Nokia have forgotten your favourite phone - Get over it

Like others have said, I agree with the general premise here. However, there are a couple problems. First, the support world has changed. Like it or not, Apple has created a situation where people expect their handsets to be supported by the latest software releases for longer periods of time. Users are more than willing to accept hardware limitations (like the lack of a GPS on the 1st gen iPhone) but the fact of the matter is, the current iPhone OS supports that original device which was released around the same time as the N95. Apps written by developers today (again with the hardware limitation caveat) will run on all versions of the phone.

Second, Nokia has created the problem themsevles. If Nokia had limited free navigation to FP2 phones, the N95 owners would grumble, but it wouldn't be the outcry it has become. However, when Nokia opens the FP1 door, then all FP1 owners are going to complain. As far as I, and apparently a lot of the rest of the N95 community can tell, there isn't really a good reason that the E71 can maintain support and the N95 can't. Add to that Nokia's statement that "you talked, we listened" and you've got the makings of a virtual riot. Just my humble opinion...

I generally understand the point of not supporting all older phones, but I do think there is a window (for me at least) of the next 9 months where I want to upgrade my n85. I'd really like to wait for a Symbian^3 phone but am tempted to get an Android phone. Having a Ovi maps 3.3 as a new toy on my n85 might be keep me patient and in the Symbian camp until Symbian^3 phones are ready.

this argument would make more sense to all audiences(consumers, shareholders, product managers, executives, etc) if Nokia was actually releasing hi-quality successors to the N95, but the reality is their value proposition (new features and user experience net HW and SW quality) has really nose-dived after the N95 8GB. They're biggest asset is their brand in the smartphone market, and they really need to do more to preserve it and prove to the high end user that Nokia will be faithful to them if they pay a premium for high end devices, not just cut losses and start fresh, because:
- consumers in the smartphone market is much smaller in market size
- consumers in the smartphone market are much less likely to forget bad experience
- consumers in the smartphone market are much louder and more adept in voicing negative feedback to the marketplace

How will they ever gain confidence in future potential consumers if they start reading thread after thread after thread about how horrible their 'flagship' products are? These types of consumers do a ton of research before making a pick.

This is a high end market space, not just mediocre mom and pop market. Can we be clear about that? And quite frankly, the current NPD worldwide statistics about Symbian's market share don't really reflect the market correctly, as it's pretty clear that Nokia is pushing Symbian/S60 to the lower market while they still try to figure out how to make Maemo/Meego the high end offering. A few posters has said this before, but with the way Nokia is handling their situation, Symbian is really heading towards irrelevance in the smartphone space.

... N900. People will have to get over Nokia like Nokia gets over the N900.

Quite a few thought provoking comments on this particular thread and that's great, but speaking as a current stone age phone user (SE P1) looking to upgrade; I'm wondering if I shell out the cash for a S^3 device when they are available, if I'll be back in the same boat come S^4! Point being that it's ok to want people to upgrade, just make sure that there is a stable and understandable environment in which to make that change. What incentive do I have to purchase an S^3 device now rather than switch to Maemo/Meego or Android and look at Symbian again after S^4 has stabalised?

Hey Abushaheed. Have you seen Nokia's support of N900? It still doesn't even have voice navigation even if u paid nevermind being free. They already said the unit wouldn't get an upgrade to Meego.

Unregistered wrote: Like it or not, Apple has created a situation where people expect their handsets to be supported by the latest software releases for longer periods of time.

But many people don't want these tired, battered old phones.

Unregistered wrote:
Users are more than willing to accept hardware limitations (like the lack of a GPS on the 1st gen iPhone)

Are they!!!!?????

Speak for yourself. But the number of location aware apps is very high.

Unregistered wrote:
but the fact of the matter is, the current iPhone OS supports that original device which was released around the same time as the N95.

And the other fact of the matter is, if you want multi-tasking you need to upgrade your hardware.
Or jailbreak.

