

Nokia announces the Lumia 800, the 'first real Windows Phone' - glymor
http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/26/nokia-announces-the-lumia-800/

======
rdl
Wow. Part of me wants this to suck, just so there are only iPhone and Android
to worry about ever developing for, but this actually looks good enough to
consider.

I looked at WP through BizSpark a little, and it looks easier to develop for
than iOS or Android, at least for corporate apps. It's possible RIM will lose
out in the "corporate owned/managed" market to WP, especially if they can
build in equivalent or better security and management tools.

If I were MS/Nokia, I'd heavily subsidize this in ways other than just
reducing the retail price; maybe even go for a $799 retail MSRP but heavily
discount through the carriers or through channels to $0-400. You want the
price to make it seem premium (or at least as good as a high-end Android or
iPhone 4S), but they're the new entrant, so using price to promote the product
might be a win. Maybe something like "$400 credit for any smartphone trade-in"
at retail. Or, bundle "we pay your phone bill for 3 months" or something.

~~~
larsberg
Developing for the platform is definitely trivial, as you mentioned
(disclaimer: I worked at MSFT for years, but I've done an iOS app with over 1M
downloads, so I've seen both).

Owning the device is a pain, though.

1) Lack of apps. No Pandora. No Bump. No Uber. That trendy new mobile startup?
Nope. I sincerely believe that nobody in any YC startup doing mobile even
_has_ a Windows VM, except on the test team.

2) Quality of the non-Live experience. It's easy to hook up your gmail
account, but then every time you add a contact, it nags you about which to add
it to. Plus, when I was just using Live mail (experiment), I'd get ~20 hours
of battery life out and about; with gmail, I get max 5. I'm not sure what's
going on there, but 5 is not quite enough.

Still, there's always hope. But I'd more heavily consider developing for it
than using it as your One True Device.

~~~
underwater
I've always had both Windows Live and Gmail accounts hooked up on my LG, and
I've never had the phone last less than a full day.

~~~
larsberg
Maybe it's something else, then, but I don't know what it could be -- I don't
have any background apps and I set it to ping for mail every 30 minutes. Maybe
my LG does poorly when signal strength gets low? (AT&T coverage is spotty in
Chicago, particularly near the lake)

But, I could use my old iPhone 3g for a couple of solid days, even listening
to streaming music and doing stuff on it. With my LG Quantum, I'm almost
afraid to turn the screen on to see if I have any text messages.

------
eis
I hope they rename it for the spanish market:
<http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/es-en/lumia.php>

~~~
achompas
+1 to everyone else saying it's not a common word. My Cuban family and I
certainly have never used it, and I don't know any other Hispanics/Latinos who
have used it before.

~~~
barista
It may not be a common word but the fact that it has such a negavtive meaning
is not good for the brand particularly if its a name for the whole lineup and
not just one device.

------
plq
Here's my dream scenario: Nokia offers the same hardware with two different OS
selections and also has Qt working on both Meego and WP platforms.

This would obviously be a win-win situation for both the developer and the
user. But this would be beneficial for Nokia as well, because:

1) It'd provide Nokia with hard data based on sales and user feedback on which
platform performs better in real-world scenarios. Currently, the decision to
drop Meego for WP platform is mostly based on "hopes and promises".

2) Having both platforms compete on even terms would also improve the overall
Nokia experience on both platforms as this open and fair competition would
motivate both the Microsoft and the Meego teams to do better.

So, why this wouldn't happen?

~~~
sethg
(disclaimer: Nokia employee)

On the one hand, maintaining two OS teams for the same hardware would be a
waste of resources. On the other hand, I have heard stories of how Microsoft
would often commit several teams to build a product to the same spec: the team
that got something market-ready first was handsomely rewarded, and the teams
that didn’t got reassigned to wash Bill Gates’s car. On the other other hand,
Microsoft (alas) has more cash to burn on this kind of adventure than Nokia
does.

