6 ms·

How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of usability, performance and polish. Definitely ahead of Android. Elop stated that th

by Geee 15y ago

How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of usability, performance and polish. Definitely ahead of Android. Elop stated that they couldn't get it ready until 2014, but surprisingly it's on markets before the WP phones. Nokia store is also way ahead of WP marketplace. It's just huge downplay of Nokia's products, while WP is not at all proven platform. Elop's statements were understandable back then, when nobody had seen the N9.

untog 15y ago
"How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of usability, performance and polish." "which is said"? Who said?
- daliusd 15y ago
  I agree that it is too optimistic (see my other comment) but I was dissapointed that I can't swype in iPad.
  - daliusd 15y ago
    OK. Maybe I was not clear enough but I wanted to say that swipe (http://swipe.nokia.com/ http://swipe.nokia.com/) function from MeeGo Harmattan grown into me very fast. I have iPad as well - I have tried to swipe program in iPad naturally one day and that has not worked for me because there is no such function in iPad. My point is that Nokia has done something really cool from usability/user experience perspective. Or maybe I'm downvoted only because I insulted all iOS device owners by saying that their device is not coolest gadget anymore...
- kenjackson 15y ago
  The engineers who worked on it, of course.
- toyg 15y ago
  It got extremely good reviews on engadget, of all places, so it can't be bad.
maratd 15y ago
It doesn't matter. WebOS was fantastic too. There is no demand. Consumers want iOS or Android. They don't want anything else. The only possible way they might is to introduce something that iOS or Android do not have ... and none of those operating systems introduce anything that would represent a significant innovation in the consumer space. They do the exact same thing, only incrementally better. That is not reason enough for people to switch.
- barista 15y ago
  Forget webOS even Windows Phone OS itself is way ahead of androind and even iOS in terms of usability. But you are right. People have ignored it so far. All they want is android or iOS.
  - Steko 15y ago
    A growing number of people "want" Android today but your average customer had no idea what Android was when Android beat the pants off WebOS in 2009/2010. WebOS was a great OS stapled onto the biggest laughingstock of marketing and shoddy production quality in memory. WP7 was late and less polished but also suffered from carriers-dont-push-it-itis.
- Geee 15y ago
  WebOS lacked proper push and more capable hardware. Also, on global markets, Palm was a miniature company. I don't know if they even sold WebOS devices overseas. Android sell well because of multitude of devices and very cheap prices, not because it's good or popular.
  - mobiplayer 15y ago
    They sold some Pre units over here (Spain), I had one.
- zobzu 15y ago
  meego runs MUCH better than webos on the same hardware tho. also its not proprietary.
daliusd 15y ago
Well it looks like people at Nokia have tried really hard to release N9 even if it has problems. It is far from polished and I have hit some critical functionality that has API but is not working on Harmattan (most probably it works on Symbian). As well there are some functions that do not work from UI. I have reported bugs but that's the best I could do (maybe I can fix some of them). Overall I love how MeeGo Harmattan works and I love this OS - I'm happy owner of N950 (I'm using it as my main phone without problems). Here is another thing that looks suspicious. New feature phones (that will run Meltemi) will have 1Ghz processor and as far as I'm aware N950 must have processor like this (at least I was hinted that it has slower processor than N9). Here I don't get why new OS is written when they have working one. As well it looks illogical to waste experience gained during Harmattan development (having in mind that Meltemi is developed in Germany and not Finland). It looks like not everything is revealed yet from Nokia side.
- Geee 15y ago
  The first update is almost released with 3500+ improvements. The current software was ready in spring already and they have been working on the first update since. Also, I think the software on N950 is somewhat older/different release. Meltemi is supposed to have different kernel, and it's really targeted at very low-end, in feature phone markets. Although, very low-end is 1Ghz in a couple of years.
  - bergie 15y ago
    N950 got the software version from N9 (I believe, though maybe there are hardware-specific differences) yesterday OTA
    - bergie 15y ago
      Release notes: http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/release/N950-39-5/Nokia_N950_PR11_Release_Notes_v39_5_en.txt http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/release/N950-39-5/Nokia_N950_...
aurynn 15y ago
MeeGo Harmattan isn't as polished as iOS - it's got a lot of first-generation performance issues, definitely requires some babysitting to keep it running well, but it's miles ahead of Android. It feels like the Harmattan team at Nokia really understood good UI and good design, and wanted to build a product around those ideals. The N9 is also a really slick piece of hardware. Someone designed and loved this thing, and wanted it to be amazing. It doesn't have any weird bulges or outcroppings like all the Android handsets; the appearance of it is minimalist; even the camera module on the back looks like it fits the style. I always found the Android cameras to be just another annoying outcrop, never fitting with a cohesive design. The N9, and Harmattan, have that cohesive design. It's a royal shame that it's the best phone no one will ever use...
- somebear 15y ago
