7 ms·
Nokia Releasing First Android Phone
- rubiquity 13y agoPaywall :/
- gcb0 13y agothe verge has a write up of the paywalled report... it seems to be the same shell/hardware as the current windows phones. which is a huge let down. it will be yet another candy bar phone. if you had hopes of a n900 successor as well, it may be the time to give up already :(
- untog 13y agowhich is a huge let down. Quite to the contrary. Nokia has been making some of the best smartphone hardware for a while now - I considered switching to WP just so that I could use the 1520 (or whatever the one with the great camera was). I didn't in the end - if it supported Android I wouldn't hesitate. Unfortunately, this sounds like something quite different.
- dman 13y agoFor all those who dream of running emacs on their phone, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
- icebraining 13y agoHum, an emacs native port for Android has been out for quite a while now [1]. Android is just a Linux system with a weird libc and windowing system. [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid
- catern 13y agoUnfortunately, this "port" is just running ordinary terminal Emacs inside of an Android terminal application. So it's pretty buggy and annoying to use; and you might as well just run it in a chroot.
- aceperry 13y agoI'm a vi guy, but I had to laugh at that. :-)
- theatraine 13y agoGoogle clickthroughs aren't blocked: https://www.google.com/search?q=+Nokia+Releasing+First+Android+Phone https://www.google.com/search?q=+Nokia+Releasing+First+Andro...
- kyrra 13y agoalternate post: http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped-without-google-10316317/ http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped-without-... Possible WSJ link that works: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304104504579374893734151208-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNjEwNDYyWj http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304...
- dserban 13y agoLinus Torvalds once said: "If Microsoft ever starts developing apps for Linux, it means I won." Is this close enough?
- Zikes 13y agoAlready happened with Skype.
- dhruvmittal 13y agoWhile it's true that they didn't drop support for Skype when they acquired it, and even continued to update it, what are the chances they'd have said "Hey, let's port skype to qt and put it on linux!" on their own?
- Zikes 13y agoI think the spirit of Linus's quote was that Microsoft wouldn't necessarily set out to do so, but eventually be forced to develop for Linux in some way whether they wanted to or not.
- _random_ 13y agoWon what? Besides Nokia is not really Microsoft and Android is not really a Linux, so the answer is probably "not really".
- leobelle 13y agoHow is Android "not really a Linux ? It runs the Linux kernel. That means it's Linux. No, it's not a distribution of GNU/Linux, but it's a Linux kernel. It's really using Linux. It's as Linux as Ubuntu, as Ubuntu also runs on a Linux kernel.
- pessimizer 13y agoWhy would anybody have cared about Linux except as an academic exercise if not for GNU? If there had been another properly licensed kernel before Linux, we would all be using GNU bolted on top of that. Linux has been great and Linus is a great steward, but Linux without GNU is a base for creating an OS, not an OS.
- jemeshsu 13y agoI hope one day Nokia will release Windows Phone Bootcamp for those Nokia Android phone. Similar to how one bootcamp to Windows from Mac OS X. If MS has its own Android stores/platform, its a win-win.
- wmf 13y agoSupposedly Nokia is only building Android phones because Windows Phone 8 won't fit on low-end hardware.
- sgloutnikov 13y agoAre you kidding? WP8 fits much better on low-end hardware. Just look at the Lumia 520.
- kremlin 13y agoI'd read all those 'Microsoft should fork Android' discussions that have been appearing on HN lately, but I never remotely saw it coming to fruition. Interesting development...
- ben336 13y agothis isn't Microsoft. This was Nokia's thing and started before Microsoft bought them.
- kremlin 13y ago"The coming Nokia Android phone won't promote Google's Play application store, from which Google takes a percentage of profits. Instead, the phone will come installed with a suite of services created by Nokia and Microsoft" It may have started before Microsoft bought them, but it looks like it's not the complete truth to say 'This isn't Microsoft.' It's a little bit Microsoft, at least.
- oscargrouch 13y agoI wonder if this fork would be open-source?
- blktiger 13y agoAlso, "Last Android Phone" :P
- Zigurd 13y agoI predict this will last 5 minutes after the Nokia deal closes. This is a thumb in the eye to Microsoft by people who will also leave that part of Nokia immediately after the deal closes. They will leave with the knowledge and experience of how to integrate an Android based product with Nokia (maps, multimedia, app store) and Microsoft (Bing search, Skype) ecosystem elements. I would bet they know at least 5 OEMs in China who would like a similar product.
- untog 13y agoHonestly, it sounds like a bad proposition overall. What is Windows Phone lacking? Apps. What will the Nokia Android phone lack? The Google Play store. Hmm.
- Zigurd 13y agoAmazon is doing quite well, and making some very sweet hardware running an Android-based OS. I think that with Nokia's ecosystem elements plus a selection of the dozens of Android apps Microsoft makes, plus some China-specific apps, you could have a workable front end to your own ecosystem.