Nokia’s pre-Elop strategy was to encourage app developers to use Qt, which
could be compiled to run on either Symbian or Meego, and then the company
could gracefully phase out Symbian in favor of Meego. I work on back-end stuff
rather than on apps, so I don’t know how well this could have worked in
practice, but I did observe that when my company phone was a (Maemo) N900, the
Ovi Maps client for Maemo was several revisions behind the client for Symbian.

~~~
stcredzero
_I have heard stories of how Microsoft would often commit several teams to
build a product to the same spec: the team that got something market-ready
first was handsomely rewarded..._

This is how large companies should run projects. Bureaucracies often suck
because they have a captive audience -- because they have no competition.
Development teams can suck for exactly the same reasons.

In comparison to the potential impact of bad software in a large company, the
cost of 1 or 2 extra development teams is chump change. I remember being in
line at the airport to pick up a rental car, thinking, "The software this
rental car company uses is clearly very bad. They won't be in business for
much longer." I noticed a few years ago, that they were bought. Actually, I
just looked it up and they were delisted in 2002.

~~~
suivix
As a counterpoint, there are innumerable software projects that would better
our world and create wealth, but only a limited number of developers.
Assigning two teams to do nearly the same thing is a waste.

~~~
stcredzero
Yes, but those are very different contexts -- mine was the big corporation
with tons of cash on hand, with in-house development projects that could
facilitate activities generating 100's of millions of billions of dollars.
Going the extra mile to ensure the organization has access to the best of
several options has a definite payoff.

------
nextparadigms
Ouch. Are they implying the other WP7 phones are just cheap fakes? The other
OEM's must not be too happy about this today. Why do I get the feeling the
other OEM's were just "used" to help WP7 survive for another year until the
"real" WP7 manufacturer arrives?

~~~
potatolicious
I suspect it's the other way around. MSFT bet the company on WP7, clearly has
spent oodles of time and effort on it, but all of the launch devices were
snoozefests - some were outright, lazy ripoffs of the OEMs' existing Android
phones.

There was nothing unique, compelling, or, well, _anything_ about these phones.
Most were even exceptionally _crappy_ with the exception of the Samsung. It's
clear that none of the OEMs were willing to invest the resources to design and
build a piece of hardware that was compelling.

I don't blame Microsoft for shopping around for an "official" manufacturer
after that little debacle.

And I say: _Finally!_ One of the weaknesses of Android has always been this
clearly demarcated line between hardware and software, as necessitated by its
licensing terms and mission statement. iPhones don't suffer from the effects
of this - the software plays closely with the hardware, and it shows. With
beautiful industrial design (honestly, I'm a fan of this new phone) and tight
hardware-software integration, Microsoft can stand a real chance. I say, about
time.

~~~
guruz
I might get downvoted for this sarcasm, but:

That thing looks like a lazy ripoff of the Nokia N9. But oh well. They're both
beautiful :-)

Disclaimer: I used to work for Nokia.

~~~
TallTalesOrTrue
Probably was necessary to keep the beautiful hardware intact to change the
guts completely in less than a year. Look at iPhone 4S. Almost no visual
changes in exterior in a year and a half and the OS didn't change that much
either... why change the looks of something that is already so beautiful.

------
Jabbles
I hope this does well. As a customer in this market I think increased
competition can only be a good thing. I'll need a new phone in a few weeks,
and I'm now looking forward to comparing the 4S, Nexus and this.

------
navs
I love the look of WP7 and this phone looks decent!

I don't generally use apps, preferring webapps on the mobile browser. How does
WP7's browser compare to Android or iOS? I've heard some say its good, others
saying its terrible. Its hard to get an unbiased answer after years of
thrashing desktop IE.

~~~
thomasz
Although IE has been updated to 9 with Mangoo which is a decent browser, i
would expect the same problems Opara gets with cutting edge stuff: You are
very lucky if the app got tested for IE. I never encountered serious problems
though, even with IE7.

