Nokia and Microsoft recently teamed up to compete with iOS and Android, trying to make it what the newish Nokia CEO calls a 'three horse race'. Nokia devices running Windows Phone 7 has apparently received mixed reactions, but Nokia's concept pieces look stunning, and WP7 is honestly pretty neat.

Nokia hardware + a shiny new OS and a corporate giant at their back = win? I think this could be pretty cool.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/7003/borg6431825.png

Nokia: the best handset maker MS could buy.

Nokia already had an in-house developed next-gen handset OS: Maemo, which they combined with Intel's Moblin and became MeeGo, which is backed by many companies.

There is almost no doubt in the tech world that MS purchased their support, as they dropped what was developed in-house using technology they own and license like a sack of stones in the blink of an eye. Palms were definitely greased, no doubt about it.

And now everyone is reporting on the death of Nokia, it's pretty much unanimously agreed the agreement they signed was a bad one and Nokia took the wrong bait.

My worries? Qt. I love Qt, and now that Nokia is all lovey-dovey with MS, I fear Qt will suffer.

As I understand it, those concept pieces are just electrons and photons. Its a "We're thinking of making something like this", not a "We're working toward releasing something like things". Regarding WP7, I haven't heard anything good about it from anyone who's used it. I have, however, heard of significant stability issues (crashing/freezing/whatever frequently).

In the way of shiny new operating systems, MeeGo would've/will fit that description pretty well . We should get a taste of it when the N9 is released.


I'm sure having a former MS employee at the helm had little impact on the decision.

I think they said somewhere that they don't feel MeeGo is ready to be rolled out for all their smartphones, so they're outsourcing to MS while they poke around with it. Which is plausible, but could easily be a cover.

I suggest treating the WP7 handsets as though they have oozing buboes, while snapping up any MeeGo phones they release (can say with near-certainty that it will be a far superior platform). Boycott only the product you don't like, try to encourage the one you do.

It'll be slow at 1st but I think they'll eventually catch up to the other competing brands. If they're smart they should try to be the cheapest option so that people will flock to it.

Neither quality nor price guarantees people "flocking" to it (I can give countless examples of both). MS has a horrible reputation on mobile phones

Everything takes time I wouldn't expect Microsoft to raise up to where Apple is overnight.

Like I said, though, neither quality (which, quite frankly isn't there on WP7*) nor price guarantee adoption.

As I mentioned, Windows does not rate high on the satisfaction scale for mobile phones, never has. WP7 lacks both consumer-driven and developer-driven support. Countless smarphone app developers have given numerous technical reasons why they can't port their apps from iPhone and/or Android to WP7. It also lacks many significant features people expect in their smartphone

*In the utmost simplest example of where WP7 is lacking in quality for most users: it forces you to use the Zune software in a world where most people are tied into iTunes. That isn't a winner for most people (note: I know not everyone uses iTunes, I myself would never dream of using it, but a very large population does, especially smartphone owners)

@Defron: No Qt on WP7. Devs are actually getting pissed at Nokia and moving to/ threatening to move to Android. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/nokia-developers/

Also: Has anyone here every actually used Symbian or Meego? IDK what they're like, whereas I've at least seen pics of WP7.

Qt is for a LOT more than just phones... a LOT. Like, I don't even know where to start with talking about how important Qt is. Nokia not loving it is what I am worried about because of how big it is.


I used Moblin, which MeeGo is partially based on. It was pretty slick. There are probably tons of people that have used Symbian given how big of an OS it was/still is

Hundreds of millions of people don't count :stare:.

But, yeah, I played with a N8 last month, and it seemed fine to me. In fact, I'm thinking I might buy one.

I'm a bit afraid that this will only result in blue-screening Nokia phones. :rolleyes:

This is a huge deal in Finland atm, some people are very pissed. To them, this seems to mean that Nokia is moving even more out of Finland and Finnish ownership, now that the CEO isn't even Finnish. I have no idea how this is going to affect anything, since I know next to nothing about stuff like this, but I'm just hoping it doesn't bomb.

I've been part of two game development projects for Windows Phone 7. At first WP7 was buggy and crashed sometimes, but that
was just it being prototype which was not intended to commercial use. If you don't have much experience with WP7 development, you can make
it crash and blue screen, a lot.

It was funny to test Global Game Jam WP7 winner game, "WTF? it blue screened?"...


I don't mind Nokia teaming up with Microsoft that much.

I am really looking forward to the new phones.
Nokia and Microsoft missed to many opportunities and trends in the last few years, maybe together they can get to the top again.

And with .NET and Silverlight the apps will be pretty and functional too .

EDIT:
I think that is quite *the* deal for both companies.
Microsoft wasn't that good in making mobiles and Nokia svcked in making good operating systems.

WP7 > Maemo

Nokia obviously agrees because they are scraping Maemo in favour of WP7, although they'll still use MeeGo for low-end devices.

For developers, WP7 is one of the best mobile platforms out there, if not the best once Microsoft fixes the stability issues and opens the phone for homebrewn applications... which I think will happen soon since http://www.winrumors.com/windows-phone-7-jailbreakers-working-with-microsoft-on-homebrew-support/ on homebrew support right now.

While Java and Objective-C are great programming languages (Android and iPhone) how can they compete with C# and the .Net libraries? and silverlight support, and XNA for games. I know that iPhone and Android are supported by Unity3D, so I understand game developers who develop for the iPhone/Android platform, but I figure Unity will publish WP7 support soon since WP7 natively supports the .Net/XNA libraries which makes it an ideal platform for creating games.

