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> Not only the variety of devices was creating an incoherent user experience, but it also made it almost impossible to create an app market. I'm not sure I agr

> Not only the variety of devices was creating an incoherent user experience, but it also made it almost impossible to create an app market. I'm not sure I agree with this take - it seems to be based on the idea of comparing Nokia phones to something like the iPhone. But at the time these phones were all made, the experience of using a phone was: - Answer or reject incoming calls with the "answer/decline" button - Read and send messages using the screen and keyboard - That's basically it Nokia created so many freaky looking phones, in part at least, because they were just phones, and the narrowness of their use meant the novelty designs didn't have a seriously problematic effect of their usablility. I don't see any evidence that they (or anyone other than apple) even considered the possibility of an "app ecosystem" - so criticising them for not making one viable seems a little leftfield. Take something like the iPhone - all of the sudden you're not looking at a phone but instead a touch screen computer someone can use for banking, messaging, browsing, shopping etc. Supporting all those different use cases provides way more contraints on Apple's design than Nokia ever needed to consider. Which is a really long way of saying, Nokia phones where just a different category of things to iPhones, and we shouldn't compare them.

rcarmo 3y ago
Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. And most of the devices that could actually do that properly were Nokias (MIDP was OK, but Nokias outsold MIDP phones ringtone-wise for an order of magnitude).
- Eduard 3y ago
  > Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. I don't remember app stores or game downloads existing up until iPhone and Android, let alone being profitable. There was MIDP and J2ME, but they were so niche, and I'm only aware of them because of an practical course during university, circa 2008. But maybe your regional context is different from mine (Germany).
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    They were definitely a thing, pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident. I don't think they were ever very popular with consumers but I bought a copy of Tetris and an offline travel guide from the Sony Ericsson store. Then you bought a new phone, nothing transferred over or could be redownloaded, and you said F this what a ripoff.
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      > pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident. Like that fucking "Amazon Prime" (or something) button on my TV remote control, which does absolutely nothing except every now and then, when I press it by mistake, send me into an app I've never used and will in all probability never use.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    They were a big thing you'd see everywhere around you (TV, magazines etc.), except that you probably classified them in your head under a different label because they were mostly about ringtones and wallpapers and accessed via premium SMS services that would respond with "WAP push" SMS with a download URL in it. Games were more expensive and less popular (though I still wouldn't call them "niche") as compatibility was a mess, but they sure were there way before 2008. My regional context is Poland, but it couldn't have been much different in Germany - otherwise I wouldn't see a service exactly like that being parodied at last Chaos Communication Camp by... actually deploying a working SMS service on the camp's GSM network:)
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    I was at Vodafone. Pretty sure we had exactly the same service across all of Europe, especially because a good chunk of it was developed in Dusseldorf :)
deltarholamda 3y ago
>novelty designs didn't have a seriously problematic effect of their usablility. In my case, I got the weird Nokia (3650?) with the round, rotary phone-layout of the numbers because it would reliably sync contacts with my Mac at the time and could be used as a cellular modem. The novelty design was... not great. But the usability was exactly what I needed.
seba_dos1 3y ago
> Which is a really long way of saying, Nokia phones where just a different category of things to iPhones, and we shouldn't compare them. Except they weren't and we should. Nokia had very popular feature phones with S40 and that's what most people likely remember about it, but it was also a huge player on the smartphone market with Symbian - and those smartphones were proper pocket computers with native apps, web browser, multitasking, messaging etc. years before iPhone. As a teenager I have myself played with Python on a Nokia E65 months before the first iPhone was released. Pretty much the only thing they lacked compared to the first iPhone was a touchscreen (even though Nokia made some attempts years before as well, see Nokia 7710 for example). iPhones didn't even let you install apps at that point (that ability only came in 2nd gen), and let's not even talk about multitasking. Nokia smartphones were doing that for years at that point. Also, let's not forget that Nokia N800 with Maemo was initially supposed to be a smartphone, and that was already before the iPhone as well. It ended up not being one because of internal politics between Maemo and Symbian teams, so the first actual Maemo phone (rather than merely an "Internet Tablet") was N900 two years later. As a "touch screen computer", iPhone was laughable compared to Maemo. Nokia lost to Android, not Apple. iPhone merely acted as a catalyst, and certainly did not define a new "device category" in any technical sense. It accelerated trends that caused regular people to start moving from feature phones to smartphones (a market segment that was previously reserved to high-end and business-class models), at which point Nokia was already left behind by Android. If anything, iPhones harmed Nokia indirectly by making Google redesign Android's UI before it first shipped, while Nokia was too busy enjoying its market leader position and in-fighting to notice what was going on around them.

rcarmo 3y ago

Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. And most of the devices that could actually do that properly were Nokias (MIDP was OK, but Nokias outsold MIDP phones ringtone-wise for an order of magnitude).

