Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Just read this interesting article on Business Insider.

Ihttp://read.bi/eHMZEI

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Just to add to the gumph...

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve...-napkin-2011-1

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

at first i was like LOL
but I remember SEGA's hardware division become the xbox
so now I'm like WTF

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Impossible, Nokia costs too much for Microsoft to buy outright without having capital to do other projects. At best a Carl Icahn type of agressive takeover could be possible at these low share prices.

Also there is no incentive for even Microsoft to be in the hardware game. The minute they can make their own hardware, you'll see channel partners such as HTC drop the Win7 platform. The money is in the services and not the hardware, so to reach the biggest amount of users they need their channel partners. This is just a dream speculated on by those that don't understand the risks Microsoft exposes itself to just by even considering it.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Microsoft has a different strategy:

If you can't beat them, Join them.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

ballmer has elop as president. Why waste money on something when you already conrol it. ;)

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Nope.

Nokia doesn't need Microsoft, Microsoft doesn't need Nokia. It's a bad match all the way around... it's two heterosexual men trying to dance. Which one will lead? The hard-headed Microsoft or the headstrong Nokia?

To be honest, it's a very ill conceived match. And ultimately - I'll be honest... absolutely nobody in Europe wants an American company in control of their homegrown company. So instead of outright purchase by Microsoft, Nokia needs to refocus, finish a platform fully, embrace the open source community and learn how promote things outside of their own regions.

I'm not a fan of this happening for the aforementioned reasons... and for this one final one. I personally don't want to hear any more anti-American sentiment when honestly the problems are elsewhere.

With that said, this will invariably incite the ire of any European that thinks highly of Nokia and very lowly of Microsoft - who's had an even worse time embracing open source than even Nokia.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I like (not love) MS and Nokia, but together they'd be worse than Apple!

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Us and nokia are in a similar position. Both doing good. But they slowly lose money, importance and speed when the competitors grow stronger and faster. MS to buy nokia. Its like...china buying us.

How likely is that ;)

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

more garbage and guff spouting from american commentators who cannot comprehend a successful company and products from outside of the USA.

and as for the numbers game, the N8 is an excellent device with the specsw it has. dual core and multi Ghz cpus do not necessarily mean better performance, and will drain batteriws like nothing on earth.

Mobile tech is about balanceing of performance and portability, which is what nokia do very well, and have been doing so for years.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

I see ABSOLUTELY NO reason why Microsoft has to spend that much money to buy Nokia.

Lets analyse a bit further down in steps!
Why would Microsoft need Nokia? Or lets first start with seeing what Nokia has. The major ones to list seems to be (not in any specific order)
1. % of phones sold in the market
2. % of phones using Nokia's Symbian OS
3. Super Hardware Quality
4. Nokia-Siemens Networks (NSN)
5. A partnership with Intel-and-many-others on MeeGo
6. Qt
7. Patents
8. R & D (for their future Morph like phones, etc)

Now, lets go back to see what Microsoft would need from these with an takeover.
1.
2. Microsoft would definitely love that much of a market share but the point here is that Nokia's market share (OS %) is not newly acheived. It's like this: Symbian%=IE% and Android%=Firefox%. Also, it's very unlikely that Microsoft when buys Nokia would let Symbian (especially Symbian^3/4) live. It will start putting WM7 on all new Nokia phones.
3. Microsoft has already proved its hardware capabilities with its Zune and XBOX devices. Zune though is more relevant here.
4. Microsoft never hinted that it is interested in network business. I am aware that Microsoft is pushing their Cloud platform thing harder but buying a network business for that doesn't somehow seem right to me.
5. Microsoft & Open-Source don't go well.
6. Qt ? Microsoft don't need Qt and more over they have their .NET.
7. Buying an entire empire (at that much cost) just for patents?
8. Is Nokia R&D working on some handheld rocket controllers in their labs?

Am I missing something?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

WOW!!!
April 1st already!!!!

