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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

> Look at HTC. What do they do besides great hardware?

I'm looking at HTC - what I see is a company that did great with Android for a short while, then got chewed up as Apple and Samsung ran away with the high end of the market while the Chinese manufacturers gobbled up the bottom end. All the "Nokia should've gone with Android!" comments I see around the internet never try to explain how they think Nokia would've fared any better than HTC (or Sony, or Motorola).

> Now HTC is making the best VR headset and has a fairly bright future.

You and I see HTC's future very differently. The Vive is the thread they're hanging by, and as soon as Valve doesn't need them anymore, it's going to be over (http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/07/can-we-stop-pretend...)

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> how they think Nokia would've fared any better than HTC (or Sony, or Motorola)

Back in the day Nokia had good hardware, a 40% marketshare, brand recognition, a loyal customer base and a wide distribution network. Certainly noone knows what Android could have done for them, but theoretically they were at a better position to take advantage of it than HTC/Sony/Motorola.

I don't know about HTC Androids, but I've had about 3 Motorola phones and they've been both expensive and low quality. That's not a winning combination, irregardless of what your competition does.

For example I'm typing this on a Nexus 6 1st gen. A phone that when I bought it, I had to replace it in warranty because the color temperature of the screen was uneven and extremely annoying. And I paid at the time the price for a high end phone and got a subpar camera, a screen that doesn't have the contrast of other phones in its generation and a design that feels cheap and bulky. Well, at least it has stock Android on it. I got basically fooled in buying it, thinking it is a Nexus.

And I could say similar things about Sony. And about LG for that matter. For instance LG had big hits in LG G3 and in Nexus 4 & 5. My wife wanted an LG G5, but apparently it gets overheated, with the customer rep telling us they've had multiple returns. So she went with the Galaxy S7 Edge, because it was the safe choice.

Here's the big problem: if we are talking about exceptional hardware, none of these companies produce good products consistently. Do you know who does that? Apple and Samsung. And back in the day Nokia as well.

Well, since 2010 I've only had two smartphones, both HTC, and in fact the first still works flawlessly (it's just too slow for me with its 768 MB RAM, especially as I use a lot of apps - a coworker of mine who bought it at the same time in 2010 still uses it daily though).

My friends and relatives with Samsung phones have had around 4 of them since that time because they always break.

What do you even mean you got fooled in buying it thinking it is a Nexus? The Nexus 6 had an OK camera previously the Nexus line up had terrible cameras. http://www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Google-Nexus-6-Google-s-lates...

HTC got started on Windows Mobile phones, and I'd argue that's where a good portion of their initial popularity carried over from. Their HTC Sense Android skinning was basically an Android port of TouchFlo 3D from Windows Mobile.

HTC still exists, Nokia phones doesn't.

>HTC still exists

That's not exactly a high bar regarding what we're talking about...

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