A man and his wife had devised a code for communicating their marital desires because of the children. When either of them wanted to communicate their desire, they would say they wanted to make a phone call. 

One day, husband sends his son to wife, “Tell your mom that I want to make a phone call”.

Wife sends a reply, “Tell your dad that there is no network signal”.

Man responds, “Tell your mom that I will go and make the phone call outside”.

Wife sends reply, “Tell your dad that if he goes to make that call outside, I will open a call centre”.

Part One: Primary, Secondary, Belle?

I have always wondered what Nokia meant when they said that they were adopting Windows Phone as their “primary smartphone platform”. Why “primary” if there is no secondary? Right?

Also, why have they gone through the trouble of renaming “Symbian” to “Nokia Belle” if this is the end of the road?

Are you following my drift? I have consistently suspected that Windows Phone will not be the only platform that Nokia would push in the market. The legacy of Symbian is too big, too strong, and too useful to be thrown away completely.

Okay, so Nokia has killed Symbian. Symbian is dead; long live Nokia Belle OS.

Part Two: Belle, Carla, Donna?

Before Symbian was killed, Belle, Carla and Donna were just names for subsequent versions of Symbian. However, note the radical shift since Symbian was killed. Now, Belle is the OS, and there are no more official references to Carla and Donna. Instead we hear of “Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1″, which is what Carla used to be (see Nokia Belle FP1 is Carla).

Are you following me? Nokia dropped the “Carla” moniker and replaced that with FP1. I bet that instead of Donna, we will hear of FP2.

Symbian OS is dead. Long live Nokia Belle!

PS: Nokia 808 PureView runs Belle FP1 (Carla)

Part Three: My OS Looks Better Than Yours?

My article on the brilliance of what Nokia has done with the 808 PureView, the new Nokia Belle flagship, has expectedly generated a lot of buzz. As usual, a comparison of different platforms showed up, with the respective chief whips of Android and Symbian (that dead platform) showing up to pitch for their camps.

I am going to build this argument around a statement made by the chief whip for Android:

The simple fact is that Belle only looks so good when compared with previous Symbian versions not against Android or iOS.

Do you know what is wrong with this statement? It is the pre-supposition that one OS looking better than another invalidates that other. In other words, the idea that Android looks better than Belle makes Belle redundant.

Of course, it doesn’t take much to see that such an idea is preposterous. It is plain silly and flies in the face of reason.

Different car brands look better or worse from one another, yet they all sell. Same for TV sets, clothes lines, and wrist watches. Heck, even ladies have different levels of beauty, yet have their fair share of male suitors. See the point? They sell to varying degrees. But they sell.

Plus, if we follow that line, Android is a rather poor copy of iOS, UI-wise. Odd, but Android sells anyway. See why Nokia Belle continues to sell, even after its precursor, Symbian has been killed by the American tech press and by Nokia’s CEO?

Fact: Nokia Belle is good enough for many people. As a matter of fact, it meets the needs of some people better than either iOS or Android could ever hope to do.

A friend who wants a new phone spoke with me yesterday. I made a number of recommendations, which she turned down. She wanted the Nokia 500, a Belle smartphone. She had her mind made up. Nokia smartphones did it for her and she was getting that particular model. She had also had the chance to use one for a few hours and was in love with it.

Smell The Coffee!

Now, y’all that keep speaking of the Symbian ecosystem, please note the difference: there is Symbian, the platform that is being killed. And then there is Belle, the resurrection and the life (I know that sounds blasphemous; sue me).

Get it? Nokia won’t admit it. But here is the best kept secret of the mobile industry, and its coming from me: Nokia has re-invented the most popular and most successful smartphone OS ever. Nokia Belle may never rule the smartphone landscape like its precursor, Symbian, did. But, who cares?

The important thing is this: Symbian OS is dead. Long live Belle!

Sony Ericsson P800

The Esato website was founded in the year 2001 and was mainly targeted at Sony Ericsson mobile phone users. Part of the site was a popular discussion forum where users interacted and found help with their devices. At the time that I joined on October 27, 2004, I owned a Sony Ericsson P800 and came across the site while searching for information about the device.

Old guard phone users will remember that the P800 ran Symbian UIQ, a fork of Symbian with a really superb touch user interface. It had a detachable flip keyboard, which I preferred removed so I could enjoy the full 2.9-inch TFT resistive touchscreen without hindrance.

This was at a time that Glo had just launched GPRS and the service was still available for free. Later, a tariff of 70k per kb was introduced towards the end of 2004.