Time flies like an arrow................and fruit flies like a banana.:D

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Really?? As an American I can appreciate technology and innovation from places outside of the USA... wholeheartedly. When you speak of Nokia, you mean a successful company that has/is resting on it's laurels. There's no forward thinking, no innovation. Where is their focus?? Maemo?? MeeGo?? Symbian?? High end, low end smartphones?? They are all over the place, hence not moving forward. And as Nokia continues to rule the mid to low end feature phone in Europe and other countries, North America has been wanting/needing a high end smartphone that has most recently come from HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Apple and has been completely ignored by Nokia. Is there any idea what the ethos of Nokia is?? Does anyone know??

There is no foothold at all in North America. Who's fault is that?? The old, stubborn traditions of the previous regime hopefully has been put to rest.... but in what direction?? Some of the top level executives directly involved with the Maemo and MeeGo projects have left to other competitors. All we hear from Nokia is S^3. That's fantastic for your low end phones but what about your high end??

Sorry, but North America (unlike most of Europe) crave smartphones....high end ones and dual core is here, like it or not. Large capacitive Super AMOLED screens are here and by ignoring these and other specs that are coming into the fold from other handset manufacturers from all over the world, you are alienating and ignoring a LARGE marketshare.

That is fine Nokia if you wish to toil with cheap, low end feature phones that you sell by the million every month to placate your precious S^ but if you continue to turn a blind eye to innovation and forward thinking, you too will end up like Palm.... desolate and alone, only to be bought out by a software and computer systems company. Even with new leadership, you've shown no vision.... it's already too late.

And thanks to this community (not Nokia) and the real smart people who are forward thinkers, my device continues to be relevant and continues to impress current "high end" Android users even after a year of release.

And for the record Micro$oft is definitely NOT the answer either...!!!

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

True.

They are definitely not a hardware orientated company. Apart from the X-Box series, what have they done that's been a roaring success on the scale of the majority of Nokia devices?

I've gone through 6 sidewinder joysticks before I settled on a Saitek, which has already outlasted all of them.
Zune? Megafail on looks and attractiveness (just like the Sidewinders).
They are now relying on other manufacturers to build the devices while M$ just provide the O/S. And didn't they attempt to get into the PC hardware market, but failed miserably?
That, IMHO, is where M$ and Nokia share an interest. Nokia want to build handsets for M$ and M$ think it's a good idea. Soon, we could be seeing Nokia devices with Microsoft branding, either made by Nokia or license built by M$.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Nokia's lack of recent continued success (and only lack of continued success - it's not succeeding as well anymore, in other words; it's not actually 'failing' in any sense) has nothing to do with a lack of innovation. And while that was an excusable position a few years ago, enough information has floated to the surface to know what Nokia's real troubles are: Internal bureaucracy that results in good ideas being killed off, combined with a mass-produce-phones-for-every-market-segment approach which, while not bad in itself, meshed horribly with the aforementioned bereaucratic woes.

As was summed up somewhere in some article before, too many people in Nokia's middle-of-decision-making-process can say no to taking risks with new ideas, and almost no one can truly force something new to go through.

It's not that Nokia hasn't innovated. It's that Nokia innovations have mostly languished internally, coming out either too late or too wrongly implemented.

- On this Microsoft buying thing -

Misguided notion. Not so much because it's American-centric. It is, but not in the American-business-is-the-only-thing-that-can-succeed sense.

But because it completely fails to take into account what, well, so many people/entities fail to take into account when thinking about business-related matters. IE, anything that doesn't have an associated $/€ value attached to it. There's quite a lot to be learned from psychology and sociology about how people would react if Nokia was bought by Microsoft, and quite a lot to be learned from history which combined with a decent understanding of cultural/social changes would indicate that frankly, Microsoft is not that well off long-term, and it certainly wouldn't be any more well-off than Nokia in the mobile business. (Unless they radically change of course.)

