I agree with you, but I did value his speach at Stanford.

lots of opinion there. nothing new.quite common stuff. Your opinion, not mine. please don't tell me what I "know", since I obviously hold a different opinion, and base it on my own experiences of developing for it.

anyway, when you can't even get the name right, it leads me to disregard anything else you have to say about it. i figured you wouldn't much care if I cared what you have to say, but it seems I was wrong.

> It should have!

Well, yes. It was quite dated in terms of h/w specs, but it is still a joy to use in general. The OSSO/Maemo/Meego devices have always been somewhat lack-lustre in terms of h/w specs, but the audience has in general found other things more important. I think some people were hoping that would be different with the N9 and N950 (and other predecessors), so I guess that's why it was sold (or updated to N9 specs)

Even though I would have preferred the *addition* of WP approach (if necessary), rather than abandoning everything and going with *only* WP, I still think it wasn't a terrible decision - brave, for sure. The graphs I've seen tend to show the sharp drop off in demand well before Elop made his announcement, so I guess the writing was on the wall to some degree (sorry, I've no reference, but I guess AllAboutSymbian)...and I still think it is too soon to tell if it will work. Yes, I think Elop and the others still at Nokia would have preferred it turn around sooner, but I don't think it's done yet. The latest results, if you look closely, seem to suggest there could be a turn around happening. The first WP devices aren't so great when compared to the competition, but they're not at all bad if you take them for what they are and consider them as a beginning. IMO, the next ones will be the great ones - when WP8 comes (and Nokia can put back long-standing features that its customers have become used to, like bt file transfer, microsd support, and no need for a computer) and they get Pureview into such a device, then it'll be great.

I doubt I'll ever buy one though, but you never know. I used to hate McDonald's, but they've changed over the past few years and I'm happy to recognise that and go 'back' because of it. I hate Microsoft with a passion, but it's mostly history so perhaps I can forgive and forget there too. They'll have to open up a bit more than they're doing, I think...otherwise I might as well just settle for an iPhone.

IINM, there was never such a thing as "Symbian 60". Symbian was the base OS, and S60 was the platform put on top of that. The 'S' in 'S60' is, as you say, 'Series'. It wasn't called Symbian Series 60 by anyone I know, technically or otherwise, and I worked on it from its 2nd edition days (with Nokia and I worked at Nokia too, though not for Symbian or S60).

So, in summary, no. Closer, but no.

> he launches awesome devices like the N9 and N950, then refuses to sell them in Europe or India

The n950 was never 'launched' unless you count internally to Nokia or as a give-away developer device - it was certainly never sold *at all*, *anywhere*.

I'm afraid I have to investigate that myself. I think it is mainly for the African market where the carriers give free calls to people on the same network, so they want to have many sims to get free calls to friends depending on what networks their friends are on.
I've also heard that people share phones in Africa, so it could be that they have a sim per user...but I don't quite see that working so well so I'm not sure.

Well, never mind him - I *am* anti-Microsoft, but Nokia gave me an L800 and I figured I could give it a try so I could justify my hate.

Unfortunately, I was impressed, somewhat. It had all the short-comings of the iPhone when it first came out, but had some subtlties that I liked. I concluded it deserved some success, but it didn't have the backing of the Apple crowd, so I couldn't tell whether it would be or not - I guess it would, but it would take its time. I thought it might win in markets like China, were (free) Microsoft Windows is pervasive and there's not much of an anti-Microsoft attitude.

But it wasn't for me...for the same reasons the iPhone wasn't. It's locked in. It doesn't take microsd cards. You can't bluetooth files. No multitasking[1]. And the device itself wasn't up to the n950 that I am still using (despite the screen starting to die) - sound quality is not quite there (way better than the n900 though), and non-replacable battery sucks.

Some of these things were fixed in wp7.8, and I'm lead to believe that many (all?) others of these issues will be fixed with WP8, so I figure it'll be a nice device to use then. Of course, my L800 won't upgrade to wp8 for some reason, so I doubt I'll get to use it.

My next phone will be a dual-sim phone, which likely means a Nokia Asha. I think the smartphone/featurephone distinction is quite bogus - and I think I'll find out for sure. Anyway, I don't know of any "smartphones" that are dual-sim (if you know of one, I'm all eyes).

[1] I started to download some apps and figured I'd check out the rest of the device while it did it. When I went back to check how it was doing, it hadn't got any further at all, but immediately started from where it was.

Well, never mind him - I *am* anti-Microsoft, but Nokia gave me an L800 and I figured I could give it a try so I could justify my hate.

Unfortunately, I was impressed, somewhat. It had all the short-comings of the iPhone when it first came out, but had some subtlties that I liked. I concluded it deserved some success, but it didn't have the backing of the Apple crowd, so I couldn't tell whether it would be or not - I guess it would, but it would take its time. I thought it might win in markets like China, were (free) Microsoft Windows is pervasive and there's not much of an anti-Microsoft attitude.

But it wasn't for me...for the same reasons the iPhone wasn't. It's locked in. It doesn't take microsd cards. You can't bluetooth files. No multitasking[1]. And the device itself wasn't up to the n950 that I am still using (despite the screen starting to die) - sound quality is not quite there (way better than the n900 though), and non-replacable battery sucks.

Some of these things were fixed in wp7.8, and I'm lead to believe that many (all?) others of these issues will be fixed with WP8, so I figure it'll be a nice device to use then. Of course, my L800 won't upgrade to wp8 for some reason, so I doubt I'll get to use it.

My next phone will be a dual-sim phone, which likely means a Nokia Asha. I think the smartphone/featurephone distinction is quite bogus - and I think I'll find out for sure. Anyway, I don't know of any "smartphones" that are dual-sim

"A friend who knows" tells me that it was an oft asked question inside Nokia at the time, if Microsoft had made the dropping of Symbian and MeeGo part of the deals, but it was always denied...for whatever that is worth. I'm pretty sure that Android wasn't part of that question though - just Symbian and MeeGo. The arguments against going with Android were pretty solid, though it was always presented as an 'either-or' proposition - not sure why. Samsung has always been the whore of the phone world, using every platform out there and even making their own, and I'm not sure why Nokia couldn't do similarly.

So my friend tells me, anyway.

US Carriers...imo, they're the root of Nokia problems...they weren't willing to sell phones unmodified (in serious ways) and Nokia weren't interested in selling the crap they were modified into, so they gave up the US market..to their peril.

Wifi was disabled in PRC too (on, eg n95), but that iiinm was a government enforced thing - makes you think.

One of the master-strokes Apple made was to force the carrier to release the iPhone un-crippled, and with unlimited data. Only Apple, with their manic fans, could do that...no way Nokia could.

(imo)

"Symbian 60"?

That's where I stopped reading...

wp7.5 has offline maps (I just d/led one to the L800 I'm giving to my sister-in-law[1])...I don't think there's a Nokia WP7 phone out there that can't be upgraded to WP7.5 (or whatever it is).

[1] no, I didn't buy it...Nokia were giving them away...I tried it a bit, and was quite impressed, but no bluetooth file transfer, no microsd, no multitasking (seems to be better in 7.5)...many things I think will be fixed in wp8, but I think my next phone will be an Asha since I'm keen on getting a dual-sim, and am convinced this smartphone/featurephone divide is bogus.

most clocks are digital anyway, even if their scales are analog - ie the pointer only moves digitally (though you might argue that it is analog, but very non-linear, since the pointer has to move from one mark to the next).

S40 has no relationship with Symbian.

Sorry, it was an attempt at a joke...