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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

Ars Technica [1] put it best. These phones are dead on arrival.

    This is not the first time Nokia has done something like this. It released a 
    Meego version of the N9, its long-in-development Symbian successor, before 
    immediately abandoning the platform and switching to Windows Phone.

This isn't a sign of some deep strategy. It's just standard Nokia platform craziness.

1: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/02/nokia-to-release-an-a...

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I wouldn't be so quick to discount this move. It could be a classic Microsoft embrace/extend/extinguish move. They lost the first round on mobile phone platforms, but this would allow them to very quickly create a platform that has developer support - after all, porting your apps from standard Android to an AOSP fork is easier than than porting it to Windows Phone. Especially as Microsoft/Nokia is pretty much the only organisation on the planet at the moment apart from Google and Apple that is capable of offering all of the same services that stock Android provides, making porting even easier for app developers.

The latest Android look and feel is not so different from Windows Phone either, once you actually get into the app. You could imagine a "Windows Phone" homescreen skin with Android Apps behind it, and it would be really quite a decent merger of the two environments, graphically speaking.

If they throw a bit of money around to encourage developers to undertake the (hopefully) relatively simple task of porting from stock Android, it's not impossible that they manage to get a pretty decent App Store together, which would solve the app problem for the otherwise fantastic Nokia hardware that they have been making these last few years.

Anyway, there's a lot of conditionals in the stuff that I've just written, none of it may come to pass, I'm just saying that it would be unwise to dismiss this effort without at least waiting a bit to see how it pans out.

Nokia is actually discouraging devs from using Windows Phone design patterns and encouraging Android design guidelines on the Nokia X.

http://developer.nokia.com/resources/library/nokia-x-ui/ux-c...

Design patterns for one platform make sense that they are downplayed where they don't fit.

Me ego was downplayed as WP came along, part of the game.

That said, this seems like an evolution of the saga low end line rather than the high end devices... Simply look at the cameras.

> I wouldn't be so quick to discount this move. It could be a classic Microsoft embrace/extend/extinguish move.

Except, unless I'm mistaken, MS doesn't actually own Nokia yet.

"On 2 September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business unit" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia

> It could be a classic Microsoft embrace/extend/extinguish move.

The rules governing mergers actually prohibit Microsoft and Nokia from strategizing that kind of thing together until the merger is complete.

Microsoft's never been a stickler for the rules.

This is more about going after volume with Android and leaving Windows Phone to compete with iOS for the high-end market. But I guess that is exactly embrace/extend/extinguish except applied directly to the Android brand, which makes more sense than turning the screws on devs with constant platform headaches.

> after all, porting your apps from standard Android to an AOSP fork is easier than than porting it to Windows Phone

So is this REALLY Android if you need to port your applications to run on it? How much of what makes an Android phone Android is AOSP and how much is the Google services that sit on top of it?

This isn't necessarily Google services vs. AOSP. Since they aren't going through certification there's no guarantee they've gone through CTS tests (so they APIs may differ from stock Android, either in signature or functionality).

So it sounds like we have two Androids on the market now: Certified Android and not-quite-Android-but-still-mostly-Android.

No, there's one Android: the one certified by CTS and conforming to the CDD. You aren't allowed to use the name Android to describe your device without being certified as "Android-compatible".

From the FAQ on source.android.com:

"Is compatibility mandatory?

No. The Android Compatibility Program is optional. Since the Android source code is open, anyone can use it to build any kind of device. However, if manufacturers wish to use the Android name with their products, or want access to Google Play, they must first demonstrate their devices are compatible."

> ... which would solve the app problem for the otherwise fantastic Nokia hardware ...

The number of app on Windows Phone is no longer a problem. There are more than 240,000 Windows Phone apps as we speak.

It's not just about the quantity, but quality as well. Many of the major apps such as Uber, Lyft and Venmo are still missing, and the app store is still largely a joke with the hottest apps arriving significantly late - if ever.

As a Finn and a Nokia phone owner, I'd love the company to succeed. I'm just puzzled about the level of arrogance they still showcase, as if they know best what customers "should" want. For example, I visited Nokia offices past spring and a very senior level executive told to a group of developers and I how he doesn't understand why people even need apps like Instagram and "Chat Snap App" [sic] when the Nokia apps work just as fine or better.