For instance, the article mentions that people buy Nokia because it's Nokia, not because it runs Symbian. True, but people also expect Nokian products to have a degree of familiarity and most importantly, quality. They trust Nokia because it's Nokia (as Nxx0 owners, it's important to remember that while we've gotten quite limited support/improvements, the mainstream Nokia phones are less poorly handled by Nokia); if Nokia suddenly became Microsoft-with-Nokia-name, they'd only trust it if Nokia kept making similar decisions it used to make. If Symbian got suddenly dropped, Nokia services were slowly end-of-lifed, and Win Phone 7 flooded Nokia phones, even if by themselves none of those changes would push users away, enough of them close enough together would.

Also, I would argue that from a sociological perspective, Microsoft is in a fading position. Business-wide, it's just fine. And it will remain a market presence for a long time to come. But I would argue in terms of relevance, deep down in the sociological-influence-and-importance level, Microsoft is not better off than Nokia. Not much worse, but not better. Both are giants who succeeded in pulling off their own era of dominance. But both are also heading in a direction the public itself is slowly starting to not care about. Both have also done their best to slam on the breaks and to adapt to the changing market - but both are behemoths, with all the difficulty-of-changing-momentum implied.

The difference is, Microsoft's inflexibility is a lot more inherent to the way it runs and the products/services it offers. Nokia's inflexibility is an internal problem they inflicted on themselves due to a slow descent into bureaucratic self-inhibition. Microsoft probably has the same bureaucratic problems, but that's the point - Microsoft's business approach has never been one to be undermined noticeably by the bureaucracy. Nokia's is. But by the same token, when the environment in which Microsoft's business strategy was successful recedes, Microsoft's relevance will be pulled out in the undertow. It'll be a slower process that the time scales most people view - something discussed in historical appraisals of large business in the 21st century or something, not in current business analyses - but it will also be more certain unless Microsoft changes drastically.

Nokia, I would argue, is in a similar predicament - but Nokia's bureaucracy has been the norm for far less time than Microsoft's. So Nokia is in somewhat of an all-or-nothing predicament. Either they fix the internal stifling of innovation (and successfully combine that with this MeeGo maneuver of theirs), or they won't. Microsoft - assuming it ever made the decision to buy Nokia, which I think it won't - can come in and keep Nokia in better circumstances than it would end up in the 'won't' scenario - but it will also nearly guarantee that Nokia wouldn't succeed in pulling off the 'will' scenario.

That said, I'm really hoping having a Microsoft-ian CEO doesn't have a similar effect. When the news first came out, I recognized that he's a human being with his own ideas and biases, not a Microsoft lackey - but there's always the possibility he thinks like Microsoftian leadership enough to go in the same directions it would.

- Edit -

Also on a personal note:

Super AMOLED Multitouch capacitive = ewwww. (Seriously, can there be more omg-that's-so-awesome-I-just-came BS in the name of a technology?)

AMOLEDs suck in sunlight, I'd rather either go the Pixel Qi route, or the transflective type of screen that the N900 has. I mean really, just look at that screen. Now ask yourself (set it to full brightness first, then run something colorful), do you really need more colorful brightness on your screen? How about actual visibility in sunlight? I remember a few weeks ago I was playing some games on an iPhone... yeah, it's 'vibrant' and colorful and ****, but... ewww. I can't even begin to view an average 'American' smartphone screen in sunlight - with the N900 I just have to pick at worst a slightly different angle. The only time I have trouble viewing anything in direct sunlight on it is my X-Terminal windows... Because I have the background set to black and the font as a light gray, relatively small letter size, thing. Not much to reflect light through.

Oh, and as I've argued countless times, the only advantage of the capacitive screen the multitouch, and there's already technology to bring multitouch to resistive screens. Given how 'light' of a resistance a high-end resistive screen gives before you can get touch recognition nowadays, there's little reason to defer to capacitive.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

I haven't really followed how Microsoft is doing business wise, but i thought that they are doing better now than for long time?
W7 is selling like hot cakes, Xbox 360 is doing great and as a whole it feels like Microsoft is doing very well right now, or?