  I think the guys at Nokia design will be very happy with that comment. Fortunately most of them are still employed with Nokia and working on exciting stuff. I feel bad for most of the MeeGo devs though. Most of them were laid off or quit in frustration over having their baby flushed down the toilet. Quite a large number of them ended up with Intel to keep working on MeeGo, just to see Intel drop the effort as well. Must be incredibly frustrating. Disclaimer: I work as a software engineer at Nokia in Australia.
  - aurynn 15y ago
    Please pass on my remarks to the design team - I'm very impressed with their work, and I do wish that they continue their excellent designs. I truly wish that Nokia had gone behind the N9 with everything it deserves. I feel it's the first time that Apple has actually been challenged in design, in integrity towards an ideal, in making something that exemplifies that internal drive. After seeing the WP7, even knowing it was coming, I know that their lovely design work was cheapened by that release. It's still good design, but it lost something tangible and wonderful, that sense of being something different and better. By shipping WP7, it became something that exists secondary to another goal, instead of a goal unto itself. Cheapened, as though a device that exists not symbiotically with the software designed to run on it, but any random garbage that can be sold with it. It lost its soul.
pavlov 15y ago
Harmattan was supposed to ship in fall of 2010. It's a year late. Yet, even if the MeeGo mess hadn't happened and Nokia had shipped a Harmattan phone on the original Maemo schedule, would it have made any difference? It would have been hamstrung by Nokia's confusion over Symbian's direction, and steamrolled by iOS and Android just the same. It's not Elop's fault that Nokia's software is in shambles. The damage was done years earlier. Put yourself in Elop's shoes when he arrived a year ago. There's Symbian, an OS that has become extremely expensive to develop. It has been open-sourced and modernized at great effort, but the resulting product (Symbian^3) has critical bugs and a lackluster UI. The people in charge tell him that the big leap forward is just around the corner... But apparently that's exactly what they were saying two years earlier. Then there's MeeGo, a Linux variant that used to be one VP's hobby project. Recently it has been promoted to become the company's new flagship -- except that nobody is quite clear on how it should be positioned alongside Symbian. There's a powerful Symbian lobby inside the company that's determined to see the "eternal upstart" MeeGo fail. The technical state of the OS doesn't inspire much confidence either: the UI framework has been reset several times in the past few years, so although they have a sprawling Linux distribution, there isn't really a phone UI yet. "Don't worry," say the people in charge, "this latest framework is so great that we'll whip up a smartphone experience in no time!" Faced with these options and all their internal political baggage, is it any wonder that Elop went looking for an operating system outside the company?
- smogzer 15y ago
  I never got to understand all that maemo, symbian, meego operating system differences. Couldn't they just use linux and get some QML frontend in front of it. It seems really a lack of direction/duplication of efforts.
  - Geee 15y ago
    Well, it was their strategy all along with Qt, but it's been slow ride. Everything is Qt on new Symbian, MeeGo and upcoming Meltemi. Qt is natively on the new BBX and will probably be on Android. Qt is also their main strategy besides WP, so we will see how things pan out.
bad_user 15y ago
What makes you say that MeeGo Harmattan is definitely ahead of Android. I do not think so. I also do not think that it's enough for MeeGo to be better in terms of usability, performance and polish. For instance, I hate Android's built-in browser. The UI sucks. But the native apps for the online services I use, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype and Flickr -- are kick-ass. This happened slowly and for a looong time people complained how poor the experience is on Android with those apps. Heck, Flickr wasn't even available for Android 4 months ago. But now they are. And I also replaced the browser with Firefox Mobile, which is very resource-hungry, but has a pretty sweet UI and syncs everything with my desktop. I can do that because Android is freaking popular. And even in regards of polish and user-experience, Android 2.3 gets pretty close to my ideal and while iOS is still better, I prefer Android for a whole bunch of other reasons. I AM pretty sad that MeeGo failed to get the traction and resources needed. Competition is good, but Nokia needed to do SOMETHING because they were clearly failing to deliver. I also think picking Windows Mobile was the dumbest move they could make, but whatever.
- dataminer 15y ago
  Can't agree with you more about Nokia picking up Windows Mobile. They should have gone with Android customized it to their liking (just like what Amazon did with kindle fire), taken advantage of already existing apps and ramp up from there just like what Samsung is doing right now. A big transition to a nascent mobile platform slows them down further, they seem to be heading towards the same fate as Palm.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    Nokia is incomparable to Palm, you'd be more likely to know that if you've spent considerable time in Europe or Asia (apart from Japan). There are millions of people there who will blindly buy a Nokia phone regardless of the software. How do you think Symbian is still pushing so many sales? Palm? It has nothing on Nokia, 'Nokia' is synonymous for 'cell phone' in many countries.
    - nl 15y ago

by Geee 15y ago

untog 15y ago

"How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of usability, performance and polish." "which is said"? Who said?

