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I was gifted a Nokia Lumia 640 when it just came out. It was a nice phone, it had good hardware, it was fast and worked smoothly. It had all the applications I

I was gifted a Nokia Lumia 640 when it just came out. It was a nice phone, it had good hardware, it was fast and worked smoothly. It had all the applications I needed and honestly thought that it was gonna take over Android, given Nokia's reputation and popularity of Windows. Then Microsoft forced a Windows 10 update on it, and everything slowed down to a halt. Camera application was running at ~5fps max. Applications started crashing. Then Microsoft pulled the support for the phone completely, and one by one, applications stopped working altogether, until all I had was a dumb phone with a crappy camera and a crappy web browser. It's a shame, really. If they had made it an open platform and allowed users to install Linux, I believe it would have taken over the world.

julianlam 5y ago
> If they had made it an open platform and allowed users to install Linux, I believe it would have taken over the world. Didn't they, though? With Maemo and later Meego (though maybe I have that swapped)? As it turns out the developer power just isn't there. That's not to say that that wouldn't be the case now, but at least back then, it wasn't able to survive. I was so incredibly excited for my Nokia N900, but at the end of the day it was not a phone running Linux, but a buggy OS with a buggy phone app.
- harry8 5y ago
  Wut? N900 was the best, most reliable, highest quality and most polished phone I have ever owned. It's not even close. How they f.ed that up is beyond me.
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    The big problem was just app support. Everyone was writing apps for Android and iOS and maybe Windows or Symbian, but that was about it. Since many of these apps aren't something you can re-create yourself (WhatsApp, banking apps, whatnot) so that hugely diminished its usefulness, especially since this is when everyone and their mother was using WhatsApp, which never made a Maemo app. This problem is even worse now. We're back where we started in ~2000 with Windows.
    - harry8 5y ago
      People write apps for platforms with the largest market shares, apple & droid. Not news. N900 never got the support to get market share. It could have though, the quality was there and they had a huge selling point. If it did the world would be a better place with better software on your phone and less spyware. Not what we got though, huh? We got Apple and Google in the race to who can smash the userbase harder with no meaningful alternative and fringe phones trying to catch up to where the 900 comfortably was a decade ago. Apple and Goog are both looking at each other and thinking "You guys doing that and actually getting away with it? Amazing! Well we'll just go even further!" And the only place where customers rights or welfare is ever even remotely served is where it happens to align with smashing a competitor and is absolutely incidental to their strategy beyond some marketing. It's nuts. The N900 was better in every single way, polish, stability everything. Got smashed by executive decision. You could build conspiracy theories around it if we didn't have such a rich history of total and complete incompetence to draw on and be a more likely explanation.
  - zokier 5y ago
    N900 was really cool device in many ways, but polished or reliable it definitely was not; when I had one, I tended to carry a feature phone along with it because N900 was so ridiculously buggy and unreliable.
    - julianlam 5y ago
      Hey, me too! I got myself a Huawei feature phone, probably their first offering in the North American market. It blows my mind you can buy Huawei phones for $1000+. The feature phone I bought for $50 literally disintegrated in my hands after a couple months of use.
    - harry8 5y ago
      Until I lost mine in a taxi it was easily the best, most polished and most reliable phone I've ever owned. More reliable than any iPhone I've owned. More reliable than any droid I've owned. In terms of calls connecting, not dropping out, the OS not crashing in the middle of calls - all of which have happened to me with Apple and Google's (Samsung's) gear. That was my experience that I'm having as hard a time reconciling with yours as you probably are with mine.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    I've heard such glowing reviews of the N900, that it makes me wonder whether I have a lemon. Towards the end of its life with me, it would soft reboot whenever someone called me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zozbot234 5y ago
AIUI, you can physically install Linux on the Lumia phones, they're not locked down in any way. It's a matter of hardware support.
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  AIUI?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
cf100clunk 5y ago
Some background reading on Nokia's demise under Microsoft: https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen-explains-the-microsoft-nokia-mess/ https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen... There are great links at the bottom of that page to Tomi Ahonen's exhaustive coverage of Microsoft's destruction of Nokia's lucrative, profitable business model.
- megablast 5y ago
  Nokia was on its way down before Microsoft cane along. They prioritised hardware over software. Maintained multiple OS’s. Made lots of stupid derisions.
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    Ahonen's data was highly accurate and was being presented in a very compelling way in real time as the Microsoft-Nokia shitstorm was unfolding. He had already left Nokia years earlier so didn't have any direct skin in the game, but he did have an uncanny record of mobile phone industry insider knowledge, data, and contacts inside Nokia, Apple, Google, Samsung, Motorola, and a long list of carriers worldwide. The reports he generated were considered the "bible" for executives. You are entitled to your opinion that Nokia was somehow "on its way down before Microsoft" but the facts are that Nokia was profitable and had products that were award-winning but never saw the light of day thanks to Stephen Elop's blundering and Steve Balmer's meddling. Ahonen laid down those facts back then. For anyone wishing to have a fuller, rounder understanding of Nokia's demise under Microsoft, take the time to delve into those links at the bottom of: https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen-explains-the-microsoft-nokia-mess/ https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen...