~~~
macavity23
IE getting punished by the marketplace for not adhering to standards?! The
prayers of a hundred thousand angry webdevs have surely been answered :-)

~~~
thomasz
you assume that most websites care about standards. They don't.[1] Writing
truly standards compliant html is too much hassle for most people out there,
and brings next to nothing in value. What they do is test it against the
important implementations: On the desktop IE 7+, Firefox 3+, Chrome. For
mobile sites they test for both webkit flavors, and that's it.

Again, IE mobile is facing the same problems as Opara: Both are very decent
browsers, but they have different ways of handling the strange corner cases in
the tag soup out there than the market leaders.

errata: The web has become a lot better w/r to standards in the last couple of
years. Like I said before, I've encountered __very __few glitches with IE7,
and none so far with IE9.

[1][http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator...](http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

~~~
rimantas

      > Writing truly standards compliant html is too much hassle
      > for most people out there
    

This may be true (the "too much hassle" part), but writing standards compliant
html is very easy. Or just easy, depending how semantically clean you want it
to be.

    
    
      > and brings next to nothing in value. 
    

This is wrong. Unless savings on network traffic, time spent on maintenance
and page load times are of now value to developer.

------
TallTalesOrTrue
The 800 basically looks like N9 with Windows Phone OS on it. Hope the OS has
met its match in this hardware. The pictures sure look stunning.

~~~
fungi
[http://europe.nokia.com/find-
products/devices/nokia-n9/speci...](http://europe.nokia.com/find-
products/devices/nokia-n9/specifications)

[http://www.nokia.co.uk/gb-
en/products/phone/lumia800/specifi...](http://www.nokia.co.uk/gb-
en/products/phone/lumia800/specifications/)

aside from the n9 case design its pretty boring spec and feature wise... but
hey its got windows and kids around here are in to that.

------
saturdaysaint
The term "killer app" seems kind of outmoded, but I'm still waiting for WP7 to
show me some really new functionality. I don't think we need something that
can do the same stuff we've been doing for years on mobile phones, even if
they've streamlined things here and there and have a pretty piece of hardware.

Also, I honestly wonder if the dashboard-oriented UI makes it weak as an app
platform. I have two friends who switched from iPhone to WP7 and they've both
remarked how few apps they use/buy outside of the included ones. The big tiles
are nice, but they also mean one's homescreen is likely to be completely
dominated by basic functionality apps (e-mail, contacts, pictures, etc). I'm
sure that this enhances those select home screen apps, but I think it
discourages adding much. Knock the iPhone interface, but the screens pages of
tiny colorful icons do seem to encourage people to collect apps like badges
and actually use them more.

~~~
desigooner
FWIW, there is talk of adding folders to WP7 in the next incremental upgrade.

~~~
saturdaysaint
I've found that folders suffer the same fate as the all-purpose drawer of apps
- simply having to do the extra app discourages usage of anything in the
folder.

------
potch
"No seriously this time you guys!"

------
vegai
Is anyone doing high quality non-smart phones anymore? I'm looking for
something that's small, sturdy with long battery life. Preferably with good
music playing.

I suppose Sony Ericssons's non-android phones are pretty good in that space,
are there any others?

~~~
obeattie
Well… Nokia kinda is. Check out the S40 Asha phones Nokia released today.
(Though maybe they class as smartphones too?)

~~~
vegai
Yeah, I guess... I really don't regard Symbian as a viable platform, though

~~~
codedivine
First off, S40 isn't Symbian. Secondly, didn't you just ask for a featurephone
then why do you care about the platform?

~~~
vegai
Oh right. Good point.

Let me rephrase what I really feel: After my three previous Nokia phones, I
don't feel Nokia is a viable producer of high quality phones. In fact, part of
me wants to punish them for selling me such junk and enveloping me in some
sort of cognitive dissonance field that made me think they were doing good
work.

Then again, Elop got there to change exactly that, so perhaps I should give
them a benefit of doubt now.

------
cavalcade
just spent 2 weeks developing an MVP app for a photo sharing startup. passed
to the store last night. :) Dev tools are smooth but the biggest issue is the
lack of mature open source libraries (Oauth was buggy and i cant find a
Tumblr, Blogger cross posting lib)

------
aurynn
As an owner of an N9, this makes me kind of sad.

I wrote a longer comment on another thread, but what this really makes me feel
is that, instead of utilising a great design paired with WP7, there's just
another indistinct me-too device to be drowned out by the iPhone.

It's sad, because the people who were behind the N9 really seemed like they
understood what Apple was on about, how and why the iPhone was like it was.

Nokia may not have gotten all of it, but they were catching on, and with this
release, I fear that spirit may have been lost.

------
misterbwong
Looks like a solid product. Not quite the halo product I was looking for from
Nokia but the challenge now with WP7 is getting users and apps for their
ecosystem.

Users won't come over until WP7 gets a feature that users can _love_ and show
off. Apple builds up a wow feature for pretty much every single iPhone launch:
2g: (revolutionary, at the time) iPhone OS, 3g/s: Apps, 4: Facetime, 4S: Siri.
A fast and dedicated camera button (one of WP7's main selling points) doesn't
cut it.

------
juliano_q
I really like this device, but the prospect of using Internet Explorer again
really turns me off. The black Lumia 800 with Android 4.0 would be perfect for
me.