Unregistered wrote:
Apps written by developers today (again with the hardware limitation caveat) will run on all versions of the phone.

Yes, the hardware caveat that torpedoes the whole thing.
Because that caveat regenerates the market.
Jailbreakers run multi-tasking on iPhone 3G.
Jobs says iPhone 3G can't run multi-tasking because it doesn't have the power.
Developers write video camera apps for iPhone 3G.
Jobs says 3G can't have video because it doesn't have the power.

What Jobs really means is, everyone can have multi-tasking and video but you might need to buy a new phone.

Exactly the same as Nokia with maps. Everyone can have free maps, but you might need a new phone.

It's both companies being selective about how they release their products so they can make more money. Business, simple as that.

But it's OK for Apple to restrict the features on their products, and pretend they support the older phones, but not Nokia?

Unregistered wrote:I get that one by-product of capitalism is that companies need to create demand and have a planned obsolescence so that we consumers would keep buying products. Cell companies in the states assume that we will change up phones every 2 years with their contract length and discounts for handsets.

But the result (for me) of this planned obsolescence is that I look to change cell companies and/or equipment every 1-2 years and I have decreasing loyalty to companies or brands.

I don't really agree with your remark re. obsolescence. The real definition of obselescence is when a device either stops working or cannot be repaired after a certain time frame.

The fact that a phone is no longer supported re. FW does not make it obselete; it still works exactly as it did before support was dropped. Those users who are complaining about a lack of free navigation for the N95 are still using their N95, 4 years after it was first released....

Unregistered wrote:
, as it's pretty clear that Nokia is pushing Symbian/S60 to the lower market while they still try to figure out how to make Maemo/Meego the high end offering. .

Before you make any assumption you need to see how the 12MPixel, 1Ghz, Symbian^3 N8*00 is pitched into the market.

And any new Maemo/Meego geek phone if there ever is one.

buster wrote:I don't really agree with your remark re. obsolescence. The real definition of obselescence is when a device either stops working or cannot be repaired after a certain time frame.

The fact that a phone is no longer supported re. FW does not make it obselete; it still works exactly as it did before support was dropped. Those users who are complaining about a lack of free navigation for the N95 are still using their N95, 4 years after it was first released....

Or there is a strong movement in the app market for a feature that the phone doesn't support.

Doesn't really apply to the N95, it has GPS. I don't think people are writing a lot of location apps for it though.

PedroGent wrote:Is Nokia paying AAS to write these kind of articles?

YYYAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

PedroGent wrote:
I'm not going to mention the lack of support on the N95 since I have it (even when it was not considered as 'historical'😉, but saying that it's the perfect time to move to S60v5 (already out-dated OS) is just a non-sense. .

People are forgetting the upgrades that N95 got in its first two year. It was not released with A-GPS, and it was not released with demand paging memory management.

Everything? Still waiting for internet radio on my N97, like I had on my N95 all those years ago...

What I don't get is the proximity of which Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 are planned to be launched. Ok you lose the legacy support with ^3 but surely wouldn't you wait for ^4 to be launched as that's the future for Symbian? Is there an ugrade path from ^3 to ^4 or you buy a Symbian^3 device and that's it, you're stuck with it?

Being an open OS, cooked custom ROMs IMHO I believe will become a hallmark of the Symbian evolution, as once it was with WinMo and is now with Android.

If anyone can shed light on this area I'd appreciate it.

Ewan gets it right. There are two data points and we need to know where support ends somewhere between those. But Nokia needs to tell us that before we buy the device. Or they must announce that they will always give x number of months support after a later 'end of life' announcement. They'd also need to define support. Personally I don't think support means that every application Nokia releases in the future must run on it, I think it should mean some kind of regular fixes and upgrades to the core OS. Maps isn't core IMO.

Just out of interest is there anywhere I can look to see if there are any developers still looking at my current phone. ie will there be ever another firmware or is my phone killed (End of Life).