Eduard 3y ago
> Actually, large telcos had a decently profitable business setting up their own app stores and charging customers for game and ringtone/wallpaper downloads. I don't remember app stores or game downloads existing up until iPhone and Android, let alone being profitable. There was MIDP and J2ME, but they were so niche, and I'm only aware of them because of an practical course during university, circa 2008. But maybe your regional context is different from mine (Germany).
- kalleboo 3y ago
  They were definitely a thing, pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident. I don't think they were ever very popular with consumers but I bought a copy of Tetris and an offline travel guide from the Sony Ericsson store. Then you bought a new phone, nothing transferred over or could be redownloaded, and you said F this what a ripoff.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > pushed heavily by carriers ("Vodafone live!" etc) with dedicated buttons on the devices that people would mostly press by accident. Like that fucking "Amazon Prime" (or something) button on my TV remote control, which does absolutely nothing except every now and then, when I press it by mistake, send me into an app I've never used and will in all probability never use.
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  They were a big thing you'd see everywhere around you (TV, magazines etc.), except that you probably classified them in your head under a different label because they were mostly about ringtones and wallpapers and accessed via premium SMS services that would respond with "WAP push" SMS with a download URL in it. Games were more expensive and less popular (though I still wouldn't call them "niche") as compatibility was a mess, but they sure were there way before 2008. My regional context is Poland, but it couldn't have been much different in Germany - otherwise I wouldn't see a service exactly like that being parodied at last Chaos Communication Camp by... actually deploying a working SMS service on the camp's GSM network:)
- rcarmo 3y ago
  I was at Vodafone. Pretty sure we had exactly the same service across all of Europe, especially because a good chunk of it was developed in Dusseldorf :)

deltarholamda 3y ago

>novelty designs didn't have a seriously problematic effect of their usablility. In my case, I got the weird Nokia (3650?) with the round, rotary phone-layout of the numbers because it would reliably sync contacts with my Mac at the time and could be used as a cellular modem. The novelty design was... not great. But the usability was exactly what I needed.

seba_dos1 3y ago

> Which is a really long way of saying, Nokia phones where just a different category of things to iPhones, and we shouldn't compare them. Except they weren't and we should. Nokia had very popular feature phones with S40 and that's what most people likely remember about it, but it was also a huge player on the smartphone market with Symbian - and those smartphones were proper pocket computers with native apps, web browser, multitasking, messaging etc. years before iPhone. As a teenager I have myself played with Python on a Nokia E65 months before the first iPhone was released. Pretty much the only thing they lacked compared to the first iPhone was a touchscreen (even though Nokia made some attempts years before as well, see Nokia 7710 for example). iPhones didn't even let you install apps at that point (that ability only came in 2nd gen), and let's not even talk about multitasking. Nokia smartphones were doing that for years at that point. Also, let's not forget that Nokia N800 with Maemo was initially supposed to be a smartphone, and that was already before the iPhone as well. It ended up not being one because of internal politics between Maemo and Symbian teams, so the first actual Maemo phone (rather than merely an "Internet Tablet") was N900 two years later. As a "touch screen computer", iPhone was laughable compared to Maemo. Nokia lost to Android, not Apple. iPhone merely acted as a catalyst, and certainly did not define a new "device category" in any technical sense. It accelerated trends that caused regular people to start moving from feature phones to smartphones (a market segment that was previously reserved to high-end and business-class models), at which point Nokia was already left behind by Android. If anything, iPhones harmed Nokia indirectly by making Google redesign Android's UI before it first shipped, while Nokia was too busy enjoying its market leader position and in-fighting to notice what was going on around them.