is OK. 0 out of 2 is a fail. I think that's the point.

Asha 305 w/ Nokia suite desktop == smartphone

[SpzToid]

I am surprised not to have read this is prior comments, but Nokia gives away a (primarily Windows) desktop software environment called Nokia Suite, of which the Asha 305 seems to be a full-featured client device. I mean c'mon, when you can enter contact info into your PC and everything (appointments, etc.) sync with your tiny phone, that's like a smart phone, isn't?

https://www.nokia.com/ph-en/support/product/305
https://www.nokia.com/global/support/nokia-pc-suite-specifications/?view=detail

The latest Nokia Suite beta supports the Linux Nokia N9 too, (known only because I pay attention since I am pleased to own an N9).

Smartphone vs Feature phone

[Dynamoo]

What's the difference between a smartphone and a feature phone? Today we see feature phone with far more features than old smartphones have, for example: the Nokia Asha 311 has WiFi, 3G, a 1GHz CPU, capacitive touchscreen, media player, radio and Bluetooth. The only thing missing from a typical modern smartphone is GPS.

The difference is deeper down though, traditionally smartphones can run native applications to extend its capabilities. These applications will typically have full access to the entire device and treat it as a computer. Feature phones are limited to applications running in an environment such as Java, and they can only interact with the virtual machine that the environment presents. So typically feature phone applications are less capable than smartphone ones.. and on top of that Java, is a battery killer. Of course, some smartphones rely a LOT on Java applications too (such as BlackBerry devices) in addition to native applications.

One thing I can't understand though is why Nokia are even bothering with Series 40 at all when they could simply have used S60 (which is a proper smartphone OS) on these cheaper models. S60 is looking good at the moment.. just at the point it is being discontinued.

Re:Smartphone vs Feature phone

[ChunderDownunder]

One thing I can't understand though is why Nokia are even bothering with Series 40 at all when they could simply have used S60 (which is a proper smartphone OS) on these cheaper models. S60 is looking good at the moment.. just at the point it is being discontinued.

They're skimping on the RAM (128MB) by running S40. That and the small screen size shared with a hardware keyboard, whereas their S60 machines evolved to a larger touchscreen and slider keyboard.

Re:Smartphone vs Feature phone

[CockMonster]

Symbian was designed by several phone manufacturers, there was no 'one-designer'. It's not unmaintainable at all, but it was difficult to write for as developers had to know about things uch as asynchronicity (you'd be surprised by how many can't get this right... every API in Symbian was asynchronous - it saved battery). As for S40, when I left Nokia they were considering a rewrite because expanding the platform became so difficult. What saved it was that it seemed to have a long-term group of developers who knew it inside out and they were mostly all in Denmark and Finland. Symbian OS was developed in London and then it spread out to India and China. Quality dropped.

Re:What's the difference?

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's one important difference between smart phones and feature phones that Nokia never seemed to understand: a smart phone is a pocket computer (call it an "organiser") which happens to have the ability to make calls too. A feature phone is a phone that has some extra apps bolted on. From a design perspective that is an important distinction, and it's the reason why so many Nokia smart phones sucked from a usability point of view, even though they had a decent hardware design.

As for the iPhone, I don't see why it shouldn't be classed as a smart phone, even though it's more locked down. A friend who enjoyed using an iPhone for some years before making the switch to Android joked: "The advantage of Android is that you can customize the whole phone to your liking, including the desktop, the keyboard, etc. The disadvantage is that you have to". Apple locks down the UI, but that default UI has proven to work well for many people. If it doesn't for you, get a 'Droid.

Hardly spin

[DarkOx]

1Ghz CPU and 128 megs of ram is really quite a bit of computer power, lets get some perspective people. Just a little over a decade ago that would have described the computer in the steel case under your desk!

These things also support 3rd party apps and browse the web. The line between feature phone and smart phone is pretty blurred here if you ask me. Feature phone used to mean its got a camera, can do MMS, and a calendar app, possibly pac-man or brick out to play with. These are lots more than. I don't think its unfair to market them as smart phones, just not top shelf. Frankly if these are not smart phones Blackberry's aint either. The only way they are not smart phones is you think being a smart phone means running Droid or iOS.

What's a smartphone?

[Compaqt]

The article has a lot of phrases like:

" widely depicted as smartphones"
"Nokia must mask its feature phones as smartphones"
"far from actually qualifying as smartphones"
"sheen of smartphoniness"
"trick the consumers into believing they are using a smartphone"
"Jurassic-era specs for Western smartphone fans"
"true smartphones"
"phony smartphone strategy"

But nowhere does it actually deign to define a "smartphone"!

WTF is a 'Feature Phone'

[Martin S.]

And who gets to define what is and is not a Smart Phone; the consumers that's who, this is just iPhone fanbozi attempt to remain the cool kids on the block by denigration the competition.

Smartphone versus featurephone

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be buried since I am late, but here is a good definition for featurephone versus smartphone: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/papers/gsm_phone-anatomy-latest.pdf

"A feature phone is a phone that runs the GSM protocol stack (the software implementing the GSM protocol) as well as the user interface and all applications on a single processor."

"A smartphone is a phone that has a dedicated processor for the GSM protocol stack, and another (potentially multi-core) general purpose processor for the user interface and applications."

Re:What's the difference?

[jbolden]

The serious answer has to do with price and how they co-market with carrier based plans. There is a natural continuum between dumb phones through feature phones through smart phones that is fuzzy. But for the postpay market there is not a continuum in pricing the phone has to target one market or the other.
   

JavaME?

[devent]

So let me get his straight. Nokia first buys Trolltech for Qt, develops Meego, drops Symbian, drops Meego and Qt, try to sell Windows Phones, and is now rescued by JavaME?

If I were a shareholder I would be so pissed of right now.