Anyway, as others have mentioned one of the problems is fragmentation. It seems that we actually have a different OS for every device, but they are loosely based on S60v3FP2 (or whatever). People don't expect this.

Companies do not only have responsibilities to owners (shareholders), but more important to their customers. As a Nokia customer I tend to be loyal, if I am happy with the product/service after I purchased it. In my case a Nokia E90, purchased in 2008 for 700 euro sim lock free. Am I happy with Nokia product/service? Basically yes, up till now. If they would no longer support the E90 in 2010 and thereafter, I would be unhappy, because I expect more from them based on purchase price and build quality!

Not sure I agree that discontinuing support for a device as popular as the N95 is a good idea. It doesn't bode well for buying Symbian when previously popular devices are prematurely put to pasture.

I suspect Ewan wasn't just referring to Symbian devices when he said 'your next phone'...😮

Unregistered wrote:Hey Abushaheed. Have you seen Nokia's support of N900? It still doesn't even have voice navigation even if u paid nevermind being free. They already said the unit wouldn't get an upgrade to Meego.

I'm not as well informed as you obviously are about these matters, but the question I'm asking relates to the impracticality of buying an S^1/S^2 device now due to the imminent arrival of S^3. Furthermore, if S^4 is also just behind S^3, does it make sense to buy Symbian at all until these issues are sorted. (If you want to keep your phone up to date for more than 6months to a year). Advise me.

Hey Abushaheed

My comment earlier was about even if you buy a maemo/meego phone, the deal would be the same. No upgrade to the next version. If you're thinking of switching os, well it shouldn't be based on hoping the os will be kept up date.

The phones that would do this is of course iphone(even apple is stopping os upgrades for iphone 1/ipod touch 1) and windows mobile 7 phones. The nexus one might also be an exception as thats google's phone for development.

Of course it makes no sense to buy ^1/^2 now where as ^3 would be brand new for a while before the retirement cycle begins anew.

Unregistered wrote:Yeah, but iPhone apps work across all iterations of the hardware. Not so with Nokia phones, because let's face it, even though devices are branded to run on FP1 or FP2 or whatever, the platform is fragmented as all heck. It's pretty obvious that Nokia's killing themselves trying to actively maintain and support each individual device, hence you see devices fall off the support roadmap - some sooner than others.

I think this post really nails the problem. A phone might be running FP1 or FP2 or whatever but the firmware is still radically different between models, for example E-series might have better printing support and inferior multimedia apps. I can see why Nokia want to segment their market offerings, but these have little if anything to do with the hardware, and must make firmware support horrible.

Abushaheed wrote:I'm not as well informed as you obviously are about these matters, but the question I'm asking relates to the impracticality of buying an S^1/S^2 device now due to the imminent arrival of S^3. Furthermore, if S^4 is also just behind S^3, does it make sense to buy Symbian at all until these issues are sorted. (If you want to keep your phone up to date for more than 6months to a year). Advise me.

i bought my N900 in December, when they became readily available. by February the horror of Meego was announced and the very obvious fact that Nokia had already dropped the N900 and Maemo even before it was released to the public. There are a litany of bugs with Maemo, and the likelihood of them being resolved before Nokia disavows all knowledge and existence of the N900 is very very slim.

i have been disappointed by Nokia for the last time. and for the record, i have been a staunch Psion user for many years and bought many Nokia Symbian handsets.

to Tawalker, I totally agree with you.

I understand that every manufacturer at some point would have to drop support for old devices, but that is simply where I think Nokia is making a very big mess with it's portfolio.

For one thing, Nokia would release Flagship devices with sky-high price tags. But given about 2-years time, support would certainly drop considerably. I also have a Nokia N95 classic which I still use till now, but it doesn't really make sense to upgrade when all the features I need in a smartphone are already packed into this handset.

I am also using an iPhone 3g, and though apple has made clear that it will not be able to support multi tasking as that of the OS4, I still think it is reasonable given that the specs of the newer iPhones are more updated.