- touristtam 13y agoOther Android based phone are being sold without the Google Play Store, and still sell very well. Disclaimer: those are mostly phone developed for the Chinese market where the Google Play Store is not allowed to be bundle with the phone. See Xiaomi for an example.
- jbigelow76 13y ago>What is Windows Phone lacking? Apps. What is the current perceived gap in the Windows Phone app store?
- rayiner 13y agoQuality is very low. Apps are there, but features are usually lacking and incomplete, and curation is awful. NB: I have a Lumia.
- JVIDEL 13y agoI'll never understand why Nokia thought that going with WP was a better strategy than forking android like amazon did. Think about it: it would have the openness and stability of Linux with the single hardware configuration and quality of the iPhone, total win-win. Now they are going to android as the cheap option which means only crappy hardware that only "looks" like a lumia. Had Nokia gone the other way it would be in an even better position than Samsung Mobile is in now, mostly thanks to it's vastly superior software resources. Then again the exact same thing could be said about RIM.
- Zigurd 13y agoIt was all about Stephen Elop's career trajectory, which was supposed to land him where Satya Nadella is now.
- nextos 13y agoOr going full steam ahead with their Maemo / MeeGo which Elop killed. It was an excellent product: http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review. In fact, N9s still retail for pretty high amounts despite being unsupported and outdated hardware.
- hbharadwaj 13y agoThank god none of you are in charge. Just kidding or am I? Elop played the game straight forward. Forking is a half baked option and when you are leveraging your company, forking is not an option. You need full scale OS support and that means, Nokia could have either gone with MS or Google. Google apparently refused to make space for Nokia's competing service suite (Read-Business Week) and as such, the option was only MS. I know the hate is strong for MS in this community but it's way too illogical to think one man alone could have played his tactics and strategies to influence Nokia to switch to a MS OS for his career progression. Meego was ruled out as an option as well. A tech-pretty thing may not always work out. WebOS taught us that lesson. So conspiracy theories are pretty meaningless.
- 13y ago
- skc 13y agoIt's pretty odd. I think it's fair to say that the only handset makers profiting off of Android today are...Samsung...and...that's about it really. Meager pickings for the rest of them. I don't see this succeeding at all. And in any case it's dead in the water once the Microsoft deal goes through because it just muddies the waters. A person that buys one of these cheap Nokia/Android phones would reasonably expect that "upgrading" to Nokias "premium" Lumia handsets will mean his apps/features carry over too. Oops.
- RyanZAG 13y agoSamsung, Xiamo, Huawei, Lenovo all appear to be making good profits off of Android. There are a few other smaller players also making good profits, although note that Huawei and Lenovo are pretty big players, easily bigger than RIM/Nokia/etc. So I don't think that argument holds much water - if Nokia made an Android phone that people wanted, they could very easily charge a premium (Sony does after all, but they just barely break even on massive staffing costs) and potentially make profits too.
- rayiner 13y agoLenovo made less than $500m net profit across the entire company last year, on $30b in revenue. These are margins you can sustain only if you're a Chinese ODM or a company like Samsung that makes money from all the parts in everyone else's phones too. It's certainly not the kind of money that supports expensive R&D. Apple can throw a billion at developing sapphire glass or a new tooling method, and beat their competitors over the head with it with phones that are lighter, stronger, etc. You can't play that game being a low-margin company like Lenovo.
- mnglkhn2 13y agoNokia has the hardware chops to produce good Android phones (in the same league as Samsung). At the same time, Nokia also has the software development chops to polish the Android platform to its liking. I doubt the phone will be a simple AOSP fork. Nokia will most likely try and play the same game Samsung is playing. Google will have to decide to what extent it will license Android to Nokia. Imagine that it cannot say no, since it will look really bad then. From my perspective, this is a very good move by Nokia. Good hardware and nice software polish will make for nice phones. Don't forget, Nokia knows how to bring the phone at a good price point. They will actually put quite a bit of pressure on Samsung and Google. This is why Lenovo will take over Motorola. Lenovo also has solid hardware chops. It will be very interesting and good for consumers.
- tosseraccount 13y agoiOS Android. We actually do need a third choice.
- aceperry 13y ago"Another reason for the Nokia Android phone is Microsoft's Windows Phone—currently the only operating system on Nokia's higher-end Lumia smartphones—doesn't work on low-cost phones because of the software's technical requirements." I have to wonder about that statement, because WP created a smaller memory requirement version that was supposed to be run on lesser hardware phones.
- cek 13y agoThis has nothing to do with Microsoft. Due to anti-trust law, Microsoft can't have any influence over decisions Nokia makes before the acquisition[1]. Even if Microsoft hated the idea of Nokia building and Android phone (likely) it could do nothing about it. And, even more importantly, Nokia could NOT change its plans even if Microsoft wanted them to. [1] http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is-microsoft-having-on-nokia-right-now/ http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is-microsof...