I wish the issue of battery replacement wasn't so binary. I mean, if it just takes a screwdriver to replace battery surely that's okay right? There's a spectrum of ease-of-replacement, imho.
"Pure Google Android" is their second most visible USP claim, right after the vintage branding.
It could be all lies, but then why should they? Given the current market situation it is quite clear that absence of brand "improvements" will create more loyalty than the add-on ever did.
That is a legitimate selling point for me, I'm not a fan of the customised Android versions sold by the likes of Samsung, it reminds me too much of the old Windows days where every OEM would sell computers with their own customised versions of Windows, loaded up with their own software.
Unfortunately the 5.5" Google Pixel (the one I want) seems to be perpetually out of stock.
A big plus with Apple is that they just don't let this happen, you always get stock iOS on an iPhone.
So, three generic aluminium-clad Androids made by Foxconn, and one more cute basic phone on the rather awful Series 30+ platform [1]. I wasn't expecting anything else, really, but still feeling a bit disappointed...
I wish Nokia revamped the whole Series 30+ thing to support J2ME.
I know J2ME was not really good, but they managed to get something even worse. It's almost* impossible to develop applications to their new phones.
* http://mre.mediatek.com/ is down for good since the start of 2017 and they announced that they would shutdown in 2015/12/31, so I don't think there's any official way to download the SDK.
I believe that all series 30+ come with opera mini.
The problem is that Opera mini is a MITM browser that does not handle neither real HTML nor WML. This makes it so that not only most web do not work, even web apps with old WML interfaces will also not work.
So, some tasks, such as checking your e-mail or IM, are almost impossible. Note that if J2ME was supported, you would at least be able to install an e-mail/IM client (even if it was a shitty one).
The years i used the J2ME variant it served me just fine. But then i stayed away from the likes of gmail for the lonest time (and the featurephone i used had a perfectly usable email client built in).
As for "IM", phones already have that. Its called SMS.
I was hoping for literally the old Nokias with modern batteries and bigger memories. Surely the entire point of these was for people who wanted a feature- rather than a smartphone?
Well, Nokia/Microsoft has been making those for years. This new one has been branded 3310 to bank on some assumed nostalgia, but it's just a direct continuation of recent devices like the Nokia 105:
The Series 30+ operating system on these devices is kind of weird. It's basically a generic clone of the old familiar Nokia Series 30/40 phone UI, but made by MediaTek instead of Nokia itself. I guess what happened is that the internal featurephone OS teams were terminated when Microsoft acquired the business, and they just picked up the closest replacement from the Chinese clone masters at MediaTek.
But does the OS matter much for a feature phone? One does not even really want to write mails with that, those are phones too call someone, write a text, maybe listen to some music (radio) and play some snake. A basic OS might just be okay for that.
Now, the atrocity that was the OS for the Nokia Asha phones, that is a completely different story.
Sure. It's just that there's no reason for anyone to care if the successful Android brand is called Nokia, Samsung, Pixel or something else. I guess it's like buying a PC in the late '90s -- they were all the same.
Agree the Nokia 6 comes to $241 USD, if the euro price of $229 is true it's a real value. To replace my nexus 6 (which is now discontinued so new in box old stock) would be more expensive.
I'm not that impressed because they're based off the Snapdragon 4xx series processors.
The Nokia 5 has the same basic hardware as a Moto G4 Play, but costs twice as much ($200 instead of $100). You're paying double for a possibly better camera and a metal back.
Similarly, the Nokia 6 is a $242 5.5" 1080p phone. The Moto G4 is a 5.5" 1080p phone, but has a Snapdragon 6xx processor rather than 4xx - and costs less. Again, the Moto is lacking the metal design.
The Nokia reputation doesn't really have anything to do with these devices. They're certainly playing it up in marketing, but I think that's yet to be seen. It's possible they'll have good build quality, but looking at the Nokia 6, it's not going to be more durable than an iPhone. In the video, they clearly want to leave you with the impression that they're somehow more durable than other smartphones, but the display is just Gorilla Glass (of unknown generation) completely unprotected (there's no lip or anything to deflect some falls).
The Nokias definitely look cool, but are they offering a better option? In addition to the Motos, you can get a Huawei Honor 5X with a Snapdragon 6xx for well under $170 unlocked on Amazon. That has a better processor for $70 less. Again, they definitely look good, but they also seem expensive (42% more expensive) compared to, well, more powerful options.