daliusd 15y ago
I agree that it is too optimistic (see my other comment) but I was dissapointed that I can't swype in iPad.
- daliusd 15y ago
  OK. Maybe I was not clear enough but I wanted to say that swipe (http://swipe.nokia.com/ http://swipe.nokia.com/) function from MeeGo Harmattan grown into me very fast. I have iPad as well - I have tried to swipe program in iPad naturally one day and that has not worked for me because there is no such function in iPad. My point is that Nokia has done something really cool from usability/user experience perspective. Or maybe I'm downvoted only because I insulted all iOS device owners by saying that their device is not coolest gadget anymore...
kenjackson 15y ago
The engineers who worked on it, of course.
toyg 15y ago
It got extremely good reviews on engadget, of all places, so it can't be bad.

maratd 15y ago

It doesn't matter. WebOS was fantastic too. There is no demand. Consumers want iOS or Android. They don't want anything else. The only possible way they might is to introduce something that iOS or Android do not have ... and none of those operating systems introduce anything that would represent a significant innovation in the consumer space. They do the exact same thing, only incrementally better. That is not reason enough for people to switch.

barista 15y ago
Forget webOS even Windows Phone OS itself is way ahead of androind and even iOS in terms of usability. But you are right. People have ignored it so far. All they want is android or iOS.
- Steko 15y ago
  A growing number of people "want" Android today but your average customer had no idea what Android was when Android beat the pants off WebOS in 2009/2010. WebOS was a great OS stapled onto the biggest laughingstock of marketing and shoddy production quality in memory. WP7 was late and less polished but also suffered from carriers-dont-push-it-itis.
Geee 15y ago
WebOS lacked proper push and more capable hardware. Also, on global markets, Palm was a miniature company. I don't know if they even sold WebOS devices overseas. Android sell well because of multitude of devices and very cheap prices, not because it's good or popular.
- mobiplayer 15y ago
  They sold some Pre units over here (Spain), I had one.
zobzu 15y ago
meego runs MUCH better than webos on the same hardware tho. also its not proprietary.

daliusd 15y ago

Well it looks like people at Nokia have tried really hard to release N9 even if it has problems. It is far from polished and I have hit some critical functionality that has API but is not working on Harmattan (most probably it works on Symbian). As well there are some functions that do not work from UI. I have reported bugs but that's the best I could do (maybe I can fix some of them). Overall I love how MeeGo Harmattan works and I love this OS - I'm happy owner of N950 (I'm using it as my main phone without problems). Here is another thing that looks suspicious. New feature phones (that will run Meltemi) will have 1Ghz processor and as far as I'm aware N950 must have processor like this (at least I was hinted that it has slower processor than N9). Here I don't get why new OS is written when they have working one. As well it looks illogical to waste experience gained during Harmattan development (having in mind that Meltemi is developed in Germany and not Finland). It looks like not everything is revealed yet from Nokia side.

Geee 15y ago
The first update is almost released with 3500+ improvements. The current software was ready in spring already and they have been working on the first update since. Also, I think the software on N950 is somewhat older/different release. Meltemi is supposed to have different kernel, and it's really targeted at very low-end, in feature phone markets. Although, very low-end is 1Ghz in a couple of years.
- bergie 15y ago
  N950 got the software version from N9 (I believe, though maybe there are hardware-specific differences) yesterday OTA
  - bergie 15y ago
    Release notes: http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/release/N950-39-5/Nokia_N950_PR11_Release_Notes_v39_5_en.txt http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/release/N950-39-5/Nokia_N950_...

aurynn 15y ago

MeeGo Harmattan isn't as polished as iOS - it's got a lot of first-generation performance issues, definitely requires some babysitting to keep it running well, but it's miles ahead of Android. It feels like the Harmattan team at Nokia really understood good UI and good design, and wanted to build a product around those ideals. The N9 is also a really slick piece of hardware. Someone designed and loved this thing, and wanted it to be amazing. It doesn't have any weird bulges or outcroppings like all the Android handsets; the appearance of it is minimalist; even the camera module on the back looks like it fits the style. I always found the Android cameras to be just another annoying outcrop, never fitting with a cohesive design. The N9, and Harmattan, have that cohesive design. It's a royal shame that it's the best phone no one will ever use...