Good to remember that Windows mobile was peanuts compared to rest of it's business. They had at best 18% of the smartphone market and smartphone market was nothing like it's today in it's size. WP7 actually looks very promising imo.



And for the actual topic? Why in world would Microsoft buy Nokia!
Nokia is very big on the manufacturing side with 9 factories totally owned by them that produce 1.4 million phones a day.
They also spent second most to R&D in Europe and got huge patent portfolio.

Nokia's next years are tied to Qt that's tied to Symbian and linux based MeeGo primary. Nokia got over 130 000 people working for them, where's 60 000 people work for Nokia Siements Network and over 24 000 people work in Finland.

Does that really sound like a software company or company that Microsoft usually goes and buys, and i'm not talking about the size, but the type of the company.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

And that's the kind of Euro-centric rhetoric I was regarding to in my earlier post in regards to an American based blog talking about any opinion piece about any European company. Simply put, they don't want Americans in their business, and quite honestly, I don't want them in my business in North America.

Nokia will continue to flail about as if they have a clue on what they're doing, it all looks good, they'll continue to make money up until a point. Realizing that your business shouldn't be built around building a timed obsolescence into either the hardware and/or OS and stop selling hardware like the razor blade/razor mentality is what needs to happen.

The Nokia products are successful in other regions. Awesome. Let them stay there then.

There... I said it.

I can be just as ignorant as you lot regarding Nokia in the North American and Japanese markets. Just will have to learn without any presence in those areas, I will speak from my own experience and/or exposure and your ranting, raving, cursing and attempts to convert or educate me will fall upon deaf ears (or eyes really) because I'll not have the same experience and exposure as you blokes in Eurotopia.

Simply put... the problem is with Nokia. Marketing isn't so out of the ****ing question when you have something you want to sell. Last I checked, that's a good thing.

So the solution is either expand the marketing or expand the training/knowledge of your products. That happens via clear communication, products that don't adhere to the "It's brand new, it's great, it's awesome, you want it..." and then in 6 months drop the support for it while announcing the new OS iteration and/or hardware and how you will have to pay another 550 Euros (or whatever Eurocentric currency that fits your egocentric nature) to stay current and get the next dot revision of an OS that's ultimately a work in progress or a dot revision of the next version of Flash or Skype.

Americans didn't create that problem. They're only reacting to their experience and exposure to those aforementioned products.

Your anger is wholly misguided. I'd suggest that you step out your "American blogs suck arse" mentality for a moment and think about what it really could be if things were done differently starting with Nokia.

NOTE: And by "you" in all of my sentences, I don't mean just gazza_d. And if you're an American, reverse the structuring of my sentences to point that we need to stop thinking that our American blogs are the best damn resources on the planet for all things gadget based. We don't have enough exposure to some aspects of the successful sides of their businesses and only are getting the short end of the stick on a few products - want unbiased exposure and information, look at the countries of origin for those gadgets. You might be surprised.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Totally disagree. I wanna stress, you don't need a faster processor for a faster phone, you just need an optimized OS. Nokia is the best at this, that's why their hardware is so "low-grade". On my N79, with something like 96 megs of RAM, I could run 28 applications at any given time, and they would run hang free unless the program was poorly written or bugged - like Opera Mobile 10s betas, they weren't ready yet, but when it was released it ran flawless.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

The GHz and MB competition is what you do when you're out of ideas of what to do next.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Having an optimized OS on my N900... I wish!

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

I'd love to agree with this, but this is only correct in regards to Symbian. Maemo/MeeGo will need more horsepower due to their architecture.

And besides, it's not hard to optimize Symbian to run on lesser hardware. Anything above the original specs it was intended is a blessing.

It does add concern(s) to the fact that most OS's aren't as fast nor resource friendly as they need to be due to code bloat.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Yeah I know many people (mostly from American my guess), wants this too happen. But as an european I say no thanks :-( If this happens Microsoft this is really bad for open source.

