Phones Nokia 8

[PJM83]

So rumors about the upcoming Nokia flagship are starting to come out. As someone from Scandinavia who grew up with Nokia this is pretty interesting.
If they manage to keep it clean I might have to pick one up.

5.7 inch Super AMOLED 1440 x 2560.
Snapdragon 835.
6GB RAM.
64/128GB Internal.
MicroSD slot.
24MP camera 12MP FF camera.

 

[Dsching]

What OS will it run?

 

[PJM83]

What OS will it run?

Android. (7)

 

[Dsching]

Android. (7)

They don't do windows anymore? Good for them!

 

[PJM83]

They don't do windows anymore? Good for them!

No, this is the "rebirth" of Nokia. No more MS and Windows. Android all the way. Their first phone is out Nokia 6 but that is China only.

 

[44267547]

So rumors about the upcoming Nokia flagship are starting to come out. As someone from Scandinavia who grew up with Nokia this is pretty interesting.
If they manage to keep it clean I might have to pick one up.

5.7 inch Super AMOLED 1440 x 2560.
Snapdragon 835.
6GB RAM.
64/128GB Internal.
MicroSD slot.
24MP camera 12MP FF camera.

Any speculation of a release date or mock photo?

 

[PJM83]

Any speculation of a release date or mock photo?

Probably during MWC.

 

[44267547]

Probably during MWC.

The camera is mentioned. But no release date or actual photo of the phone itself.

 

[PJM83]

The camera is mentioned. But no release date or actual photo of the phone itself.

Nokia has said they will announce new models during MWC the 8 will probably be among them.

 

[Oohara]

Interest piqued.

 

[Michael Goff]

They don't do windows anymore? Good for them!

Yeah. Now instead of making no money on Windows Phone, they can make no money making Android.

 

[Sam_S]

I am excited!! Pre iPhone, Nokia was the only brand of phone I would buy, their build quality was amazing!! I miss the old slide phone I had

Hoping Nokia come up with a new phone that will match the build quality that they used to have pre iPhone!

The Nokia 6 looks great from the ad! Lets hope they release something similar, or better to the Western markets.

 

[sunking101]

I am excited!! Pre iPhone, Nokia was the only brand of phone I would buy, their build quality was amazing!! I miss the old slide phone I had

Hoping Nokia come up with a new phone that will match the build quality that they used to have pre iPhone!

The Nokia 6 looks great from the ad! Lets hope they release something similar, or better to the Western markets.

The Nokia N-Series had dreadful build quality! It was the only reason I moved on from them when I did. Nasty plastic-railed sliders with play out of the box. Ugh. Real Christmas cracker stuff.

However, I'm definitely interested in this new one if the OP has the specs right. It isn't the Nokia of old, someone basically bought the brand name?

 

[Tsepz]

I loved the Nokia Nseries for what they brought, they started this whole journey into Convergence devices.

The N95 was quite the beast


Anyway, these specs are great, let's hope it's all true, my bet is it is true at the Nokia 6 already brings 4GB RAM and 64GB Storage.

 

[MindsEye]

The Nokia N-Series had dreadful build quality! It was the only reason I moved on from them when I did. Nasty plastic-railed sliders with play out of the box. Ugh. Real Christmas cracker stuff.

However, I'm definitely interested in this new one if the OP has the specs right. It isn't the Nokia of old, someone basically bought the brand name?

Maybe we were in the unfortunate minority but i also had issues with the N series mainly the N80. Still the shortest reigning phone i've owned lasted me about 3 weeks.

Still i hope Nokia can make a comeback (if its okay to call it that) with this flagship. Still baffles me that it took them until 2017 to make this move as they thought being a entity unto themselves in the world of Windows Phone was the better move.

 

[brdeveloper]

I think that only north-american media thought Windows and Elop would be a good move to Nokia. Nokia had a very nice reputation in Brazil, Asia and most of Europe, however it didn't perform well in US. When Apple launched iPhone 4 (2010), Nokia had launched N8, a very nice cameraphone capable of sharing very nice pictures on Facebook. That picture quality is impressive even for today standards. However, Zuckerberg's company didn't offer a Facebook app for Symbian on that time - Nokia had to develop one by itself. Later, Facebook provided a generic and ugly J2ME app which was worse than Nokia's one.

Symbian can still run Whatsapp and performs very well with native apps and games, a proof that what killed Nokia was the american-centric media and a badly chosen CEO. A Finnish CEO could have done better decisions, perhaps developing newer phones like the Nokia N9 (running a self-made Linux distro, MeeGo). The abrupt move to Windows provoked a rupture on OVI/Nokia Store ecosystem, making older and loyal users move to other platforms.