julianlam 5y ago

> If they had made it an open platform and allowed users to install Linux, I believe it would have taken over the world. Didn't they, though? With Maemo and later Meego (though maybe I have that swapped)? As it turns out the developer power just isn't there. That's not to say that that wouldn't be the case now, but at least back then, it wasn't able to survive. I was so incredibly excited for my Nokia N900, but at the end of the day it was not a phone running Linux, but a buggy OS with a buggy phone app.

harry8 5y ago
Wut? N900 was the best, most reliable, highest quality and most polished phone I have ever owned. It's not even close. How they f.ed that up is beyond me.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  The big problem was just app support. Everyone was writing apps for Android and iOS and maybe Windows or Symbian, but that was about it. Since many of these apps aren't something you can re-create yourself (WhatsApp, banking apps, whatnot) so that hugely diminished its usefulness, especially since this is when everyone and their mother was using WhatsApp, which never made a Maemo app. This problem is even worse now. We're back where we started in ~2000 with Windows.
  - harry8 5y ago
    People write apps for platforms with the largest market shares, apple & droid. Not news. N900 never got the support to get market share. It could have though, the quality was there and they had a huge selling point. If it did the world would be a better place with better software on your phone and less spyware. Not what we got though, huh? We got Apple and Google in the race to who can smash the userbase harder with no meaningful alternative and fringe phones trying to catch up to where the 900 comfortably was a decade ago. Apple and Goog are both looking at each other and thinking "You guys doing that and actually getting away with it? Amazing! Well we'll just go even further!" And the only place where customers rights or welfare is ever even remotely served is where it happens to align with smashing a competitor and is absolutely incidental to their strategy beyond some marketing. It's nuts. The N900 was better in every single way, polish, stability everything. Got smashed by executive decision. You could build conspiracy theories around it if we didn't have such a rich history of total and complete incompetence to draw on and be a more likely explanation.
- zokier 5y ago
  N900 was really cool device in many ways, but polished or reliable it definitely was not; when I had one, I tended to carry a feature phone along with it because N900 was so ridiculously buggy and unreliable.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    Hey, me too! I got myself a Huawei feature phone, probably their first offering in the North American market. It blows my mind you can buy Huawei phones for $1000+. The feature phone I bought for $50 literally disintegrated in my hands after a couple months of use.
  - harry8 5y ago
    Until I lost mine in a taxi it was easily the best, most polished and most reliable phone I've ever owned. More reliable than any iPhone I've owned. More reliable than any droid I've owned. In terms of calls connecting, not dropping out, the OS not crashing in the middle of calls - all of which have happened to me with Apple and Google's (Samsung's) gear. That was my experience that I'm having as hard a time reconciling with yours as you probably are with mine.
- julianlam 5y ago
  I've heard such glowing reviews of the N900, that it makes me wonder whether I have a lemon. Towards the end of its life with me, it would soft reboot whenever someone called me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

zozbot234 5y ago

AIUI, you can physically install Linux on the Lumia phones, they're not locked down in any way. It's a matter of hardware support.

phist_mcgee 5y ago
AIUI?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

cf100clunk 5y ago

Some background reading on Nokia's demise under Microsoft: https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen-explains-the-microsoft-nokia-mess/ https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen... There are great links at the bottom of that page to Tomi Ahonen's exhaustive coverage of Microsoft's destruction of Nokia's lucrative, profitable business model.

megablast 5y ago
Nokia was on its way down before Microsoft cane along. They prioritised hardware over software. Maintained multiple OS’s. Made lots of stupid derisions.
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  Ahonen's data was highly accurate and was being presented in a very compelling way in real time as the Microsoft-Nokia shitstorm was unfolding. He had already left Nokia years earlier so didn't have any direct skin in the game, but he did have an uncanny record of mobile phone industry insider knowledge, data, and contacts inside Nokia, Apple, Google, Samsung, Motorola, and a long list of carriers worldwide. The reports he generated were considered the "bible" for executives. You are entitled to your opinion that Nokia was somehow "on its way down before Microsoft" but the facts are that Nokia was profitable and had products that were award-winning but never saw the light of day thanks to Stephen Elop's blundering and Steve Balmer's meddling. Ahonen laid down those facts back then. For anyone wishing to have a fuller, rounder understanding of Nokia's demise under Microsoft, take the time to delve into those links at the bottom of: https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen-explains-the-microsoft-nokia-mess/ https://mobilesyrup.com/2014/08/14/ex-nokia-exec-tomi-ahonen...