I just say QT+KDE0QtQuick.

And reminds me of Oracle buying SUN mostly because of mysql...

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Not exactly! The laptop dock thing that was introduced for the Atrix is a good idea.

Btw, if the rest of the market is getting built around those specs (Ghz and MB's), then you have to deliver it.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

All depends on the architecture of the CPU. And, as someone else pointed out in this thread, good software that's well written and optimised.

Remember when the first Pentiums came out? They were the fastest thing that Intel could produce at the time. AMD on the other hand could still beat them with the old 486/DX series.

Same thing happened with the AMD64 series of chips. They beat the hell out of the Pentiums with the same clock speeds.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Ok, that sounds nice.

I think it won't be that simple. In the end, there's always the problem with battery. Just increasing the spec gradually won't do it like it did for desktop PCs. Not for very long.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Maemo is optimized. Graphically, it doesn't perform the best. Still runs fine, just not great. The OS itself though is pretty quick.

Keep in mind, since most of Nokia's products are Symbian-based, even if Maemo wasn't optimized, they're still doing pretty well.

I don't understand this. Clocked at 600Mhz A8, and 256MB of RAM, I've seen a PR1.1 and PR1.2 N900 run 16+ applications flawlessly, with about no lag. PR1.3 and overclocked to 1Ghz is fabulous.

MeeGo shouldn't require anymore power than Maemo does. The UI will be properly handled by the GPU so that'll take some load off the processor. If anything, slightly more RAM would be needed. Hypothetically however, MeeGo should run better than Maemo.

Edit:
The link below my post also strongly reiterates what I'm talking about.

Edit again:
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/7...1010818353.png

Only using 180.1 megabytes of the N900s "pathetic" 256 megabytes of ram. No slowdowns, OS is running smooth. Only lag was experienced when I went to go close all of those applications, the framerate dropped slightly then.

Of course, you would rarely ever run this many applications, but it goes to show if you wanted to truly multitask with 4 or 5 major applications, the N900's "pathetic" Cortex A8 can handle it.

I didn't overclock by the way, downscaled back to 250 and 600.

So what are you running on your N900 exactly? Windows Mobile?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Yep, It’s Still All About Efficiency And Not Clock speed :

http://thenokiaguide.com/2010/11/10/...ot-clock-peed/

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Wouldn't that be like being in a rowboat and purchased by the Titanic?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

MS buys Nokia and then what?

• Ditch WP7 and persuade HTC etc to use Symbian/Meego?
• Ditch Symbian/Meego and and make WP7 phones that nobody wants?
• Let Nokia continue on an independent course?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Ok, I understand quality over quantity. Comparable thing would be megapixels. Megapixels's don't make your photos better.

But the point here actually is how are you going to sell your stuff against the competition? Did Nokia ever market saying it doesn't need that much horsepower in its phone as they have a much superior architecture and a well written code?

Good or bad, the end consumer before making his purchase, definitely compares the specs with other phones. He might be actually dumb in doing so but remember, your consumer is always right in what he does. So, how will Nokia fare in his comparisons?

Ok, take it this way. Needed or not, you have to compete on the spec level atleast for marketing reasons.

You gave an example of Intel and AMD, fair enough. But you know who is still the King right?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

Apple doesn't give cpu specs for the iphones and they seem to be getting along just fine.

Probably not. But those in the know, knows that Symbian is pretty efficient on CPU, memory and power usage. The clueless or those who thinks they know would just be looking at the raw CPU speed. One thing that Nokia is consistently guilty of though is putting too little RAM into their devices.

Nokia phones have always had a slower CPU than the competition so nothing new there.

Apple doesn't.

That's in part due to the superior illegal tactics Intel employed in coercing manufacturers not to use AMD stuff, and for which they are now being sued by AMD for.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

By showing off it's features. I've seen Verizon commercials about the Droid line speaking highly of a "1Ghz Snapdragon". I've seen a Nokia promo for a phone preloaded with Sportstracker that would monitor your heatbeat and GPS location while you work out.