While I don't care much about "app counts", the Windows Store is ... laughably bad. Common searches return tons of trademark violations, and obvious crap apps. Ugly junk.

The "number" was never a problem, and by optimizing for that metric, MS made their store into a gross place. A joke, as another comment puts it.

They kind of have to say that though, the same author wrote this:

"While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you."

And his colleague wrote an article titled: "Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable."

So they'd look a bit silly writing about this in any other way.

Maybe it will get canned, but then before today I would have said that it was only for internal purposes, so scare Microsoft into buying them. Turns out I was wrong, and they went public with it.

They are kind of right. These phones are worthless in the US market or any high end market due to lack of Google Play. And that's where the profit margins are. Samsung is really the only player with enough vertical integration and scale to profit on the low end devices. Nokia is one of the very few vendors who can provide a competent maps app without Google Maps, but they are still producing a failure here due to not kissing Google's ring.

I wouldn't read too much into that. I'll say a lot of things about Peter, but he's not exactly afraid to admit he's wrong.

Well the idea was good the implementation sucks as usual. Android without the play store is not as useful or flexible and you can't compete with other budget phones which do have the play store so you're shooting yourself in the foot.

As log as there's an easy way for end users to put it on it shouldn't be such a big deal though.

What I suspect they are attempting to do is get back into the low budget phone market which they used to rule before they stupidly gave it up voluntarily and the only reason they are using Android is because it's the only one suitable for that hardware however this is not the old low end market they used to know.

Before it used to be acceptable to have only a few crap apps for phones but now even the low budget phones have access to the play store. I wonder if they will make it with this self inflicted handicap.

They have no option here - using Google's app store comes with severe attachments that Microsoft is not likely to accept.

My guess is that they are aiming at lower end of market where the price is important, and betting on developers to port their apps. Which could actually happen if porting is not a big issue.

OTOH, Google is putting more and more stuff in closed source part of OS, so the platforms will inevitably diverge. It might be a bit late for Nokia to do this... we'll see.

They have already proven that WP can run on low spec hardware though with the Lumia 520. It's also a 1GHz, 512MB RAM device.

Lumia 520 has MSM8227, it is not that low end. It is dual core Snapdragon S4 with Adreno 305. Nexus 7 (2013) is not that much powerful.

You can already get a brand new and unlocked Windows Phone for less than $100. Microsoft is already winning the low-end battle.

When did "having a product available" become "winning the battle"?

Nokia is clearly aiming the low end market in emerging country. I am not sure that market needs the play store as much as you seem to insinuate. Most of the services offered by the play store apps dont even work in a lot of developping countries.

So Nokia kills one platform/smartphone in the recent past and that means that this new line of phones is doomed? How are the two events linked? I don't see a connection. Products are born and killed everyday, just because company X has killed product Y in the past, doesn't mean that every future product will be killed in the same manor.

Also, N9 was an internally developed OS that was late, and Nokia was suffering. Axing something that is eating massive resources for an external vendor isn't in any way similar to Nokia introducing a low-cost alternative to their existing high end offerings.

Microsoft is about to buy Nokia. No way they're going to continue development of an Android phone.

Was this initiative started before or after the MS acquisition was planned and announced? While technically MS might not own them yet, it seems they have already built their product offerings around this partnership (and for some time now). Which would make the comparison to the internal N9 project being killed in favor of a new platform not as relevant.

This seems to me as a plan hatched after Nokia got into bed with MS as a plan to diversify.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404098/microsoft-consider...

huh? they already own Nokia

No, they don't.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/the-nokia-microsoft-deal-is...

MeeGo was a) successor of Maemo on N900 (and other devices) and b) abandoned, because "burning bridges".

"burning platform" not "burning bridges" (although the number of bridges burned between Nokia leadership and employees, suppliers, developers, distributors/retailers and carriers was nothing short of astonishing. And catastrophic).

It was abandoned because "internal politics"

Funny how those internal politics are internal only now that MS bought Nokia, isn't it?

Nokia's got a long history of internal turf wars. I'm sure it was Symbian vs Meego without Microsoft being in the picture.

The all powerful, at the time anyway, Symbian team didn't like competition and did everything they could to muck up Maemo/Meego development.

That's not the proper chronology.

Nokia announced they were abandoning Symbian/MeeGo for Windows Phone BEFORE announcing and releasing the N9.

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