Case in point; if Nokia was able to provide Ovi maps for free, then why not make the liscences free as well for the FP1 devices? I think that is a more logical approach instead of trying to port the new software to an old device. Why charge for something you are giving away for free to others?

Flagship anyone?

With Apple you do get left behind but every new generation of iPhone OS and new hardware revision things improve, there is a definite reason to upgrade.

With Nokia it hasn't, they still don't have a Symbian phone with with more than 128mb ram, they are losing dedicated graphics chips, they are still stuck on the same hardware and haven't improved much since the golden age with the likes of the N93, N95, N95 8gb, N82, E90 etc...

Yes, we should move onto new phones after 3 years, but the current crop of Nokia phones are horrible even All About Symbian reviews can't recommend them.

Like Ewan's review of the X6 and Steve's constant articles about how to save RAM and optimise on the N97 (his main device) and now he doesn't even use a N97, he just wrote a article and said he uses a E61i, N82, E90 (still longing for the glory days), and i8910.

If Nokia aren't going to produce decent high end phones they should just get out and stick with the middle and low end.

Unregistered wrote:Before you make any assumption you need to see how the 12MPixel, 1Ghz, Symbian^3 N8*00 is pitched into the market.

And any new Maemo/Meego geek phone if there ever is one.

Do we ever learn our lessons on this? I wouldn't mention anything about future products, or lack thereof, until we get to see at least even a demo unit. 12MPixel on a tiny sensor? 1GHz which is pretty much the bar already NOW, so basically it's already yesterday's news by release, right? Which, btw, was the same fatal move they made with the N97, as all you need to do is compare the N97 specs with the iPhone 2nd Gen to see how it got trounced by the iPhone 3GS. Have you seen the Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 demos? They just look like upgraded N97 stuff, nothing evolutionary. As for Maemo/Meego, I didn't say they will succeed on this. But they put this OS on the best piece of HW they have yet to offer. It has plenty of community support through a healthy homebrew and development ecosystem. The adoption of a really mature OS with truly advance features like full memory mgmt and a full kernel has done wonders in that they keep breaking limits on the handset. And the handset have way more positive reviews than the N97, with even big Nokia bashers like Engadget concluding that it has a viable future, so it's a telling sign already. My whole point is that Nokia's flagship Symbian product managers plain idiots, and the execs keep letting them get away with it, and then finally we have apologists like AAS justifying their idiotic antics to the misery of the shareholders and consumers. Please talk about now and the past, not the vapor future, and let Nokia know that they have been truly shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly over their idiocy.

Nokia shouldn't be forgetting phones. They should be dedicated to platforms.

Back when phones were all dumb phones and there were no services, the money was made from handsets alone. So it was in the manufacturer's interest to just churn out new handsets with slight spec upgrades and be done with.

Now, with the move to smartphones and mobile computers as Nokia like to call them, along with Nokia's own transition to being a software and services company as well as a manufacturer, you can't just cut off potential customers like that.

Symbian needs to be more of a platform, ideally a fully upgradable one. Every S60v5 app should install on every S60v5 handset. Might be reasons it doesn't work (no wi-fi, no TV for you kind of thing) but it should at least install. Likewise, every S60 3rd Edition FPx app should work on every S60 3rd Edition FPx handset.

For Symbian to be a viable platform in the future, for it be taken seriously by developers as well as consumers, it needs to stop having these kind of caveats. The N95 could run the navigation, it should get it. Don't do something daft like split the platform and say that some FP1 phones can manage it and some can't. Fragmentation is bad. Yeah, the phones are old now, but it keeps people on the platform.

That's the point. Platform.

It's one of the ways Apple now print money and whilst eventually you have to say certain products are no longer supported, like 2G iPhones, those should have had lots of support first and there would still be apps available. There's still ways for a manufacturer, software and services company to make money from those handsets.