Proudly Nigerian Forum

We had a thriving “Proudly Nigerian Forum” on Esato in those days, a tight-knit community of phone users (both Sony Ericsson and non-Sony Ericsson) from Nigeria, and had lots of good times together.

I remember that one member then Ihejirika, actually came for my daughter’s naming ceremony. I also remember asking folks there to help give my wife a memorable 30th birthday. She got calls and text messages (and one MMS too) by the bucketful.

We even had one Proudly Nigerian meetup at the University of Lagos hosted by me and a good turnout. Angelgirl and Ambyzown were individuals that I remember getting to know at that meetup. It was fun putting a face to the individuals that one had spent countless hours chatting with online.

Running Out Of Steam…

Eventually, The Proudly Nigerian Forum began to lose steam. I am not exactly sure why. I do know that I was regarded as the driving force of the forum, and I had started my first mobile blog, GoSmartMobile, the precursor to Mobility blog. That meant that I spent less time on Esato. There might have been other reasons too.

My last post on the Proudly Nigerian Forum was on January 23 2009. My last post on Esato was on May 07 2011 under the thread, “Your favorite Nokia model.” My account is still active, and once in a while I go to check for anything exciting.

Today, the Proudly Nigerian Forum is more of a ghost town. The last post there by anyone was on the 8th November, 2010.

Proudly Nigerian Forum was wonderful while it lasted. It was where many of us cut our teeth with mobile internet services on Nigerian networks. That was where Brym and I met. In addition, I’m still in touch ocassionaly with CoolApostle, Ambyzown, AreaFada, EgunjeSpoilLagos AKA EnjoymentMan, and Tilly.

A few members from there have been active on Mobility blog, Brym being the most conspicuous. In many ways, it was where the foundation for my mobile blogging career was laid.

If you need information on Ericsson, Sony Ericsson and Sony mobile devices, Esato is still a great place to visit. It is a huge library of useful information. Should you want to check out what went down on the Proudly Nigerian Forum back in the day, here’s the link: Esato Poudly Nigerian Forum. My username there was originally AYA, later changed to Oluyom.

I’ve been a Nokia user right from my first phone. It was no surprise that my first smartphone was a Nokia Symbian device. In short (and long) i was a devoted fan.

When  I wanted to upgrade, the options then were the N8 and the E7, which was recently announced. But then Android also had a lot of eye-catching, feature-filled phones. It had only just overtaken Symbian as the number one smartphone OS.

So I bided my time to see how the OS wars played out. In the meantime, I flashed my then ageing 5230 with several modified roms from the Dailymobile forums.

I finally made the move and got a Samsung Galaxy S, which I have been using ever since.

However, Nokia’s recent announcement of the 808 Pureview running Symbian Belle OS with a 41MP camera sensor got me wowed.

See, I personally vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to use anything that smelled Symbian again because being the power user that I am, Symbian did not give me the amount of “tweakability” that I wanted so using an Android phone for me was a match made in heaven.

But I am currently in a dilemma cause inasmuch as I vowed that I wasn’t going to get a Symbian/Belle/Carla device, this phone might just make me change my mind after all.

Reasons?

1. The camera

2. The camera

3. I’d say that i love the OS but sadly that would be a lie so yes the camera .

I just might be buying into this dying platform for the last time, or what do you think?

I disliked Blackberry smartphones for both objective and subjective reasons. So it may be viewed as hypocritical that I still went ahead to get one for myself, albeit the entry level 8520.

While I find the Blackberry largely uninteresting in design and features, its capabilities as an email device of choice is largely indisputable and unrivaled. Its encrypted push email also keep it at the top of the game for corporate users. Well, I guess this is expected for a company that has been in the messaging business for almost 25 years.

Email accounts that use the push method for message retrieval enable you to have email messages delivered directly to you as soon as the message is received by your email provider instead of checking periodically or manually for new messages.

The BlackBerry listens for new information and notifies the user when it arrives. The BlackBerry does not poll the server to look for updates. It simply waits for the update to arrive and notifies the user when it does. With e-mail, a copy of each message also goes to the user’s inbox on the computer, but the e-mail client can mark the message as read once the user reads it on the BlackBerry.

The ease of use and the relative affordability of maintaining (not acquiring) make the option of carrying a Blackberry alongside my Android mobile of choice a necessity. Many others share the same opinion too. And this is probably the reason why RIM’s recent free-fall as the mobile device of choice has not hit the dirt yet.

