Strongly, strongly, strongly denied by Nokia, apparently…
Andy Kitson over at Juniper Research caught this Guardian article which confirms the possibility of a Nokia device, running Android.
Now then.
Now then, now then, now then.
Richard Wray at The Guardian calls this a ‘strategic U-turn’. I call it a killer move. An absolute killer.
They can test the market, see how people react … it really will be interesting putting a N97 Symbian device next to (for example) an N97 Android device, and seeing which one gives the better all round experience.
I’ve long held that Nokia’s hardware is second to none. Absolutely second to none. The amount of work they put in to their devices, the amount of thought, the amount of *workmanship* is exceedingly impressive. I’ve seen it first hand at one of their test labs. (See the MIR video of that day).
Set aside the hardware and let’s look at the operating system and user interface. Well. There’s not too much to be said from a positive perspective, other than it is certainly very capable. If you wanted to program your handset’s trajectory to the moon, well, count on the operating system doing an efficient job. But if you want to do other stuff quickly and easily… there’s a problem.
Developing for Symbian is an absolute flipping nightmare. That’s why I suggested that a head-in-the-sand-Nokia would be best placed setting up warehouses filled with independent developers working away trying to create interesting things for the Nokia platform (because, nobody else is).
But if you throw the baby out with the bathwater — a good idea in my book — that is, develop a Nokia handset running Android… well then, you free up the capabilities for a heck of a lot of developers to jump into the game.
The Android handset is supposedly launching in September — at the Nokia World conference. Count on me being there to bring you some stimulating perspective.
I’m encouraged.
Thoroughly encouraged. Nokia’s taken their head out of the sand.
It’s just one handset, mind. Just one Android device. Touchscreen, of course. But how will we all react to it?
Positively?
I wonder.
I think I’ll have a highly positive reaction.
I wonder about the die-hard Nokia fans.
What does this mean for Symbian? Obviously Nokia will still continue to make Symbian handsets — but if their Android one flies off the shelves, they might need to seriously look at that.
Interesting times.
Nokia’s got game: Android handset coming in September: http://ping.fm/Id6px
RT @MIReview: Nokia’s got game: Android handset coming in September: http://ping.fm/Id6px
Nokia’s got game: Android handset coming in September: http://ping.fm/Id6px
“There is no truth to this story whatsoever. It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones,” a spokesperson confirmed to PC Pro, before adding. “It's actually absurd.”
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/260113/nokia-blasts…
RT @MIReview: Nokia’s got game: Android handset coming in September: http://ping.fm/Id6px
Would love this to happen but it has been denied: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets…
Currently looking at buying a new handset and in complete agreement that Nokia has best hardware but my patience with s60 has run out…. This would have been a great move
What an arse, eh?
For a minute there I was thinking “whoa, I won't buy that HTC or Sony Ericsson Android phone – I'll wait to see if Nokia put it in the N97”. I really would love to see that combination, but it's obviously not going to happen. So it's the Hero or the soon-to-be-released Android SE Xperia for me, breaking my long association with Nokia/S60. I just can't do clunky anymore.
It was exciting for about 20 minutes Mark… wasn't it. So Nokia clearly have their heads still stuck in the sand.
like i said can't imagine nokia replacing lemming like symbian with android. too progressive.
And in the meantime a plethora of Android devices are going to appear this year that will reach a much bigger market than the T-Mob offering so far. By the time Nokia introduce whatever Symbian are going to come up with next, it could all be too late for them. It would be a real shame to see Nokia become the next Motorola!
That's how it's going to play out, basically, isn't it? Total arse.
Its not an issue of Nokia not bring progressive; its an issue of being smart with your resources. If Nokia were going to do Andrioid, then that ship should have turned a long time ago and Maemo would not have seen the attention that it has to date.
That being said, I’m sure Nokia has a few skunk-works, Android running devices, if only to see what it does and to work some of that magic into Maemo/Symbian as needed.
Remember also, Nokia is turing itself into a hybrid-service provider. Android devices by them doesn’t fit; services that work on Android devices do.
I've wanted to write this for a while, because if they're not going Android, I don't know what their next move is going to be.
I really don't get Nokia these days. The hardware is good, as it always has been for the most part, but they've always been let down by OS. I think their biggest mistake was in not getting fully behind their very own PyS60 project (Python for S60). For those of you not familiar, a huge amount of work went into the PyS60 project at Nokia internally, almost as a grassroots project, to port the Python programming language to the Symbian platform.
The project was/is a great success, in that they succeeded in getting it working, and went the extra mile developing all sorts of simple hooks so that you could write Symbian apps, in Python, on any Symbian device.
The only thing it needed (or needs, as they could still pull it off) was for the company as a whole to get behind it, sort out the run-time distribution (install it on the device, include it in firmware upgrades, make it available OTA), signing process and (to allow deeper integration into the device) allow native modules to exist in private directories (or some other solution).
Instead it's now fallen to the open source community to sort out the mess that is PyS60 app distribution (distributing the run-time with your app, different versions, different forks, overlapping modules, everything in one directory, the signing process etc.), and it needed to remain in the hands of Nokia so that it could be a common de-facto run-time across all devices. At the end of the day, only Nokia can sort out the mess that is security signing on Symbian – it's never going to be solved by the community.
So, why should they have gotten behind this? Because Apple came out from nowhere with an incredibly productive development platform and people (developers) took notice. Apple had the IDE (Xcode and Interface Builder), the debugger, the profiler, the language (Obj-C… somewhere between C and C++, but a little better thought out) and an API and it all made sense and was easy to use from day #1.
Symbian C++ is still to this day (8 years since release) considered a black art, crafted in basements by men with pointy hats and long beards. The tools provided are archaic.. as if they came from another era (which is pretty much the case given its roots in EPOC and Psion) and make you feel that we've learned nothing in the near 20 years of software development since EPOC was born.
Python on S60 by comparison gives you a nice, safe, productive language that almost anyone can pick up – its clean and concise. The guys at Nokia (and the open source community) have covered most bases of Symbian development in terms of user interface design, networking, sound and integration into the device, and wrapped it all into nice, easy to understand, Python API functions.
On top of that, you can fairly easily (caveat to the above run-time distribution issues being sorted out) include native modules with your Python application – so you can access the phones innards and do all the wonderful low-level pointy beard stuff that you need to on the device for games and whatnot, but add a great consistent Symbian UI and your higher level logic with very little development effort on top.
That Nokia haven't entertained it at all, and I know people have tried to evanglise it from within and FAILED, strikes me as a company that really has no clue as to what they're doing in this market anymore.
Feels good to get that out. Rant over!
Do you mind if I publish that as a stand-alone post, Jay?
2009/7/7 Disqus <>
Not at all, go ahead!
You should have your own blog, column or something mate. Concise, well presented and thought out.
You should have your own blog, column or something mate. Concise, well presented and thought out.