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Comment by forgotusername6 | Hacker News Reader

I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.

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I bought my dad a Nokia phone in 2008. A dumb phone, with just texting and calling features. It continues to work to this day, so, 17 years (the markings on the buttons are fully erased now, other than that it works). It outlived him. I don't know how they managed to build stuff like that. I would expect some electronic part to fail sometime along the way.

Well, I can tell you how: rigorous testing.

I worked for Nokia (briefly, just before Eloppification) and I remember being told that when the iPhone launched everyone laughed because there was no way that the battery could last more than a day, there was no app store back then, no flash, no high-speed data (2G) and it failed every single one of the internal tests that Nokia had.

Yet, people didn’t care, obviously - and the iPhone is the model for nearly all phones today.

I get bent out of shape about this, the same way I get bent out of shape about the death of small phones and modular laptops; but people vote with their wallets and if the market was large enough for both to exist then there would be better options; yet it seems like there’s not.

People seem to care much more about capacitive touch screens, large displays, hungry CPUs, incredible post-processing of cameras (and great camera sensors) than they do about being drop proof, having stable software or battery life.

Features > Stability ; to most people. (and, how do you put stability on a spec sheet for tech youtubers to care about or savvy consumers trying to buy the best “value” they can; build quality doesn’t fit onto a spec sheet).

> People seem to care much more about...

One cannot conclude this from what the market does. Single individuals might want wildly different things than what the combined economy serves them.

I was there, too. Not at Nokia, but in the ecosystem of these companies.

People wanted iPhone over Nokia, not due to its specs but due to its usability and presentation.

Let's be honest, both Symbian and Maemo/Meego were abject messes in both of these categories.

They were really trying with MeeGo, we used to joke that we had the most expensive clock app in the world because it had been remade so many times. People forget that R&D can be super expensive. Apple definitely cooked there.

Symbian though, I mean, considering the hardware constraints was crazy!

The smartphone variant of Symbian needed 2MiB of Memory and supported Qt... madness.

We need a Symbian/Nokia movie to accompany the "Blackberry" movie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXL_HDzBQsM

  Mike, are you familiar with the saying, "Perfect is the enemy of Good"?

  Well, "good enough" is the enemy of humanity.

Meego’s N9 had in some areas better usability than the iPhone and was overall competitive.

Tap to wake, slide to homescreen, the control center were introduced by the N9.

having stable software - yeah that wasn't my experience. I used early and late Series 40 phones and they had plenty of problems. Mostly minor but not clearly getting better. And then it got worse. My N97 mini was a good phone with pretty terrible software. It was bad. And then it didn't matter anymore.

I'm not excited about the current duopoly, but a decent mid-range phone from either is better now that in was five years ago.

I once supported an expensive application for Symbian OS and the customers had plenty of problems with Nokia smartphones. Not dumb phones, but smartphones. HW keyboards failed constantly, wi-fi quality fluctuated randomly from piece to piece, displays developed weird errors, loudspeakers developed tin sound etc.

Oh, and my favorite, problems with microUSB charging ports were eternal.

On the battery front that really is just a function of your use. I've got a smart phone I use purely for work, which in reality means sending a handful of messages in a day. That battery lasts 5 days or so.

Also my first phone, a "bomb proof" Nokia died when it fell out of my pocket into a shallow pond. Most modern phones would survive that no problem!

In 2003 I almost never touched my phone, because you couldn’t do much on that tiny display other than actually calling people.

Maybe that’s the reason the battery lasted a week.

> virtually indestructible

Owned a Nokia in 2003 as well and it was destructed by some water. It had no Nokia Care and my grandma refused to buy me a new one.

> text without looking at the screen

I do it all the time by dictating.

Try doing that in class. I could message my friends without a teacher spotting it.

It’s 2025, kids just pull out their phone now

I owned a 3310. I remember going into the mountains for a week and didn’t even charge the phone beforehand, because the battery would last anyway. Back then I used to climb, and I remember how it fell out of my pocket from around 30m (100 feet). When I got down, I just picked it up from the ground and put the back panel back on. The phone worked perfectly for at years after that.

If you limit your smartphone usage to the capabilities of a 2003 Nokia (turn off data and wifi, only use calls and SMS) the battery will last 2 weeks and never crash or reset. Before I got a phone with dual SIM capability I used to bring an old spare phone to keep my home SIM in with data off only to be able to not miss calls/SMS. They’d typically last the whole trip without charging when they’re not keeping connections alive for email, push etc.

Before I got a smartphone I used a j2me IRC client to keep connected with my friends, and I had to carry 3 batteries to swap throughout the day for it to last, the battery life was horrible if you actually did anything on it.

I have a 1960s western electric phone on my desk. Between calls it could be used to smash your Nokia into powder.

Does it matter? No. Those phones were built to purpose for their time. Sonim made/makes an Android phone that is approximately as durable as a Motorola radio for police. I used one for a bit, the speakerphone worked submerged, and it fell off a two story building when on a video call.

But it turns out nobody really wants that. When the technology for smartphone chips and displays matures, my guess is, like the tank Nokia, the iPhone Kevlar Edition will be the Nokia of 2035.

My Nokia in 2003 didn't last a week. As a teenager I was on AIM on that thing constantly. The battery lasted maybe a day or two when I was actually using it a good bit.

The battery lasted a week when a week's worth of usage was a dozen messages and an hour of call time with the rest the phone is locked and dark.

Phones of the past also died when exposed to a little bit of water. Back then it was common to hear someone say their phone died because of water damage but it has been years since I‘ve heard that about a smartphone.

Smartphones are pretty durable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2xGzHjYCcY

Note to mention they're waterproof.

my nothing phone (1) full of very ugly scratches (and one especially ugly testament on a corner to me dropping it one too many time) was stolen a few months ago while I was in a house of worship (I was introducing my favorite girlfriend to the forbidden pleasure of dipping fries into mcfreeze ice cream with caramel - and while in this trance state...)

anyway, the new Nothing phone (3a) is amazing batterywise!

Is this written by AI or why does this make no sense to me?

it's not AI (at least I am not aware, but the simulation argument is pretty convincing!)

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