Hands-On with the Nokia 8 Sirocco: Reviving Nokia's 'Dream Phone' Concept | Hacker News Reader

Hands-On with the Nokia 8 Sirocco: Reviving Nokia's 'Dream Phone' Concept

anandtech.com

70 pointsrbanffy30 comments

Not even HMD people believe that Sirocco is going to sell. They are just putting it into the market to show that they are coming. It's for the presence and testing the market for input. Walk before run. Their next high end phone will be the real thing (and it's going to be 5G phone)

There is a good reason to expect that HMD/Nokia phones will be very competitive in just few years. UMD has Foxconn money and manufacturing muscle behind it plus everything that comes from Nokia Research/Bell labs.

46% of Hon Hai's (Foxconn) revenue comes from Apple. Foxconn wants to reduce its dependence from Apple. Nokia wants to maintain the value of its brand in consumer space.

s/UMD/HMD

I have a Nokia 8 for development and it’s a nicer phone than the Pixel 2 for the price.

Imagine a world where Nokia doesn’t hire a MS exec as CEO to tank the company so they can sell it to MS and instead adopted Android.

They’d be worth more than Samsung.

> They’d be worth more than Samsung

Samsung is not just about phones. They are a major computer hardware manufacturer (memory, SSDs, etc.), major appliance manufacturer and also a major producer of mobile chips, among other things.

But yeah if Nokia had adopted android long back Samsung's phone's probably wouldn't have become that popular. Or Nokia might have eaten market share from Apple.

They could have started for not having internal wars between Symbian and Maemo units.

Already when the first Maemo tablet was shown to us on internal demos, we saw the future, but it was unthinkable to have GSM support.

Followed by not having a bonus clause for the CEO to tank the company.

Thankfully they managed to survive, even if on a different shape.

Yeah the Samsung Mobile part was implied. ;)

Definitely an interesting counter factual to think about.

I wonder if the Nokia board from that time ever think about the collosal mistake they made hiring some MS guy. I wonder if anyone wrote anything about it.

A few thoughts on this:

The title of the article made me think it's a concept phone, as in not real and unlikely to be produced. I almost didn't click on the article because if that's the case I don't really care.

It looks just like the Galaxy S8, which is a great phone with a great camera that's much more affordable.

It's crazy how many words I see in life (Sirocco) that I know the meaning of specifically because of a lifetime of playing Magic: the Gathering.

I've broken more Samsung phones than I can count. I broke my S8 within 3 weeks of getting it, even with a case on it.

They have a reputation of having the most breakable phones for a reason. [0]

By anecdotal comparison, the last Nokia I owned was a windows phone, did not require a case, and lasted me 3.5 years without a scratch.

For me, if Nokia can create an S8 looking phone with the handset quality they are known for, for me it would be worth the investment.

[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/hold-the-phone-samsung-galaxy...

To me, it seems about 1 out of 4 people that pull out a Samsung phone has a cracked screen. I don't have hard data, but I've seen it happen enough in my friends phones that I decided it would be best to avoid it entirely.

> By anecdotal comparison, the last Nokia I owned was a windows phone, did not require a case, and lasted me 3.5 years without a scratch.

Yep, with the exception of the 925, every Nokia WP device I've owned has been an absolute tank. The 925 suffered from a broken charge/USB port, common on that model, but if it wasn't for the dead platform I'd still be rocking my 640 and 650. My mom is happily using my 521 from five years ago, getting nearly a week on the original battery and loving the OS (she's not into apps, she just wants phone/text/photos).

Although AnandTech claims that it has a headphone jack, other reviews state that it does not.

It's interesting that it's an Android One phone. With support for GSM and CDMA, I wonder whether it will be supported with Project Fi.

Nokia phones are not coming to US yet.

Nokia 6 will be available in May, according to CNET.

https://www.cnet.com/news/nokia-6-your-mission-is-to-get-the...

Its so infuriating that they never show the top and bottoms of phones so you cant tell. On another note, does anyone know how modding friendly Nokia phone are, i.e do they have open bootloaders?

From what I have read on reddit, Nokia locks their bootloaders and won't unlock them.

They've said they will unlock their bootloaders, but they've not got around to doing it yet from what I understand.

They say it's IP67 certified, then say it's waterproof. These aren't the same things. IP67 isn't even very good water resistance; IP68 is slightly better, and several popular phones support it.

> Its diamond-cut edges provide a rather comfortable grip, which is much appreciated on a 7.5-mm thick handset. Obviously, this grip is a differentiator, so when you hold the N8S, you can easily recognize it.

Diamond cutting is not polishing; you can round and polish metal without a diamond cutter. Maybe these reviewers are confused again and the diamond cutting is for smoothing the glass? And by the way, who are these people that spend almost a grand on a highly fragile glass-covered phone and don't keep them in a rubbery case? (I probably just answered my own question: rich people)

The real question is who spends a grand on a glass phone then covers it in a cheap rubber case.

They are the modern day sofa protectors.

Someone who didn't want glass on their phone in the first place – someone who treats their phone like a tool, not a trophy.

Releasing Android One phones is at least a good move if you want to target the purist segment of the Android market. I have previously bought the Nexus phones and around christmas bought a Nokia 8 because HMD put a more or less stock version of Android on it. I much prefer stock Android to the touchwiz business Samsung is doing, at least as it was on my Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3.

It will be interesting to follow Nokia and HMD and I hope they succeed. There are too many phones with subpar custom UIs and menus + crapware that lags one or two major Android versions behind the latest release.

I'd be happier if they fixed the damn microphone issues with the existing Nokia 8 first, or at least acknowledged the issue for those Nokia 8 users (myself included) who can't even make a call on this device: https://community.phones.nokia.com/support/discussions/topic...

I am confused. What exactly did Microsoft buy if Nokia can come back with everything they had previously?

Microsoft sold Nokia's mobile assets to a Foxconn subsidary.

Who license the Nokia brand from Nokia, since the MS deal only included a time-limited use of it for consumer devices.

And the design of the phones is made in Finland, by HMD Gobal, which is staffed with a lot of former Nokia engineers.

10 years lease contract for Nokia’s former headquarters in Espoo. That’s about it;)

They bought only Nokia's mobile phone division and license for the Nokia brand for a few years. Nokia Research, Nokia Networks, the brand and the patents are still owned by Nokia.

After MS sold what remains of the Nokia phone manufacturing (including feature phone capacity that sells 70 million phones a year) to Foxconn, Foxconn and Nokia made HMD Global happen. Nokia provides brand for 10 years, patents and research, Foxconn finances the operation and builds the phones.

Also to note, HMD has lots of former Nokia employees, and uses the former Nokia Mobile building in Espoo.

Why not just make a cheap, high quality phone for developing markets àla Xiamoi?

That's the new 3310. And also, why go to the moon when you can climb Mount Everest?

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