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Nokia Had an Android Phone In Development
puddingebola writes "Perhaps influencing Microsoft's $7.2 billion acquisition, the New York Times is reporting that Nokia had an Android phone in development. From the article, 'A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company's Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft's $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.' Perhaps Nokia feared they had put too many eggs in one basket? Whatever the case, the project is most likely dead at this point."
I am ex-Microsoft. I quit after being forced to buy a win7 phone (not because of the phone, but for other reasons :)). That thing was on shit hardware because HTC refused to put it on recent designs. I cursed it and hated it and I bought the Samsung S4 as soon as my contract allowed it. As an open source guy shoe-horned into Microsoft I love the concept of Android. I couldn't wait to ssh and rdp into servers even if on a tiny screen. I loved having a real SDK (win8 is improved, but still limited) and I can see that it is a good dev env.
Its execution is crap. It crashes once a week. I also hear Android needs reinstalled somehow once in awhile, so can't wait for that. My win7 phone crashed like 5 times over the 2.5 years I had it including random updates and verizon dicking around. Android's notification system is limited and lame (hey I already read that mail somewhere else, get rid of the notice). I have to pull it down to see what's going on instead of being integrated into the home/lock screen. Mail is integrated more than win, but Gmail is some how sooo special it gets separate updates and its own mail program so I still have to check mail twice. Outlook and most mail clients by default save drafts in (guess what?) 'drafts' yet android/gmail gets confused and puts the various draft copies in the threads, generates/spams more copies if you open them wrong, and buries replies to you under the messed up drafts when someone replies. WTF?? Plus the new label system is not accurate and not useful for as tiny a demo they give you. I turned it off.
My wife is still Microsoft and she loves her lumia and honestly it is pretty useful. Only now is the motoX advertising simple camera access and lock screen notices. Hey maybe if they copy live tiles, integrated messaging fully like windows and iOS, and get rid of the special gmail crap (even windows doesnt treat outlook very special) Android would be going somewhere (of course fix the stability now).
Anyway, excluding BLE support win8 really isn't missing much and is pretty competitive. Its usability is a ton higher than Android after using both. The main reason it is failing is just all the windows hate, which is understandable. Microsoft has come a long way, but it isn't perfect (no company is). They just need some serious marketing and stop with the stupid dancing crap.