New clients that adopted Windows were those who didn't care about operating systems, advanced hardware features or were aware of Nokia phone capabilities. The PureView stuff along HAAC microphones didn't mean nothing to those clients. At the same time, older Nokia users moved to Android or iOS. When Windows seemed mature to give a chance (around WP8.1), it was too late. I was one of the old Symbian users who knew about PureView capabilities and high amplitude audio capturing, then I got a Lumia 930. Nice phone, however it's now almost as badly supported by Facebook as it was in the Symbian days.

The sad thing is: these new Nokias won't probably have pureview and haac stuff because of copyright issues... they will be just ordinary (although perhaps well-made) Android phones.

 

[MindsEye]

Damn that was a good read, at this point i'd say were approaching a generation of users who've never owned or used a Nokia phone. Something i know is a more relevant point in Europe and other markets than it is in NA.

I still vaguely remember Nokia's first reply to the iPhone that ExpressMusic touchscreen phone. My brother-in-law purchased that and i tried it out and it was normal Symbian with touch tacked on. it was abysmal, he even agreed at the time he made a mistake in buying that. For all what the iPhone was lacking, they nailed the UI design and the app store was an unparalleled growing monster.

On the Android side, things weren't great, i was seeing a sea of phones inferior to the iPhone in every way shape and form for all the criticism the iPhone was getting. None of the current heavy hitters were taking it seriously. Phones with 512MB onboard storage when iphone came with 8GB and up to 16GB. Cameras were also inferior to the Nokia's and a good camera was even more of selling point than it is today.

I don't know who was the Nokia Ceo back around 08-09 but they missed a massive opportunity to be what essentially Samsung is now. For me back then i would have killed for a Nokia phone that had a OS built for touch from the ground up like Android. Instead i went with a series40 Luna 8600 and used a iPod Touch 2nd Gen to hold me over until Android started to mature.

Anyway they'll never be what they once were but they'll be smart to price the 8 aggressively. Not to far off the OnePlus price structure if i was them. Even then there is far more competition now then there ever was before but i think their brand still carries some cachet.

 

[Tsepz]

Damn that was a good read, at this point i'd say were approaching a generation of users who've never owned or used a Nokia phone. Something i know is a more relevant point in Europe and other markets than it is in NA.

I still vaguely remember Nokia's first reply to the iPhone that ExpressMusic touchscreen phone. My brother-in-law purchased that and i tried it out and it was normal Symbian with touch tacked on. it was abysmal, he even agreed at the time he made a mistake in buying that. For all what the iPhone was lacking, they nailed the UI design and the app store was an unparalleled growing monster.

On the Android side, things weren't great, i was seeing a sea of phones inferior to the iPhone in every way shape and form for all the criticism the iPhone was getting. None of the current heavy hitters were taking it seriously. Phones with 512MB onboard storage when iphone came with 8GB and up to 16GB. Cameras were also inferior to the Nokia's and a good camera was even more of selling point than it is today.

I don't know who was the Nokia Ceo back around 08-09 but they missed a massive opportunity to be what essentially Samsung is now. For me back then i would have killed for a Nokia phone that had a OS built for touch from the ground up like Android. Instead i went with a series40 Luna 8600 and used a iPod Touch 2nd Gen to hold me over until Android started to mature.

Anyway they'll never be what they once were but they'll be smart to price the 8 aggressively. Not to far off the OnePlus price structure if i was them. Even then there is far more competition now then there ever was before but i think their brand still carries some cachet.

I had that XpressMusic phone, it was the Nokia 5800XpressMusic, for me, a Symbian fan, at the time it was great, but in hindsight, it was atrocious as touch experiences go, but at the time it made for a decent transition to touch screen.

 

[MindsEye]

I had that XpressMusic phone, it was the Nokia 5800XpressMusic, for me, a Symbian fan, at the time it was great, but in hindsight, it was atrocious as touch experiences go, but at the time it made for a decent transition to touch screen.

Yeah i get that, if it was your first venture in touchscreen smartphones then i can see how people loved it. i had a Sony Ericsson P800 and P910 both of which i thought were great phones for their time.

The problem is with the XpressMusic, i had already owned the 2nd gen Touch for months and i was still in love with the device. So coming from that to the experience Nokia was offering was very jarring. Would have felt the same way about any touchscreen device if iPhones and iPod Touches were around the time when they were released.