Thanks to the data efficiency of the Blackberry OS, the device has also become very popular among the mobile networks too. With as little as N1400 per month for the single email BIS variant, you have almost unrestricted use of your email and allied services for a month.

Alternatives To BlackBerry Email?

On the other hand, if you have a fanatical dislike for the Blackberry, like I did before economic reasons made me have a change of heart, and would rather stick to your device of choice, alternatives abound.

Microsoft Exchange email is probably the best known and most widely used email platform in the world and has push email capabilities. In fact, the Blackberry platform rides on it. On iOS and Android devices, push email is supported for the following email account types; Microsoft Exchange, Gmail and Yahoo! Other email accounts such as POP, IMAP or AOL accounts do not support push message retrieval but can instead be setup to fetch mail at specified intervals or manually when the Mail application is opened.

Google email, Gmail, is compatible with Microsoft Exchange using Google sync. Once you have an existing data plan on your Smartphone, you can easily configure this on your mobile. And for those with personal domain names, you can easily change the MX records of your domain name and jump on board Google Apps email and enjoy, probably, better featured email services than you will get on your blackberry.

However, one major limitation is that a lot of mobiles only allow one Microsoft exchange account to be configured. Lately, however, devices based on Android and iOS allow almost limitless exchange accounts, a plus over Blackberry’s 10 email account limit. They even go further by allowing you to add Yahoo accounts freely without a need for the $20 Yahoo premium upgrade.

Another downside is that the amount you would be paying for data allocation to power this email service on a non-Blackberry device is substantially more.

Some people swear that the push email offering from Blackberry is significantly better than that on any other platform. I tend to agree. On closer look, this difference may be attributed to the different methods in which push email operate on different platforms;

Push Email On Blackberry

When you have a new email, RIM sends a notification to your device over the phone network, in much the same way as an SMS text. This tells your phone that a new email is available and that it should connect to the server and download it.

On iOS

Either your phone is set to connect to the server at a predetermined interval (every 15mins, 30 mins, 1hr etc), or it’s set to maintain a constant connection to the server in order to receive emails in real time.

Both methods are fundamentally different and the advantage of the Blackberry method is that it saves a considerable amount of power. In contrast, the iOS method is somewhat of a battery drain. If Apple truly wants to compete with RIM in the email stakes, it should perhaps consider offering true push notifications like RIM, in conjunction with the phone networks.

How long Blackberry would continue to stay relevant with this advantage is any body’s guess but I doubt if it will be for long. In the meantime, all hail the current king of mobile email!

First, it was quad-core processors from LG and Huawei. Little did we know that Nokia was going to pull a mad stunt of this magnitude that totally changes the game again.

While HTC had been smug about their upcoming 16 megapixel camera phone, that became a non-issue as of this morning when Nokia announced the successor to the legendary N8 – the 808 Pure View. That basically extinguished the spark that HTC had been hoping to flaunt.

41 MegaPixels? What For?

The Nokia 808 PureView features a 41-megapixel sensor with our highest performance Carl Zeiss optics to date and Nokia’s brand-new pixel oversampling technology. You heard that right; its no typo.

The beauty here is that it is not about megapixels for megapixels sake. We all know that Nokia know camera phones. The innovation that was put into this is just great.

Nokia says, ‘It’s not about the piles of megapixels but rather what you can do with them’. It isn’t about shooting pictures the size of billboards! Instead, it’s about creating amazing pictures at normal, manageable sizes. There’s a combination of benefits.

How It Works

The Nokia 808 PureView uses its 41 MP sensor to capture image data from multiple adjacent pixels and condenses it into one, resulting in stills at lower resolutions with amazing detail and low noise levels. The optics are Carl Zeiss and there’s Xenon flash and a LED one acting as a video light. It can capture 3 MP, 5 MP, 8 MP, and 38 MP stills.

In summary, here’s a 41 megapixel camera that produces superb, stunning 3, 5, or 8 megapixel shots and awesome 1080p video.

Other Benefits

• zoom in up to 3X without losing any of the details in your shot
• audio capture stereo CD-like quality for video recordings
• 1080p video recording at 30fps, with 4X lossless zoom
• significantly improved low light performance of over 5x more light
• faster shutter speeds, reducing the effects of camera shake

Other Specs

- 4″ ClearBlack 640 x 360 pixel display
- 1.3 GHz processor + GPU
- 512MB of RAM
- 16GB internal memory
- Xenon and LED flash
- FM transmitter
- Nokia Belle OS
- 1/1.2″ optical sensor – 2.5 times the size of the N8′s sensor (the biggest on any smartphone)
- Xenon flash (twice as bright as the N8′s)
- LED flash for video light
- USB On-the-go support
- Li-Ion 1400 mAh battery

The 808 PureView should ship in the 2nd Quarter of 2012.