Moving slightly off topic, I'd really really like to see Symbian being upgradable. If it had a manufacturer's HAL and the OS itself was upgradable that'd be awesome. It'd also make it worthwhile being open source and would encourage more development from a lot more people. Right now I have no real reason to try and add things I'd like to see because I have no way of getting them onto my phone. For instance, I want a text message counter in my Log. I could download the source, I could code one in. But I can't add it to my phone. Dang.

Unregistered wrote:Do we ever learn our lessons on this? I wouldn't mention anything about future products, or lack thereof, until we get to see at least even a demo unit. 12MPixel on a tiny sensor? 1GHz which is pretty much the bar already NOW, so basically it's .

No.

12MP seems to be a bit of a ceiling with regard to declining image quality due to noise. Personally I think they would have been better with 8MP, but the idiot buying public see only a number.

And 1GHz is already a problem for battery life. Until somebody makes a step up with portable energy supply, or a lower consuming chipset, then the 1Ghz will have a recharge disadvantage against more controlled processing.

"Those of you still stuck on the N95, it really is time to move forward and look at what's new in the smartphone world."

And today Nokia launch the Nokia E5, "Packing the latest version of S60 3rd edition" 😊

Idiotic, apologist rhetoric, how can it have been "forgotten" when you can still buy services direct from Nokia for it?

My beef is more with the lack of support on new products.

Take the E72. Recent flagship E series business emailer and yet it has an outdated, functionally incomplete and broken email client that is non upgradable (without firmware update, and it's not being fixed in those so far), and yet some older 3rd editions and the 5th Edition kiddies touch devices get newer versions of the client.

Various upcoming Nokia apps are available for older phones but no commitment to the E72. Nokia Point and Find for example. Supported on the E71, and responses from queries seem to indicate it will be unlikely supported on the E72 but will be on other future devices. Many new apps are aimed at 5th Edition and not just because they are touch apps.

The E5 has just been announced and it looks essentially like the E72 from a functional point of view, but half the price and with features implemented that were missed out in the E72. I very much doubt the E72 will see these added despite both being 3rd Edition FP2 devices.

It's fair enough with older products having an end of life in terms of support, although you just have to look at Apple to see that from a software point of view, their core OS updates apply across the board. Very opposite to the way Nokia have traditionally worked, which is to only release software changes in new models and firmware updates are purely just a means for bugfixes.

Unregistered wrote:No.

12MP seems to be a bit of a ceiling with regard to declining image quality due to noise. Personally I think they would have been better with 8MP, but the idiot buying public see only a number.

And 1GHz is already a problem for battery life. Until somebody makes a step up with portable energy supply, or a lower consuming chipset, then the 1Ghz will have a recharge disadvantage against more controlled processing.

Great point! I totally forgot about the battery consumption problem, and was trying to show how Nokia keeps trying to cut corners, put little investment as possible, and just take the position of "Me too!" only to be continually outwitted on the high end market by their competitors. They keep trying to milk their cow that is obviously poorly maintained and developed, while ppl like AAS and Symbian-guru tout this declining trait as superiority as Nokia keeps pushing s60 down to the lower market and compete on price, thus accomplishing their goal of attaining a false smartphone market position. The smartphone market is traditionally a market that tries to establish new features. The phone smartphone wouldn't be so "smart" if it did the same thing as the plain old vanilla phone did, would it? Add to the fact that in the past, Nokia dismissed touchscreens only to desperately and haphazardly graft the feature on their future phones, just shows how myopic their product managers really are.

Unregistered wrote:
Idiotic, apologist rhetoric, how can it have been "forgotten" when you can still buy services direct from Nokia for it?

Unregistered wrote:"Those of you still stuck on the N95, it really is time to move forward and look at what's new in the smartphone world."

And today Nokia launch the Nokia E5, "Packing the latest version of S60 3rd edition"

I agree about N95, what about e72? Not a single major firmware update correcting the bugs since its launch 5 months back. 5 months in a smartphone world is too much isnt it?

For us in India, we dint even get the minor firmware updates. We are still stuck with the spacebar bug, along with some other bugs that were fixed with the minor updates elsewhere.