When put in the perspective of 42% more expensive, they don't look as great. It's like, "yea, they're fine, but if I'm being cheap, I should get a Moto G or Huawei Honor. If I'm not being cheap, I should get something with a better processor than a Snapdragon 4xx series." I mean, a OnePlus X is $200 with a Snapdragon 8xx series processor. The OnePlus X isn't a great option for Americans since it doesn't support enough of the North American bands to get good coverage, but the Nokias don't really support North America at all. I have nostalgia for Nokia too and the phones do look pretty, but I'd definitely take a $200 OnePlus X over a $242 Nokia 6. Similarly, a Huawei Honor 5X or Moto G4 looks to have a better processor than a Nokia 6 and they cost less. A Moto G4 Play has similar specs to a Nokia 5 for half the price. And I think Motorola/Lenovo are coming out with a G5 this Spring (which might be before the Nokia gets into customers' hands). LeEco and ZTE also have devices with more power.
The thing about the mobile industry today is that it's reasonably saturated with good options. The Nokia devices look nice, but they're in the "get notified when you can actually get one" stage. Let's say you can get your hands on one in June. By then a whole slew of new Android slabs could be out - possibly with better specs and prices. I do love CNC machined aluminum like the Nokia 6, but I also like a phone that has enough performance to be great to use for a while.
I'm guessing that Nokia is going to push these in cheaper markets. There are European countries like Poland and Greece that have lower GDP per capita, markets like India where Nokia has been historically strong where people might be willing to shell out an extra $75 for the Nokia, and China where the cachet of having a Nokia could play well (Volvo, another Scandinavian brand, plays well there). But it's a hard market that's saturated with plenty of good options and it's hard to one-up anyone given that all players (other than Apple and maybe to a small extent Samsung) are essentially pulling from the same parts (and OS) bin.
They look like fine devices, but they're not a value you can't already get for multiple manufacturers today and given that they aren't available yet, it remains to be seen what this Spring will bring from competitors. I mean, they're super pretty and that almost makes me want to cast off all my cynicism aside and say "screw-it, I want a pretty blue or copper metal Nokia",...
Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap. I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either.
The long battery life of feature phones is fantastic, and I could certainly type faster with T9.
The experience often falls apart when you want to join a group text, book an Uber, get directions etc. There are lo-fi versions of these, but the experience is bad enough to just not be worth it.
I know quite a few people that don't care 1s for such things,they really just use their phones for calling and SMS, eventually taking some very occasional pictures.
I have a dumbfone, in addition to an iphone. Bought it because I needed a secondary phone number and Iphone does not support dual sim. Did not see much point getting another smartphone
I would use it as a backup phone but never as my primary device, and I did use the original back in the day. Sure, it is indestructible. But it is not applicable in the modern world.
Only reason I own a smartphone is to fit in while working - it was like being an outsider with everyone else getting information immediately via Trello and Slack. I would often miss last minute changes to meetings and stuff.
Other than that I have no reason to own one and would love to get rid of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, I use normal taxi services and public transport, I memorize directions from my computers and so on. I don't even check my emails on the thing.
If work requires trello and slack on a mobile device, it would be reasonable to ask them to buy said device for you. I dislike the trend of work expecting people to use their personal mobile device to stay connected or even for 2FA.
> Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap.
I went back to a feature phone for almost a year, though I had a smartphone in "airplane mode" with me for most of the same time, but I'd just connect that to wifi.
> I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either.
Probably not. One thing that I couldn't get used to with the feature phone was call quality. It was terrible. I don't know if that's GSM (as compared to what 4G was like on my smartphone) or if that was the build quality of the feature phone (which was a rather cheap phone). But I agree that the 3310 isn't likely to entice many people to take the leap.
I'm smartphone phobic, I have only used one briefly and I hated it. I prefer the ergonomics of texting with buttons and I get stressed out by constantly being connected to social media, emails etc. Personally I feel like smartphones are a huge step backwards. We have allowed corporations to colonise our leisure time and disrupt our social interactions in exchange for a few tawdry gimmicks.
I consider having access to maps and ridesharing to be life changing, not just tawdry gimmicks. I'm not exaggerating - for example I don't think I would've been able to go car-free without Citymapper and Lyft.
I don't have any social media apps installed on my phone, nor do I have my work email set up.
Am in the same camp. Not that into my phone at all, my 16gb iphone is battered and almost entirely unloved, but holy smokes, Maps/Uber can be useful/life saving.
Then, don't connect them to social media? Or better yet, don't use social media at all. I use an iPhone, and to be honest 99% of the time I use it for listening to Spotify, WhatsApp and HN.
However, it's the 1% that really makes me love having a smartphone. Looking for a place to eat in a new area, needing maps, etc, access to banking in a quick and easy manner.
+1. I'm still using a Samsung Convoy 2 (2010) because the only thing it can't do is group texts. They come in as the MMSes they are, but I can't see who else was included. So far, in all my years of owning this phone, it's never caused something catastrophic to happen by only texting whomever started the conversation.