My Conclusions

What Nokia have done here is simply brilliant! Someone asked what he would be doing with 41 megapixels on a phone. Well, now you know: its not for the sake of 41 megapixel shots. It is to produce stunning regular shots, among other benefits.

But brilliant is not the word that I was looking for. What Nokia has done here is mad. And wicked. Move over, Nokia N8; hello Nokia 808 PureView!

The Carnival of the Mobilists is the destination to read a weekly roundup of the best of mobile blogging around the world.

Our very first entry ever sent in was picked and is featured in this week’s edition hosted over at Mobyaffiliates.

Mobility blog looks forward to continuing to actively participate in the Carnival, and we hope that our readers will benefit from the extra exposure to great mobile blogging from around the world.

Visit Carnival of the Mobilists 263.

LG Optimus 4X HD

Not too long ago, the idea of dual-core processors on a mobile was extremely novel. Manufacturers and users have only just begun to really tuck into that, but the game has been upped again. Dual-core is now being pushed to mid-range devices. Quad-core CPUs are the new flagship powerhouses.

Already, at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), both LG and Huawei have announced quad-core Android smartphones and tablets. Many modern-day PCs don’t even have dual-core processors yet!! It is getting crazy indeed. But didn’t we say that this is the post-PC era?

These beasts come with displays from 4.5″ and above. Some of the already announced quad-core devices are:

• LG Optimus 4X HD
• Huawei Ascend D quad XL
• Huawei Ascend D quad
• Huawei MediaPad 10.1 (tablet)

LG were the first to jump on the dual-core train, and here they are again at the fore-front with quad-core technology. Huawei are the surprise here. They really are stepping outside of their traditional low-cost market to play high-end stakes.

It is expected that both Apple and Samsung will announce quad-core products too soon as well. Oh, what a crazy world this mobile industry is. Bring it on, guys!

I listen to music a lot – at home, in the car, at work, everywhere and anywhere. I have a collection of over 1,000 tracks of a wide range of music genres.

Unfortunately, I do not always know all the lyrics of these songs. I ended up hunting down apps that can provide these lyrics.

Being a long time Symbian user, the app named Lyrics was what came to my rescue. While playing any song in the music player, launch Lyrics and it will pull down the lyrics of the song being played from a server and display to you. Lyrics also presents a brief profile of the musician and their other songs.

The app also has the option to search by title, artist or album.

On Android, I haven’t been able to find an app that works exactly like that. However, an Android app by the same name, Lyrics, is available though it functions differently. This one does not read what’s being played in the music player.

Launch the app and you are presented with a search box. Enter a name, song or album and it also pulls the lyrics from a server, if available and presents that. There is an option to save the lyrics to your device, which is quite useful.

I am sure that similar apps exist on other platforms. Are you a music lover like myself? How do you get the lyrics to your tracks on mobile?

If you use 3G on your smartphone or tablet on a regular basis, chances are that you wish for better battery life. Did you know that using Wi-fi for internet connectivity instead of the built-in 3G radio on your device is less drain on the battery?

Yes; if you turn off 3G data on your device and connect via Wi-Fi, you will get better battery times.

What You can Do

To have your own personal hotspot, you can purchase a Mifi device. A Mifi device requires a SIM card with an active data plan and shares this with multiple devices via WiFi. Many Mifi devices in the market are able to share with a maximum of five (5) devices.

This way, you do not need separate mobile internet subscriptions for each of your devices, and you also get extended battery performance on them.

I am aware that many mobile platforms allow you to turn off mobile data. This includes: iOS, Android and Nokia Belle. If you have access to a WiFi hotspot, simply turn off mobile data. If your device also lets you choose, fix it to only GSM.

Downside

A downside of this is that Mifi devices generally have a battery life of four (4) hours if five devices are connected all through.

Hopefully, we will begin to see a greater proliferation of hotspots in our cities, especially at eateries, fast-food outlets and recreation spots.

Do you have access to a Wifi hotpot at home, at work, or at your favourite hangout? Do you use a Mifi device? Do share in the comments section below.

I recently had access to an HTC HD7 device running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) for close to three weeks and have used it extensively so I can share some of my thoughts on Windows Mango.

