It is more of a "hardware specifications" driven culture, where design of the software experience is secondary. But in "touch phone" devices, just getting the hardware right can't even get you halfway into making a better product.
> But in "touch phone" devices, just getting the hardware right can't even get you halfway into making a better product.
That was true long before touch phones. I had an E70 phone as my second (? I think) smartphone. The software was complete shit and it was a pain to use, and the hardware was solid but way underspecced for the needs, especially RAM-wise (the thing had like 16MB ram, it would slow to a crawl at the slightest whiff of me having an idea of opening a web page)
This is actually why I love Nokia phones. They have fantastic hardware.
I'm really hoping that letting someone else do most of the heavy lifting for the software will allow Nokia to focus on what we already know it does best.
What is wrong with WP7, except of the lack of apps? Or what is wrong with Microsoft in terms of providing developer tools or marketing support for their products and 3rd party programmers?
Because up until WP7, doing mobile web apps for smart phones meant being able to write standards based code plus some webkit specific CSS for fluff.
But now we got to deal with this frustrating piece of crap that is IE on a mobile platform with significant deployment. Gone are the days where at least in the mobile world you were able to write code and have it work in all browsers with spending hours after hours working around bugs in IE.
what is wrong with Microsoft in terms of providing
developer tools or marketing support
Nokia doesn't lack development tools, neither marketing support.
They also have all the resources they need to produce an operating system / platform to rival iOS and Android.
They lack focus.
Android also had lots of flaws when launched, but Google & partners kept iterating. Nokia could have taken the world by storm simply because they can push lots of cheap smartphones all over the world. And the Ovi Store could have been the most popular app store. If only they provided enough consistency across what they are doing.
And Microsoft?
When choosing a partner you have to take into consideration the company's track record. Microsoft has been caught resting on its laurels several times over the years, with Windows, with IExplorer, with Windows Mobile. It also has been caught screwing several of its partners.
Microsoft transformed PC-makers in cheap complementaries to Windows and bloatware. Microsoft also forced PC-makers to only bundle Windows with new PCs.
For us (devs and consumers), Android and Windows Mobile may be good things, but for Nokia this will be a disaster.
