Yes, but Symbian development was spinning up again, MeeGo had an amazing potential. WP was absolutely not ready to be sold.
But the truth is that Symbian had simply been stagnant for too long and would never catch up and MeeGo for all its potential was just another platform with even less backing than WP and even less ready to be sold. Had they decided to really go for it with on of Symbian or MeeGo a few years earlier and gotten on the smartphone bandwagon then I might have my MeeGo Lumia device I so wanted, but they didn't and by the time they realized their mistake it was too late. As much as I hate to admit it and as much as it didn't necessarily work out very well, going with WP was probably a good decision at the time
Just out of curiosity, what do you mean "smartphone type stuff"? Symbian has been a smartphone OS since its inception.
At launch of iPhone Nokia had featurephones that were more capable.
And if one look at the current Android market, they may be right. Samsung is only where it is right now because of a massive marketing push in the last few years.
Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing. What else? Would you like me to list how doesn't the latest iOS compare to latest Symbian?
So you're saying it was slow, kind of ugly, had no apps and the brand was so tainted that nobody wanted it.
Don't you think those are good reasons for abandoning Symbian?
So no, I don't think those are good reasons for abandoning any OS. Not for power-users anyway. iPhone is better in media consumption, that's it and that's what majority is after. And bandwagons, obviously.
The dialer was particularly awesome. It was the first time I saw a dialer that a) had untrained voice dialing and b) had vocal caller ID.
I had untrained voice dialing IN GREEK for years on my Nokia 701. And it actually worked correctly!
My brand new kitkat-soon-to-be-lolipop device cannot even voice dial English names.