Let’s take a look at the outstanding features and weaknesses of Windows Phone Mango in a concise list before I jump into more details:

Pros
1. Clean, elegant UI
2. Excellent Email implementation
3. Good Web Browser
4. Microsoft Office integration

Cons
1. No USB mass storage
2. Pseudo Multi-tasking
3. No proper Bluetooth file transfer

Now for the details.

User Interface And Experience

Windows Phone has a very different, decent user interface. as a matter of fact, the UI is my favourite among the existing mobile platforms. I prefer it to all others.

Everything is fluid and seem to flow into one another with lots of space. I am a minimalist at heart and so really do find the UI and UX top notch. This is a well-done minimalist interface.

Multi-tasking

Microsoft say they have added multi-tasking to Windows Phone, but it isn’t quite through. What has been done is an implementation similar to what obtains on iOS in which an app is frozen when you leave it and resumes when you return to it. This is in sharp contrast to what obtains on Symbian, BlackBerry, WebOS and Android. On these other platforms, apps actually keep running in the background.

Still, the experience is not actually bad. Some services are able to keep running in the background regardless of what else you are doing. For example, music playback goes on even when you move away from the music player.

Performance

Running on a 1GHz single core processor, the HTC HD7 purs along nicely without hiccups. However, I observed that 3rd party apps resumed a bit sluggishly when you return to them. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the developers hadn’t had time to make them Mango compliant yet.

Text Entry

The Windows Phone onscreen keyboard is the best of any of the mobile platforms that I have used. It really is very good. however, I also noticed that the keyboard takes up over half of the display when launched. Perhaps this is why it is that good.

Web And Email

Microsoft has a reputation for putting out the worst web browsers. Well, forget that on Windows Phone. This browser is powerful, fast and sleek in use. The user experience is nice. There is no Flash support though, but then a lot of people don’t seem to be bothered by that.

Email is another area where Windows Phone shines. Setting up and using email on mango is such a pleasant experience. Again, it is my opinion that it is the best email experience on any of the existing mobile platforms.

Social Networking

Social networking is baked into the Windows Phone contacts hub. Log in to any of a number of available services, including Facebook and Twitter, and you are good to go. As a matter of fact, you can do Facebook Chat right from inside your Contacts app. You can also update your profiles and view what your social networking contacts have posted. It is all very neat and cohesive.

Apps And The MarketPlace

The Windows Phone MarketPlace has grown quite fast and now has over 70,000 apps. Much of what you need is in there. The problem is that I was not able to buy a single paid app, because of Microsoft’s restrictions. The MarketPlace is not open to a lot of locations yet.

As such, I was stuck with only free apps. I saw apps that I had both the desire and the means to pay for, but I was unable to make a purchase.

Dependence on Zune and SkyDrive

Windows Phone depends heavily on Microsoft’s Zune desktop software (which has never been a favourite of mine, though it has its following). The platform also relies heavily on SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud service, for file storage and transfer.

While I love the UI, email and web on Windows Phone to bits, this lock-down to Zune and SkyDrive are big issues for me. and for many others around. Still, there are those who don’t mind.

Conclusions

Windows Phone Mango is a significant upgrade for the platform. It has made Windows Phone more relevant in the smartphone race. Still, some glaring omissions need to be addressed. USB mass storage and Bluetooth file transfer are two key ones. The MarketPlace needs to be opened up too and more countries supported.

For now, the only way to get files on and off a Windows hone are through Zune on PC, email or Microsoft’s cloud service. You can’t take a picture and share it with a friend via Bluetooth. Same for office and video files.

Should you buy a Windows Phone device? Only you can answer that question. Like all other things, your decision will depend on your needs and situation. That’s why I have prepared this guide. You take a look at what you want and run them against what Windows Phone offers. The call is yours.

A lot of things have been said and written about Nokia’s adoption of Windows Phone as their smartphone platform. Some things are very obvious. Others less so. Here are my thoughts on the saga.

Symbian

Symbian ruled the smartphone market for ten (10) years unchallenged. Against Palm OS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry, it held on to over 40% of the smartphone market during that period. That was awesome. But times have changed and its age eventually became its weakness, especially against the new breed mobile platforms, Android and iOS. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was inevitable. Other OSes too will hit that point when they will need to give way.

Some ignorantly and rashly call Symbian a failure. That’s like saying that Mohammed Ali is a failure just because he is now old and has stepped out of the ring. Symbian has had an amazing life, and even after it has been “killed” by everyone, it still sells in good quantities. As a matter of fact, it has the largest installed smartphone base in the world today and is still the most used mobile platform for web browsing globally.

