Monday, August 22, 2011

Mobile Wars - Return of the Nokia?

I remember about 2 years back when any big mobile announcement used to happen it was either by Nokia about their N series devices which were *awesome* or by Apple about their iPhone. Now it’s all about Android, and the iPhone, No one really cares about what's happening to other brands, devices etc. and you can’t blame anyone. Nokia hasn’t been doing anything good. Since the N95, N95 8GB there haven’t been any brilliant devices by them, even the N97 had its flaws  image courtesy: dailymobile.se , http://images.dailymobile.se/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/n95.jpg Especially with the touchscreen devices, Nokia hasn’t been there. Symbian was renamed to ^3 and what not but I did not see any improvements that other devices had – namely the iPhone and Android. The changes were all minor and didn’t help much.

Today in this age of apps and appstores Nokia hasn’t made any changes to their ‘OVI Store’ . I remember using it on my Nokia N95 8GB when it newly released. It was full of bugs, I had to sign in EVERYTIME I opened it and browsed a few pages… The app sucked big time. But then the device also was getting old. N-gage gaming had failed,ngage although it was a good start at a time when others didn’t have anything similar. My first Android device – the Samsung Galaxy i7500 was one brilliant device, although it ran Android 1.5 out of the box and Samsung almost disowned it once the newer devices were launched it did pretty well. Thanks to some awesome independent developers like ‘Drakaz’ the device can now have a Gingerbread ROM. Android being opensource you can do all sorts of things to it, Custom ROMS, kernels, CPU mods, etc. Even availability of apps is amazing. The appstore or ‘Market’ is brilliant, has a huge collection (Yea I know not as much as Apple) and slowly gets all those apps that Apple’s got. It’s pretty good and no wonder today it’s up there alongside Apple in the mobile OS wars. About Apple, I don’t need to write anything more, You ask almost anyone and there’s this craze to own an iPhone. And they do have their reasons. The iPhone 4 has BRILLIANT hardware. Although I’m not a fan of ‘iOS’ it does everything and you can’t really point out any flaws.

To come to think about it had Nokia adopted the Android OS it would probably be the BEST today. Nokia makes great hardware, great camera sensors. Thanks to Android many manufacturers have got a ‘New Life’ like Motorola, LG. Among all mobile phone manufactures I personally feel Apple, HTC, Nokia and Motorola have great hardware. Samsung still makes their phones plastic-ky, even the High-end ones.
Nokia especially in India is super popular, Android or not, Nokia is still doing very well in India. People here in India have this feeling of Nokia being ‘the best’ even today. These are the people who hardly care about the OS and apps etc. They’re very happy to have a nicely built Nokia phone that has a great camera. Now just imagine these devices having Android on it. I guess most of the youth and others would opt for Nokia and with Android on it the demand would be even more! Obviously making it No.1 in the business. And that is why Samsung, which you could say is No. 2 on the popularity list in a country like India could soon be the No. 1 mobile phone manufacturer, with their ‘Galaxy’ line up powered by android, I won’t be surprised.

So those were my predictions with Nokia and Android OS. Back to reality Nokia joining forces with Microsoft, to make Windows Phone 7 devices, I

  (image courtesy: www.techshrimp.com
http://techshrimp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/microsoft-nokia-buying-phone-division.jpg) 

really don’t know how far they can go with that. Windows phone 7 still being the immature one, even though its GORGEOUS and has a modern UI. You can say Nokia will then be like Samsung was during the years 2007-09 with Windows Mobile phones like Omnia etc.. They could still make some differences if Windows Phone 7 gets frequent updates like ‘Mango’ which bring in cool stuff to the OS as they are lagging behind iOS and Android.

Nokia with their current line-up isn’t really going anywhere. The only Devices I would pick to be good are – The Nokia N8, E7 and C7. Also the C6-01 makes a great budget device

  (image courtesy: www.symbiantweet.com
http://www.symbiantweet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Nokia-World1.jpg) 


These phones have a great build quality and other hardware specs like power packed cameras 8MP, 12MP etc.
Also the ‘Anna’ update is now making them on par with the other devices out there. annaIf I had to pick a Nokia device today, it would be among these 4. They are great devices and the pricing is pretty good too. So for a normal user these devices would be almost perfect, especially in India etc.
The more recent one like the X7 really looks hideous and that is not what is needed.

So for Nokia to comeback, according to me they basically need devices with specs like the fantastic four of their lineup – The N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 or better. Good designs. And most importantly – Windows Phone 7 or Meego whatever, but it should really do well with the basic stuff i.e.  - the apps and appstore. The N9 preview was good but we don’t know how its gonna work outcaptured n9. I still believe Nokia  can still make a comeback, meego-021whether they go ahead of Apple and others is still a question which most won’t be able to answer. So only the future can tell us what’s going to happen!