Which commercial sounds like it'd appeal more to an average user who thinks a Snapdragon is a scary race of snapping turtle?

I do agree, but not for the clueless. The people who think they know what they're talking about will go for raw power. The clueless just want the phone with access to some form of apps and looks cool. [Off topic] Hence, the iPhone has been so successful.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

If you directly correlate a device's tech spec to the expected UX you're gonna get out of it, then you might be clueless too.

There's the software layer on top of it,which is determined by the device's developer-marketplace-customers ecosystem, then there's the vendor's support, then there's a 'softer' social aspect on top of this all. It all determines the 'value' you're getting out of the purchase.

Unless, of course, you buy gadgets just to run synthetic benchmarks on them and post the screenshots online.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

That's not a feature per se. It's a spec that enhances a feature.
people are already familiar and they appreciate Android Os's features and capabilities, so they'd assume a higher tech spec will enhance that further.

Now if Nokia comes out with a brand new phone running a brand new OS, sporting a 2ghz CPU, people will likely want to learn more about the 'true' functions and features of the phone first, before 'applying' the 2Ghz 'modifier' into their perception of said device.

to me, it seems they're getting a far better deal buying an iphone 4 then a n900' all things considered. (ui/UX, apps selection, resale value, etc).

Who's clueless?











It depends.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

right. what i'm saying is that processor speed is NOT a feature so they shouldnt advertise it. sportstracker is a feature however, so that would be good to advertise.

also you dont need to defend the iPhone against the N900, cause i didnt bash one or praise another. all im saying is simpler tech people want simpler devices. thats why the iPhone is so successful.

let me try to reiterate what i was talking about:
think, if a commercial for a superphone just listed it's 3G bands, processor, ram, connectivities, and that was it, would the average consumer be interested? probably not, cause they wouldnt know what any of that was. would the commercial describing its app store, gaming capabilites, internet speed and screen size help tempt the average consumer, probably.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

I am not sure if you realized it but you answered your own question!

If the specs don't have big numbers (probably because its not needed for that OS), then advertise/market what it does and how it does better than others.

Apple does marketing better (infact, excellent).
Nokia doesn't. So, it has to level their laziness at specs level.

Now, what percent of the people do you think know the capabilities of an OS. I mean (in this case), how many people know that Symbian runs better at even older hardware?

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

I think that's too... subjective, I guess? How good of a deal it is depends entirely on what you want out of a device.

I've played with iPhones, seen their messaging system (the little push message pop-ups), their control-depriving though shiny UI/UX, and, well, I couldn't live with it. Maybe back when the iPhone first came out, when nothing else on the market was vaguely similar.

But I would personally never trade the capabilities of the N900 for all the bug-less-ness of the iPhones (which aren't exactly bugless, we just only hear about our bugs here, and unfortunately our fixes are, well, not exactly quick to reach us down here in the end-user space).

Frak, even without the root-access-with-one-download, the ability to make and reflash kernel images on-board the device, the easy-as-hell SSH, the ability to actually manually monitor and control so much of the device's workings if you know what you're doing, and as of late the packet injection and all the fun that comes with it, know what I feel completely impotent without when messing with any other phone? Status Menu. That thing is a godsend. It's on EVERY screen, just about, unless a program is coded against it specifically, and with the ability to open it in portrait mode hacked on, it's even better. Of course, leave it stock and it sucks. But put in Qwerty's non-disappearing FM Transmitter applet, the Brightness Applet, and a couple of the other stock and custom things, and it's a godsend in so many use cases. I move from a dim environment to a bright one? It takes me like a second to change brightness. If I had an iPhone, I'd have to back out of my application, navigate through a few screens just to get to the settings, and back out. The best thing I've seen Android have is the desktop widget that lets you change brightness settings (still have to back out of the app). I've also never seen nearly as responsive of brightness auto-adjustment in the screen (to be clear, my recent exposure to other gadgets is two different iPhone 4s, an iPhone 3GS, and a Droid - the original one, not the Droid 2/Droid X/Droid whatever).