But Symbian had aged. Nokia needed something refreshing and different. Windows Phone qualified; no problem. The problem was that stupid “Burning Platform” speech in early 2011. As far as I am concerned, Nokia should simply have announced that they were adding Windows Phone to their smartphone line-up and not announced Symbian’s death (even if they were going to kill the latter off).

Thereafter, they could gradually transit in such a way that Symbian sales wouldn’t drop as sharply as it has. Most other manufacturers run multiple smartphone platforms anyway. Samsung does Android, Windows Phone and Bada. HTC does Android and Windows Phone. Nokia could have at least pretended to run two platforms for a while.

Anyway, what’s done is done. We move on.

MeeGo And the N9

MeeGo wasn’t ready. The N9 does not run MeeGo; the Maemo 6 OS was only branded as MeeGo. Whatever it was that happened between Nokia and Intel, it was a complete mess. Years after, there is no single MeeGo device in existence. Sad.

The N9 could not have saved Nokia. It is a great device, but unpolished in many areas. In addition, there are so few apps available for it that there was no way it could go up against iOS and Android. Lastly, it had no ecosystem to build on. It was dead on arrival. Great device, but absolutely no future.

Nokia’s own attempt at building an ecosystem, Ovi, failed on many fronts. as a matter of fact, only the maps app was stellar, and Nokia have wisely kept Nokia Maps till date. MeeGo would have had no ecosystem to fall back on. Ovi’s failure nailed any hopes that MeeGo might have entertained.

Windows Phone

Windows Phone is unique and superb in many ways. I have used two Windows Phone devices and like the OS in many ways. However, unless Nokia modifies it in very deep ways, it is going to hurt the company’s fortunes badly. Windows Phone is so different from what traditional Nokia fans have been used to, that it cannot hope to ever help Nokia retain a significant share of its fanbase.

Nokia needs to add things like USB mass storage, Bluetooth file transfer and other usability options to make this platform friendly to older fans. As it is now, it seems that Nokia is more interested in gaining the US market and losing the rest of the world. Which is sort of odd. And suicidal.

Already, Nokia’s place in the smartphone market has shifted so dramatically that it is shocking. Since the “burning platform” announcement, Symbian has no longer been selling as much as it used to. Who wants to buy a product that its maker has pronounced dead? Who wants to keep investing in such a product? Developers? Consumers?

Nokia In Focus

As far back as June 2010, Nokia had presentation charts that indicated that they were going to produce Windows smartphones. The chart below is from an article I did in June 2010:

That was before Elop. As far as the evidence available suggests, Elop is not to blame for Nokia’s current woes. The Board are. They kicked out the old hands (who must have protested some of these changes) and brought in Elop to do exactly what he is doing now. That is the only explanation for the fact that Elop hasn’t been fired yet inspite of having bled away the company’s marketshare and revenue in drastic proportions.

Critics need to stop wasting their energies on Stephen Elop. He who pays the piper dictates the tune. That’s the Board. Things are playing out according to the plan of the Board of Nokia corporation. Nokia’s board wanted this!

Some even say that the plan is for Microsoft to eventually acquire Nokia. I must admit, that doesn’t sound so far-fetched right now. Who would have thought that Google would ever be in a position to buy the once mighty Motorola (who were largest mobile maker before Nokia took over)?

The Future

Unless Nokia finds a way to customise Windows Phone to levels that their traditional fan base will feel comfortable with, they will lose their hold on markets in Africa, South America and Asia. Who will take it up? Android? Blackberry? Bada (yes; Bada is selling better than most people think)? Who knows?

Microsoft’s Windows Phone is still largely locked up against these markets. For example, if you purchase a Windows Phone device today in this part of the world, chances are that you can’t purchase apps in the Market to enhance it. You are entirely at the mercy of free apps.

I don’t have any answers to the future. The mobile landscape is too volatile. One thing is certain: Nokia was in a tight spot, more like between the devil and a rock. They have chosen a course to follow. However it plays out will be seen in the coming years.

Get Over It

I see a lot of people getting worked up about how things have turned out so far. My advice: get over it. It has happened. Find a platform that meets your needs and buy devices from there.

If you are a die-hard Symbian fan, there are a number of new devices out there for your consideration, and one or two more are still on the way. If Symbian no longer floats your boat, take a look around, hunt and try out others till you find something that meets your needs.

One thing is sure: the Nokia/Symbian glory days are over. No-one stays on top forever. The more things change, the more things stay the same.