~~~
barista
IE 9 is actually a great little browser on the Mnago version of the OS. What
doesn't work on IE9 for you? Which website that you regularly visit on your
mobile?

~~~
juliano_q
I am probably being biased here. But even nowadays I have very bad experiences
with IE on desktop. The simple perspective to use IE again, even on mobile,
feels wrong to me.

~~~
barista
Unless you can be more specific about what you think is broken for you as a
user, I do think you are being unreasonably biased here.

------
seltzered_
For t-mobile america users/cheapskates: it's quad-band 3G unlike the N9's
penta-band 3G, so I don't see this phone selling on t-mobile at all.

Too bad though, I've been wanting to replace my nexus one with a well-designed
easily jailbreakable/sim-unlockable os.

~~~
untog
Looking at the specs:

[http://www.nokia.co.uk/gb-
en/products/phone/lumia800/specifi...](http://www.nokia.co.uk/gb-
en/products/phone/lumia800/specifications/)

It says it does 850 and 1900, which are T-Mobile bands, no?

~~~
seltzered_
t-mobile us 3G band needs 1700 mhz (I believe that's the receiving frequency).
example: even an unlocked iphone supports 850 / 1900 / 2100 hsdpa/3G, but
won't get more than "edge" speed due to the non-support of 1700 mhz

~~~
untog
Ah, you're right. How confusing/annoying.

------
regularfry
Then there's that little voice in the back of my head saying "Cyanogenmod?"

------
drodil
<http://twitpic.com/5siddh/full>

~~~
recoiledsnake
It's funny how people now call Meego a great OS, but if Nokia had gone with
Meego, everyone would be saying "where are the apps?" "This would be better
with Android on it". "The same icon based UI sucks". And it probably wouldn't
sell well.

------
bhoflack
This phone looks ugly compared to their leaked prototypes.

~~~
jsnell
In nature the N9 is easily the best looking and feeling phone I've seen,
including all iPhone models. It's not obvious from the pictures whether the
case changed in any way from the N9 to the 800, but at least it doesn't look
like anything major.

------
yread
Wow there's gonna be Nokia Windows Phones for 60 euros

~~~
timthorn
No, I don't think so - that's for a phone in the Asha (non-WP7) range.
Cheapest WP is the Lumia 710 at 270 Euros.

~~~
yread
uh ok. I got confused as he mentioned the retail price between talking about
marketing of WP7...

------
Shenglong
I'm so disappointed by the color choices, and the bevel on the screen (or what
looks like a bevel). Don't people ever wonder why some of the most popular
phones in history have been white/black/silver only?

I feel like consumer demand for mobile devices isn't driven by aesthetic
choice, more so than apparent popularity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_mobile_pho...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_mobile_phones)

The numerous amount of buttons on the side also makes me angry. Honestly, I
have two buttons on the side of my iPhone, and a flip switch which makes
perfect sense. Is it _really_ necessary to have four different -unmarked-
buttons?

</end_of_complaints>

~~~
recoiledsnake
Huh, the buttons are vol. up, vol down, power and camera(works even when in
sleep/locked so that you can quickly take a picture unlike fiddling with the
power and touchscreen on the iPhone). I don't see how that's numerous when
they are all pretty useful.

~~~
adolph
How does it avoid lots of pocket/purse pictures?

~~~
recoiledsnake
No idea but I haven't seen one in six months of use.

~~~
shrikant
I could be wrong, but I think that would be the proximity sensor at work.