My car has navigation, so hailing a Lyft is not a thing I do and being constantly connected to social media is not a thing I desire.
The Convoy 2 has whatever Bluetooth was new in 2010 and can stream music to cars, BT speakers, etc. Its removable micro SD card and battery means I've got more storage than most iPhone users* and still only charge it about every other week.
Only Verzion tracks where I am--the phone is innocent, knowing nothing of our post-Snowden society.
Its halves are only a little thicker than an iPhone 6, but it's shorter than an iPhone 5, so it disappears into my pockets.
I really like it and have kept it after briefly trying both of its successors--the Convoy 3 was larger and looked worse, for no discernible reason, and the Convoy 4 is targeted strictly at old people. The 4 is a huge, nasty plastic thing with a slightly-improved camera, on paper, but somehow manages to run slower than the 2. Quite the disappointment.
*Buying music from Bandcamp, Amazon, Beatport, etc. instead of renting music from Spotify means you can listen to music without a 4G connection! Crazytalk, right?
After owning a couple of smartphones I went back to dumbphones a few years ago. I've owned a Nokia 515 and now a Nokia 208. By book reading went up about an order of magnitude. The only thing I really miss are maps.
I actually just spent some money to repair my 208, because it's the last of these to support 3G as well. I guess I was right not to wait for this one since it doesn't appear to support 3G.
I've had various dumbphones over the course of years. A few Xcover line bar phones from Samsung, those were the best, really, but they eventually broke down and were discontinued by that time. A couple of years ago I had Nokia 225 because my smartphone broke, didn't find an appealing replacement, and I'm not that much into smartphones anyway.
I loved the 225 for its simplicity and general responsiveness but texting was abysmally slow after entering a few dozen characters: while the phone was recomputing the text layout on each keypress I could almost see the code as it was written by someone who clearly should've read about computational complexity on compsci 101. That was the sole reason I dumped the phone, especially as SMS is one of the main uses for a dumbphone. Battery was great though, and ringer volumes, speakers and the microphone were good. I suspect the new 3310 is pretty much another revision of that phone.
I would pay decent money for an old skool feature phone that:
- is small enough to fit in a tight pocket without me either feeling it in the first place or bending it broke
- doesn't have its back cover, battery, and phone flying in three directions when I drop it one the floor
- has battery life in weeks
- has a simple but usable camera, 2Mpx is enough for taking photos sharp enough for notes
- has blazing fast user interface with absolutely no delays or lag (how hard can it be?)
- its UI has predictable command paths instead of scrollable list and grid views so that I can punch MENU+5+3+2+1 or something similar to dive directly into one particular submenu. This is how you set your phone to silent/vibrate/loud in the good old times, while walking and never looking at the screen for feedback because you just knew what the phone would do.
- Has 3G/4G data and a basic mostly text-based web browser for checking out timetables, locations or opening times if absolutely necessary
- Has a native online map application: Google Maps for J2ME was, if a bit outdated, still decent
- Bluetooth for transferring contacts, audio files, and photos
All these features have been in phones ten years ago, probably earlier. The best phones at the time had probably 90% of the above list, usually by lacking something that wouldn't have been fixed by technology if only smartphones didn't take over.
I did make the leap for a nearly a year. The problems you point out are legitimate, and they made me to move back to a smartphone. Hopefully the 3310 fixes some of those bigger issues you point out (eg: group texting) just as a function of being newer.
The market for the 3310 is larger than you think. For one, there are plenty of old people that prefer to have something simple and smartphones are a nonstarter for them. I think we might actually buy two of these for my grandparents, as they're about to move onto our family plan from another provider.
Beyond that, I think a lot of people who walk around with an $800 phone might be interested in spending $50 as an insurance plan, so that if their phone breaks they have a readily available backup, or if they're doing something risky they can have something to take instead. (Of course, that means you can't post photos of your crazy exciting life to Instagram and Facebook while you're experiencing it, so I doubt most people would be interested.)
I personally won't pick one up because it lacks 3G and LTE, and I would never buy a phone that I can't tether to my laptop. I realize the lack of those radios results in the battery life it's able to get, but I'd prefer for it to be disabled by default but still available for when you need it.
"I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap"
Some people, including me, need two SIM, so I would not buy a new 3310 (though I had the old one and loved it) for that reason. My current phone however is a dumb dual SIM paid €20 new, and I would not swap it even for the latest iPhone or any costly Android equivalent.
I'm just wondering who these people are that are still making phone calls? I barely make 60 minutes of talk a month on my mobile. When I had a dumbphone the world was a different place.
I have both a "dumbphone" and a smartphone. But honestly, if you want a dumbphone get something like an old BlackBerry Curve. That way you still retain full keyboard capabilities instead having to use T9 for texting.
