Too bad Nokia had something very cool with Maemo2 through 5, Maemo6/Meego was already showing Nokia trying to lock it down while it outsold the crappy WinCE OS Lumina phones. Problem was Nokia was too hooked on Symbian and so the Linux group was left to go geek-wild until the N900 came out while the Symbian group allegedly sabotaged things.
I suppose WebOS by Palm was pretty cool too, both were real Linux OSs unlike Android which runs on a hacked kernel and weird Dalvik VM interface.
I think Nokia can return to phones around 2016, it comes up every now and then at talk.maemo.org
Damn their phones were tough my Maemo N900 is a tank and still the coolest phone I have ever owned. With inductive charging I bypass the fragile USB port problem; its only weakness.
Anyway to wrap it up go-go-go Neo900.org a community upgrade board for N900, be a geek order one, I don’t work there just want one at mass production prices.
We don’t need no stinking Nokia, we’ll make our own damn phone; wIth blackjack and hookers!
I still have a working 3310 (but then, who doesn’t?).
Heard that in the voice of Gaff.
The AMPS version is probably the ultimate still usable mobile phone if your hot tub is targeted at the '80s.
My dad’s probably still got his late 80s Nokia brick with the credit-card sized SIM.
First couple phones were Nokias. They were tanks.
I’d have dropped Microsoft and kept Nokia.
Kinda like ValuJet did by buying AirTran and using their brand.
The whole story makes me wish the Finns would bring back Viking raids for one last go to capture Elop for flogging and torture.
Microsoft’s Steven Elop is appointed by the board of Nokia to CEO, he doesn’t even move his family, suspicious?
Writes the burning platform(maemo and symbian=platform) later kills all Linux and Symbian projects.
Nokia goes from easy #1 in both smart and dumb phones to a dying snack for MSFT in the three years Elop was CEO.
Don’t the Finns have a navy and some horned hats around?
This is clearly because Microsoft only acquired the rights to use the Nokia brand for Lumia phones for 18 months after the acquisition. Nokia still exists as a company, they just don’t make mobile phones anymore, and Microsoft was only licensing the right to use the Nokia name.
Your comment reminds me of how badly I wanted a smartphone that could do the things that I really wanted it to do; I had Palm devices from 1998-2008, and my last one was a Treo phone, but I was constantly frustrated at the small screen (compared to the previous Palm PDAs I’d had) and lack of a decent web browser. I came very close to getting a 6620 (I think; it took me some time to find something like what I remembered from over a decade ago, since Nokia has had a staggering number of phone models) at one point, and probably would have gotten another Palm phone if their next-gen OS had been out by the time my Treo stopped syncing, but it wasn’t, and by then the iPhone had had a couple of new iterations and I made the leap.
I went from a Nokia 6650 and Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 which I did for way past normal lifetime to a Nokia N900. I am still hanging on to it with no replacement on the horizon though I wish that it had been bigger like the previous Nokia Maemo N-series tablets.
I’m still using an ancient Nokia cellphone. The thing works, makes and answers calls, and that’s all I ask of it.
In a page that is about Vista, an OS that came out 8 years ago?
And a branch of the 19th century version of Nokia, Nokian Footwear, still exists, although it is no longer owned by Nokia itself. Still, it is one of those weird things, like Tandy Leather where you have to wonder how they ever got into electronics (which they only did in the 1960s).
Nokia goes from easy #1 in both smart and dumb phones to a dying snack for MSFT in the three years Elop was CEO.
huh? Nokia an easy #1 in the smart phone market?!? They were never even in the game. And Windows Phone has seen decent growth since then, solid #3 worldwide, #2 ahead of Apple in many markets, though Android still comfortably dominant of course.
It’s sad in some ways, I’ve had Nokia phones since my very first phone 15-20 years ago, they made the best dumbphones on the market, and the quality of their Mego and Windows Phones was top notch as well (Symbian was an atrocious OS though). Microsoft have a decent record with hardware in recent years though, their mice and keyboards were always solid, and the Surface is pretty nifty too, so I’m confident they can keep the quality at Nokia levels.
And Nokian tires are amazing. Best snowtires I’ve ever owned.
that’s better than I thought they were doing, though clearly still not an easy #1, and already well in decline before elop took over.
Well, it’s more than a bit misleading because Symbian != Nokia, even if it was mostly. Plus, the smartphone volumes in 2007 were tiny, relatively speaking.
I don’t like Elop and how he ran Nokia, I really liked Nokia phones and had a sentimental attachment, but he wasn’t wrong about Symbian. It was pants, and Nokia really did screw up Maemo/MeeGo, and I’m still very pissed off that I couldn’t get an N9 because Elop wouldn’t sell the damn things.
However you look at it, though, Ratnering/Osborneing your company is a dumb move.