I created a small WP7 application a few weeks ago (scientific calculator with functions to do molecular calculations... I was bored in my Chemistry class) and the development process was absolutely brilliant. I just downloaded the WP7 development kit, created a new project in Visual Studio 2010 and probably spent more time having fun with the interface design than actually writing code. No searching for libraries, no coding headache, just creativity. ^_^ ... of course I don't have a WP7 phone so it was of no use to me, but developing it was great. I actually ended up re-writing it in PHP/Javascript and putting it on my website so I could use it on my phone.

I may be a little biased since I've hated the Java platform (for mobile apps) since I tried to write a J2ME application a year ago. The only thing I learned from that was how an aneurysm feels like. <_<

I know I shouldn't judge the Android java platform on that experience, but it's hardcoded into my brain that Java + Mobile = cthulu-like horror and despair. :cold: I'm sure the java platform for Android is easy to work with and all, but I just love the fact that I can port my Windows C# projects to WP7 with only minor changes to the code. (Since WP7 supports the .NET libraries)

overall I think that the WP7 platform will conquer a large portion of the mobile developers out there, http://www.winrumors.com/anolyst-claims-windows-phone-7-will-be-the-fastest-growing-platform-in-2011/

My opinions:
- with almost every phone companies using the same OS version, the unique driving point is the hardware, which Nokia is good at. Had they try to deliver a good phone with a recent Android version, they could succeed
+ W7 is unique, and Nokia would be a prime target for people who wants a W7 phone
- but general opinion for W7 isn't very good
+ Microsoft is rich, and Nokia could benefit from the fund

I read that stocks for both Microsoft and Nokia dropped on the day of the announcement, but I couldn't find the article to back it.

I think this is a very good deal for Microsoft. If it's good for Nokia remains to be seen, WP7 is hardly a popular OS at the moment.


I have a Symbian device (Nokia E52), and as a user I'm very pleased with it, I got all the software on it that I feel I need. The problem with the OS is that it isn't developer friendly, so not much new software is being made for it even though the userbase is huge.


No, they won't use MeeGo for low-end devices. They will use Symbian for that.

Oh, and Maemo > WP7

oh yeah I got those confused there.

I am by far not an expert and I've programmed in Java before .NET came out and I absolutely fell in love with .NET.
Together with Visual Studio its unbeatable.
Drag and Drop UI is just genius!

So yeah, I absolutely agree with you!

Anything that helps kill Symbian and its spawn is good in my book. I haven't used Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone as it is now called) but it can't be worse than Symbian. I've had a Symbian phone for 3 or 4 years and really dislike it. Both the ultra-basic Samsung phone I used before Symbian and the Nexus One I use now were/are so much better that the comparison to Symbian is a disgrace to both.

Qt, on the other hand, is awesome - it would be a pity if anything happened to it, but then it's open source and cross-platform (i.e. not tied to Symbian) so I'm not too worried.

Maemo doesn't even exist anymore, even before this deal, so I don't get what you're saying. Also Nokia isn't going to do MeeGo at all, they might release one single device with it, but they are pretty shakey on that. Right after the this deal, Nokia came forth and said they weren't exactly on good terms with Intel or AMD (two of the major forces behind MeeGo now that Nokia isn't in the picture)


The reason MS is thinking about allowing homebrew is because they are going to lock the market like Apple did, which doesn't help you get developers at the start. MS sees homebrew as a way of having your cake and eating it too. If it actually comes to light as being allowed (given the restrictions MS is placing on app development, I honestly don't think it will, I think it is once again MS saying it to get support), I wouldn't at all be surprised when it is disallowed in the future. Though I definitely agree with you that MS needs to get the kinks out of their phones first. They released WP7 too soon, its lacking numerous features common, not just on smart phones, but regular phones too (such as the ability to set custom ringtones)


Well, Java developers are a lot more commonplace than C# developers (I should note, as much as it pains me to admit: I agree with you that C# is better than Java, but I'll probably never do anything with it until the scourge that is Mono is killed off and replaced with something actually officially supported and released by MS --- which'll never happen). While you may see it as a joy to write for, WP7 is a complete new build from the ground up, breaking compatibility with apps from before, which didn't exactly win brownie points for windows mobile developers. It also isn't possible to port some things because of the restrictions MS has put in place (most obvious example: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/22/sorry-windows-phone-7-app-makers-the-camera’s-off-limits/, which many popular apps like Layar do -- multiple developers have cited things like this as why they can't port their app to WP7). Finally it's a logistical thing: porting to WP7 is costly, and the audience just isn't there or the uptake. Its a chicken-and-the-egg problem. Developers don't want to spend the time porting there without consumers, and consumers don't want to be there because there's no apps.

Of course Microsoft is trying to deal with the problem in their usual manner: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Windows+Phone+7/news.asp?c=21387 until they can get the biggest marketshare money can buy.


That's a single anolyst, hardly a large group of experts (rather, from the article, just a singular "expert"). It doesn't seem to be the case either. We'll have to wait for the quarter's statistics to come out, but adoption seems to be pretty flat from what I'm seeing and reading.

This is further troubled by the fact that http://www.pcworld.com/article/207596/microsofts_windows_phone_7_no_tablets_for_you.html. Windows 7 proper is going to be their only offering on it. That's segmenting your developers and not something I'd say is a good move in the current market.