
Nokia D1C: The Comeback - ereli1
http://inmobility.org/20161673/nokia-d1c-the-comeback/
======
amiga-workbench
Such a shame trojan horse Elop tanked the company by partnering with
Microsoft, I'd have loved to see more of their Linux based phones, I've still
got a Nokia N9 which has to be my favourite handset so far.

I hope Ubuntu for phones can gain at least some traction.

~~~
nivla
I have heard this statement so many times and I feel it doesn't justify the
truth. Here are some counter points. Nokia came back into my view when they
started launching the Lumia phones. It was slick, fast and solid phones with
amazing camera. Any mention of Nokia here on HN and Reddit before that was met
with DOA as the top comment. When they started releasing the Lumia phones, the
tune started to switch to "if they made an android phone, I would totally
buy!". Remember the whole silly fiasco with even Siri calling Lumia 900 the
best phone in the market? [1]

I think Microsoft gave it a premiere spot with Windows Mobile which would have
otherwise gone unnoticeable in the Android market. Despite me jumping ship
from Windows Phone, I still believe Windows Mobile was one of the best
(*subjective) of all mobile OSes. Its extremely fast, less resource hog and
well designed (flatness before it got trendy). Given the stereotypes about
Windows OS, the mobile OS seemed nothing like it. Heck, I bought a $15 Lumia
phone from Best buy and it seems like a $200 buttery smooth phone.

Lumia also had good set of apps, which created an amazing group of loyal
buyers. Offline GPS - You could download the maps for the entire world on your
phone. Offline Radio - Download the entire mix radio to you phone and use it
where you went. Camera Apps - Nokia cinematography, Live Images, Selfie,
Panorama.

However, I do believe that Microsoft's Nokia buyout was a stupid idea. Nokia
was amazing at advertising, viral marketing and creating a brand loyalty.
Microsoft however sucks at both advertisements and marketing but they seem to
be very good at pissing off even their loyal followers.

[1]
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/255508/siri_says_nokia_lumia_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/255508/siri_says_nokia_lumia_900_not_apple_iphone_is_the_best_smartphone_ever.html)

~~~
matco11
There is an interesting story by the New Yorker: "It wasn’t just that Nokia
failed to recognize the increasing importance of software, though. It also
underestimated how important the transition to smartphones would be. And this
was, in retrospect, a classic case of a company being enthralled (and, in a
way, imprisoned) by its past success. Nokia was, after all, earning more than
fifty per cent of all the profits in the mobile-phone industry in 2007, and
most of those profits were not coming from smartphones. Diverting a lot of
resources into a high-end, low-volume business (which is what the touch-screen
smartphone business was in 2007) would have looked risky. In that sense,
Nokia’s failure resulted at least in part from an institutional reluctance to
transition into a new era."

[http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/where-nokia-
went-...](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/where-nokia-went-wrong)

~~~
Zigurd
> _Diverting a lot of resources into a high-end, low-volume business (which is
> what the touch-screen smartphone business was in 2007) would have looked
> risky. In that sense, Nokia’s failure resulted at least in part from an
> institutional reluctance to transition into a new era._

It's a bit of a nitpick, but Nokia had put considerable resources into Series
60, Symbian, and subsequently Maemo. Nokia's management, before Elop, was in
no way reluctant about a smartphone future beyond high-volume S40 devices. The
S60 features of integrated PIM apps are foundational to smartphones, and
Maemo/Meego was a credible smartphone OS. As I recall, Tomi Ahonen had good
reason to think the N9 was outselling Windows Phone when Meego was killed.

------
nine_k
This is not a comeback. This is a once-famous name being reused, it seems.

Imagine if Apple went out if business and then "returned" with an Android
phone.

~~~
jbkkd
This isn't quite the same. Apple's platform is a closed garden. Hardware and
software are bundled together and are inseparable. There can be no iPhone
without iOS.

Nokia didn't do that. They had Symbian, Windows Phones and Asha to name a few.

What's happening here is Nokia taking their excellent hardware for which they
were known for (remember those phones you could throw at a wall?), and
sticking Android on it as the operating system - just like they would do with
Windows Phone.

~~~
nine_k
I'll be very glad if Nokia ends up making very good Android phones.

Lumias were quite good, too, from the hardware perspective.

What is the saddest part is the loss of their mobile OS effort; it had a
number of good UI ideas.

BTW I wonder when some reasonably large player will try to offer an entirely
(or at least significantly) different UX on top of Android's open-source core.

------
youdontknowtho
Yeah...the name nokia has been licensed to a couple of different consumer
devices. the only remnant of the old nokia that still exits is a networking
device company that makes infrastructure for data and cell networks.

these are not the droids you are looking for...