somebear 15y ago
I think the guys at Nokia design will be very happy with that comment. Fortunately most of them are still employed with Nokia and working on exciting stuff. I feel bad for most of the MeeGo devs though. Most of them were laid off or quit in frustration over having their baby flushed down the toilet. Quite a large number of them ended up with Intel to keep working on MeeGo, just to see Intel drop the effort as well. Must be incredibly frustrating. Disclaimer: I work as a software engineer at Nokia in Australia.
- aurynn 15y ago
  Please pass on my remarks to the design team - I'm very impressed with their work, and I do wish that they continue their excellent designs. I truly wish that Nokia had gone behind the N9 with everything it deserves. I feel it's the first time that Apple has actually been challenged in design, in integrity towards an ideal, in making something that exemplifies that internal drive. After seeing the WP7, even knowing it was coming, I know that their lovely design work was cheapened by that release. It's still good design, but it lost something tangible and wonderful, that sense of being something different and better. By shipping WP7, it became something that exists secondary to another goal, instead of a goal unto itself. Cheapened, as though a device that exists not symbiotically with the software designed to run on it, but any random garbage that can be sold with it. It lost its soul.

pavlov 15y ago

Harmattan was supposed to ship in fall of 2010. It's a year late. Yet, even if the MeeGo mess hadn't happened and Nokia had shipped a Harmattan phone on the original Maemo schedule, would it have made any difference? It would have been hamstrung by Nokia's confusion over Symbian's direction, and steamrolled by iOS and Android just the same. It's not Elop's fault that Nokia's software is in shambles. The damage was done years earlier. Put yourself in Elop's shoes when he arrived a year ago. There's Symbian, an OS that has become extremely expensive to develop. It has been open-sourced and modernized at great effort, but the resulting product (Symbian^3) has critical bugs and a lackluster UI. The people in charge tell him that the big leap forward is just around the corner... But apparently that's exactly what they were saying two years earlier. Then there's MeeGo, a Linux variant that used to be one VP's hobby project. Recently it has been promoted to become the company's new flagship -- except that nobody is quite clear on how it should be positioned alongside Symbian. There's a powerful Symbian lobby inside the company that's determined to see the "eternal upstart" MeeGo fail. The technical state of the OS doesn't inspire much confidence either: the UI framework has been reset several times in the past few years, so although they have a sprawling Linux distribution, there isn't really a phone UI yet. "Don't worry," say the people in charge, "this latest framework is so great that we'll whip up a smartphone experience in no time!" Faced with these options and all their internal political baggage, is it any wonder that Elop went looking for an operating system outside the company?

smogzer 15y ago
I never got to understand all that maemo, symbian, meego operating system differences. Couldn't they just use linux and get some QML frontend in front of it. It seems really a lack of direction/duplication of efforts.
- Geee 15y ago
  Well, it was their strategy all along with Qt, but it's been slow ride. Everything is Qt on new Symbian, MeeGo and upcoming Meltemi. Qt is natively on the new BBX and will probably be on Android. Qt is also their main strategy besides WP, so we will see how things pan out.

bad_user 15y ago

What makes you say that MeeGo Harmattan is definitely ahead of Android. I do not think so. I also do not think that it's enough for MeeGo to be better in terms of usability, performance and polish. For instance, I hate Android's built-in browser. The UI sucks. But the native apps for the online services I use, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype and Flickr -- are kick-ass. This happened slowly and for a looong time people complained how poor the experience is on Android with those apps. Heck, Flickr wasn't even available for Android 4 months ago. But now they are. And I also replaced the browser with Firefox Mobile, which is very resource-hungry, but has a pretty sweet UI and syncs everything with my desktop. I can do that because Android is freaking popular. And even in regards of polish and user-experience, Android 2.3 gets pretty close to my ideal and while iOS is still better, I prefer Android for a whole bunch of other reasons. I AM pretty sad that MeeGo failed to get the traction and resources needed. Competition is good, but Nokia needed to do SOMETHING because they were clearly failing to deliver. I also think picking Windows Mobile was the dumbest move they could make, but whatever.

dataminer 15y ago
Can't agree with you more about Nokia picking up Windows Mobile. They should have gone with Android customized it to their liking (just like what Amazon did with kindle fire), taken advantage of already existing apps and ramp up from there just like what Samsung is doing right now. A big transition to a nascent mobile platform slows them down further, they seem to be heading towards the same fate as Palm.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Nokia is incomparable to Palm, you'd be more likely to know that if you've spent considerable time in Europe or Asia (apart from Japan). There are millions of people there who will blindly buy a Nokia phone regardless of the software. How do you think Symbian is still pushing so many sales? Palm? It has nothing on Nokia, 'Nokia' is synonymous for 'cell phone' in many countries.
  - nl 15y ago