 

[Tsepz]

Yeah i get that, if it was your first venture in touchscreen smartphones then i can see how people loved it. i had a Sony Ericsson P800 and P910 both of which i thought were great phones for their time.

The problem is with the XpressMusic, i had already owned the 2nd gen Touch for months and i was still in love with the device. So coming from that to the experience Nokia was offering was very jarring. Would have felt the same way about any touchscreen device if iPhones and iPod Touches were around the time when they were released.

Understandable, the P800 and P910 were Symbian UIQ devices, a Symbian UI built from the ground up for Touchscreen usage. Nokia never really invested much into UIQ and it died out when Nokia bought Symbian and pretty much elbowed Sony Ericsson, Motorola and other UIQ investors out the way, while putting more money into S60, which was always for portrait keyboard smartphones.

Nokia's vision was that of Convergence smartphones that looked like feature phones, but were also strong in Multimedia, and this was well executed with the N82, N95, N96, and N86 smartphones. They never saw iPhone coming and were blindsided by Android completely, suddenly Touchscreens were the rage, yet Nokia were deeply invested in an OS driven by Directional Pads and Keyboards. They suddenly had to start from scratch and make S60 a touch friendly UI, having killed UIQ, which at that point hadn't had any development for about 2years if I remember correctly.

Very unfortunate for them, proof that you never put all your eggs in one basket.

 

[brdeveloper]

I still think that the supposed "superiority" from the first iPhone was mostly sold by north-american media. Americans at that point felt their pride hurt because of a Finnish company dominating a highly technologic market. N95 basically lacked a touchscreen. In all the other areas it was blatantly better than iPhone: better camera, 3G support, IR transmitter, FM radio, tons of great software, a great GPS/Maps application with offline support... well, if american media sold these features with the excitement they sold iPhone's touchscreen, well, there would be another story.

5800 XpressMusic was gabage. It was an attempt to respond to north-american media, but it lacked most of the best features N95 had, like a 5MP camera, dual ARM11 and graphics acceleration. The 5800 XpressMusic was basically a spartan smartphone with a touchscreen. No way it could compete with iPhone 3G/3GS, which had a capacitive touchscreen and (already) a good set of fancy apps.

N900, N8, N9 and 808 were from another lineage of phones. From late-2009 (N900) to mid-2012 (808) Nokia produced interesting phones which could compete with the iPhone hype. However, it was to late... worldwide media had already bought the "iPhoneist" discourse. It wouldn't matter what Nokia would do anymore: real Linux phones capable of running GPL software (N900, N9); cameraphones which produced pictures like premium compact digital cameras (N8 and 808) and superb audio quality capable of recording loud gigs without distortion (808). Nokia tried everything, except running Android (then it would became a commodity-phone manufacturer) or iOS (impossible). People said that Symbian lacked a good set of apps, but the truth is that what people called a good set of apps were basically Facebook. A decent Facebook client would have turned Symbian a viable operating system again. Around 2011 Symbian would need a slightly broader set of apps to keep its viability, perhaps adding Instagram and Foursquare. But the truth is, no company was interested on investing money on anything that didn't sold well in USA.

If you played with a N8 or N9 or the 808 it's hard to argue that UX was worse than those from iOS and Android devices from that time. It was different, but it had a notification curtain, home screens and most of those gimmicks common to touchscreen devices.

CORRECTION: Nokia manufactured an Android phone when it was already developing Lumia (Windows) phones, but that happened in the decadence years (around 2012-2015).

 

[Ffosse]

They will fail again; it's inevitable - there is little money to be made in Android unless you're Samsung.

 

[brdeveloper]

They will fail again; it's inevitable - there is little money to be made in Android unless you're Samsung.

I agree... the only way to bring fresh air to Nokia would be re-hiring those Linux guys that made Maemo and MeeGo work and launch an appstore-independent mobile operating system, capable of running Android and Symbian apps by emulation. Ok, initially that would be a professional/geek OS, but Lenovo Thinkpads basically survive because there are people that value robust hardware. Nokias could be the "Thinkpads" of the mobile world.

 

[sunking101]

They will fail again; it's inevitable - there is little money to be made in Android unless you're Samsung.

How much do manufacturers have to pay Google to put Android on their phones? Surely they make sufficient money from the hardware itself to make production worthwhile?

 

[Djilkosh]

How much do manufacturers have to pay Google to put Android on their phones?

AOSP (Android Open Source Project) is free and anybody can compile it. BUT putting GApps (Play Store, Google Play Service etc.) then you must pay.