~~~
rhblake
That "remnant" is much larger than the handset division they sold. 114k
employees after acquiring Alcatel-Lucent. Seems to be doing well. (I just
learned that Bell Labs is now " _Nokia_ Bell Labs".)

~~~
youdontknowtho
Thanks for the update. That's interesting news.

~~~
ptaipale
In fact Nokia always was an infrastructure company. (Well, "always" as in
"telecommunication infrastructure products since 1960's", i.e. it started in
telecoms about 100 years after its founding in 1867).

One can always say that there are other mistakes Nokia did. Like, why did it
not acquire Cisco back around 1990 when it could have done it? But then again,
many other Nokia acquisitions did not work so well so very likely Nokia Cisco
wouldn't have been anything like Cisco is now.

Nokia came to telecom infra because before that it was a cable manufacturer,
and it came to cable manufacturing due to being a rubber product manufacturer,
and before that it was also wood industry manufacturer. You can still by
"Nokian" brand boots and shoes in Europe, although it's a separate company,
and you can also buy "Nokian" brand car and bicycle tyres, though that is
another separate company.

(I worked in Nokia's infra side for 20 years and 1 day.)

~~~
youdontknowtho
That's true. They bought a company back in the 90s that had a technology that
was a big influence on MPLS. Ipsilon? Something like that. It would assign
tags to packets and then let you assign tags to specific paths.

~~~
ptaipale
Yes, Ipsilon Networks was one of several Nokia infra acquisitions, and not
that successful. There was Vienna Systems, Diamond Lane, CopperCom, Rooftop,
many others. That's quite normal in the business.

~~~
youdontknowtho
yeah, they have a really good portfolio of products in that space these days.
Cheers.

------
theklub
I want a refresh on the Nokia Communicator. I want a micro laptop.

~~~
agumonkey
Casio sold some a while ago
[https://youtu.be/qZ7TUJQjH74?t=68](https://youtu.be/qZ7TUJQjH74?t=68)

------
vamur
Nokia has only themselves to blame for the downfall of their brand. There was
a time then a Nokia phone was a status symbol. Now it's a gimmick at best.

If they didn't jump on a DOA platform and instead concentrated on the high-end
Android market, they would still be #1 or #2 in Europe at least. Now they now
collect paltry licensing fees on a yet another Foxconn phone, which judging by
specs is obsolete anyway.

------
piyush_soni
That's a pretty 'average' phone for a comeback.

~~~
droid8
It's not like they have to live up to any particularly high expectations... As
a brand, their history is made of two decades of mediocrity in both design and
technology.

If a new brand licensing on Android phones was all they could come up with,
it's no surprise their CTO left two months ago.

~~~
fsloth
Where did you get the two decades? Before IPhone came 10 years ago and changed
the game from hardware to software plus ecosystem Nokia's phones were in the
top category - no, sorry, they were in all of the categories since there were
so many of them.

Even after IPhone Nokia had years of great market position.

Technology wise mediocre? Thats.. not really the general perception.

Perhaps the fact that Nokia tanked as fast as it did creates a shadow over the
history before this.

------
b34r
They're not coming back. Being a smartphone OEM is a massive money sink with
little upside unless you're the #1 or #2 player in a market. Wearables, VR,
health, etc are the next targets for Nokia.

~~~
jpalomaki
Probably they are not coming back, but it seems to be that they are not
closing the door either. This whole deal seems to be setup so that they could
just acquire the newly formed "HMD global" in future IF they wanted to do a
comeback.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/18/nokia-phones-are-back-
after-m...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/18/nokia-phones-are-back-after-
microsoft-sells-mobile-assets-for-350-million-to-foxconn-hmd.html)

------
gm-conspiracy
Any recommendations for a small form-factor, yet functional, Android phone
(about the size of an iPhone 4/S)?

~~~
0xFFC
With Android huge update problem, I wouldn't go near to Android phone,unless
Google's own phone. Let be honest Android manufacturers, just ripping off
people and don't care a little bit about customer experience/security.

Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before
that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed
stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version.
Thats total fraud , which they pull off (manufacturers).

~~~
vetinari
> Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before
> that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed
> stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version

And that would be exactly which ones? Samsung did update their high end
phones, so did Sony, HTC and LG.

------
Zigurd
It's good to see they have Android 7. It shows a lack of product management
savvy at most OEMs that they don't get that delivering up-to-date Android
might be a key advantage in selling Android phones.

------
627467
This looks like another "Alcatel" phone, a classic brand inside comoditized
hw.

I would pay to have android running my Nokia lumia phones. (like someone
manage to get onto the lumia 525).