And I'm sure someone could hack the Android OS well enough to replicate that functionality, but you'd have to flash an entirely new image over the firmware to make it work, I think. iPhone you'd be lucky if you could get it after jailbreaking it.

Even without the insane versatility, even without all the things you can either do, or make it do if you're willing to put forth the effort, there's all these little things that are made possible by the N900's OS and versatility that, well, if they matter to you, if they make your phone experience more enjoyable, you CAN'T get them on anything else. No other phone will let you, let alone without fighting on you.

Nokia's policy in regards to their closed blobs, which they won't open and won't bug-fix faster/better is a major pain in the ***, yes. But we only notice and have the liberty to have problems with them because the rest of the OS is open and transparent enough that things that deep down are hindrances.

And I don't think, if you were someone who'd like the N900 initially, you'd have a problem with not getting resale value out of it. I know I certainly never intend to resell.

So I disagree with the notion that it's objectively a better deal. For the things I want out of my phone/device, the iPhone is the absolute worst thing I could buy. At that point, I'd be happier pulling out my pre-N900 phone - the Samsung Highlight. I don't care for the app selection, and if I want to consume media on it, at least it takes Micro SD cards, and is happy to play files from it.

The iPhone is good at what it does. It does, well, very little, and god forbid you want to make it do something that an existing app doesn't do. Like the Super Bowl here in the US, which people who don't care much about football watch for the commercials, you put up with the shortcomings of the phone because of the app selection if that's what matters for you. But if there's nothing you need out of the commercials that you can get elsewhere, and you simply don't at all like football, it's not going to be worth it - especially not when it costs you upwards of 500$, with which you lock yourself into just watching the superbowl with the occasional commercial to make the experience feel worthwhile for two years.

If that's all you want from a phone, and you don't feel the inhibiting grip of the OS around your actions, you'll be happy, and the iPhone's a better deal for you. But there's plenty of people for whom it's definitely not a better deal. The clueless ones are the ones who don't know what they want, or don't know what device can best fill it.... so, most people.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

No, we don't want it to happen. Not at all. In fact, I'd hope that every international and federal trade commission would vote against it.

Optimized denotes "optimal". Lagging to the point where I might miss a phone call because it has to think about rotating; that is not optimal. Glad you can multi-task a whole lot. Woo. But it can't multi-task stuff that I'd like for it to do smoothly... thus, not optimized. Just... running on the hardware with the 256mb of RAM it has.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

The whole megahertz conversation is pertinent only due to perceived lag. Get rid of that, these conversations no longer would happen.

Re: Now Is The Time For Microsoft To Buy Nokia
 

10 I assume you missed the last line of my post? :)

Are we still talking in the same context here?
I was answering Mattbutts' post, where he was referencing 'the deal' for the 'clueless'.

I also calculate the cost of a phone as Purchase price - Resale price. Obviously you'd have to tack on operational cost (monthly bills), which I assume would be similar if we start off with unlocked phones without contract.

I think there's plenty enough of iPhone vs XXXXXX threads out there, I don't think we need to rehash any of those here;

My point was that the iPhone is a good fit for the mass. And why should 'we' care about this? Because we need those f'in mass too.

If n900/maemo/MeeGo is a cow, then the masses is a huge green pasteur where it can grow and multiply and thrive. They can fund Nokia/Intel/Our Overlords, and we can tag along for the ride, assuming Nokia doesn't become an assh*t and close the platform.

ps: yes, you can get a status-bar-like app for the iPhone where you can toggle things from anywhere, without going in/out of the settings app.

pps: no, you don't need to always change the brightness manually on iPhones, because they have auto-brightness setting which works rather well.

So at the end of the day, you're paying $4-500 for the n900.

Whereas someone who bought the iPhone at full price $600-ish can probably resell it for $3-400 when they upgrade, bringing their cost down to $2-300.

GOTO 10