Personally I yearn for a dumb-ish phone. That's as much due to form-factor as features. Essentially the entire market is candy bar touch sensitive, sealed battery and so on.
I can't be unique in wanting something that's not a candy bar? I've passed peak smartphone - and toned down my app use. I'll accept a few different formats as alternative.
Yet again, after a ludicrously short time, my sealed in smartphone battery was getting tired. I was hoping Blackberry was finally going to make the "obvious" handset change - a Classic with Android. They announced they were exiting handsets instead. The Far East gets a selection of Android flip phones, mostly very expensive premium, never coming near Europe. So I settled on getting a LG V20 when it released as it at least keeps SD and removable battery. Then LG decided EU doesn't get those.
So when my "smart" phone died, I got my old V8 Motorola (The Linux based flip follow on to the v3) out the drawer. It's fantastic. It gets more signal and clearer calls than any smartphone I have owned, and the original (12 year old?) battery gives weeks of standby. It has ergonomics. Of course the camera is awful, and there's next to no storage.
Seriously, give me that form factor with modern storage, Android and keep the a tiny screen that only comes on when you flip open. I don't need a huge screen to run a chat app, or listen to "turn left in 100 yards", or book a taxi. I can't think of a single app I use that needs a 4"+ screen. The miniscule external v8 screen is perfect for notifications and music player use. Should get decent standby life...
Nope, the entirity of global capitalism offers me 23,509 near identical candy bars in a simulation of choice.
They should revive the N900 platform by offering Maemo/Meego in Nokia 6, 5 or 3. Would cost little and bring in tons of loyal followers.
It's an antifragile plan. They would have to invest little to port and keep Maemo running on these new terminals. But if it takes off it can give great ROI. Also, it buys them independence and differentiation.
They should also provide AOSP for these phones, so that we don't get yet another Android terminal that gets no updates past a few months. It'd be nice to have alternatives for pricy Pixels to run CopperheadOS.
IIRC when the MS takeover/under happened, the stub of nokia was left behind, and MS actually walked off with the exclusive right to make nokia branded phones (or maybe just smartphones, unsure) for a certain number of years.
"tons" is a relative term. These days I very much doubt they'd make the return on investment. But it would be interesting to allow users to flash the OS onto the Android device they bought.
(Not that they will- the Nokia name has been licenced, so the manufacturer doesn't really have an incentive to push Meego)
And the Maemo platform kinda lives on in Sailfish. If going systemd and wayland can be called "lives on". Never mind that i suspect they in part got developer attention because of some experiences developing (for) the Maemo platform.
I assume they are made for Europe and emerging markets. Note that it only works on 900/1800 MHz as well and not on the US frequencies, so even without sunsetting it would not work in the US.
This is actually impacting San Francisco buses right now - the transponders that MUNI buses use to transmit their location for arrival estimates use 2G, and they stopped working because AT&T started taking down the 2G network.
Fun fact: Smartphones became the biggest mobile phone market just two years ago. Dumb phones and feature phones are still almost half of the markets if you measure them by number of units (smartphones dominate revenues).
Many emerging markets still sell more feature phones and dump phones than smartphones. India for example.
There is even small reverse trend when customers in developed world when people are getting fed up with smartphones.
Not the case in other parts of the world though. Here in New Zealand one of the two major networks no longer operates a 2G network and the other major network is planning to turn it off in the next few years. The only other network hasn't announced any plans but chances are they will turn off 2G soon after. Definitely would be very surprised if there were still a 2G signal avaliable anywhere in New Zealand in say 5 years time.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. I nearly bought an oldschool 3315 off eBay a while ago before I heard about the 2G shutdown - when I heard about this I was so excited because I could finally get my dumbphone, but with 3/4G! Apparently not.. surely, I am not the only one who loathes the smartness of my phone?
I think it's referring to Trump, Brexit and the various moves the right elsewhere in Europe, which are dividing people on nationalistic and religious grounds.
Bluetooth is not listed in the spec (I only looked at Nokia 6), but scroll down product page further on accessory section there is a wireless headphone. So I guess Bluetooth is standard.
I wonder what "we’ll make sure you keep getting regular updates" really means. Regular updates and prompt security updates the moment Google publishes them are two different things. Considering that even Google's support of its own devices is somewhat abysmal (three years of security updates _at best_) and that almost all 3rd party vendors don't push security updates fast enough I'm not confident that Nokia will be any better.
Since, from my understanding of the texts, all the Nokia Android devices are running stock Android, I guess they can apply the same updates as for the Google devices.
It's a promise and nothing more. I sure would not pay a premium for that promise, considering how often it had been broken. I would find it more compelling if they announced updates for a small fee, then they could say "we promise, but we also promise that you only pay of we deliver".
At least they are offensively sticking to plain Google Android, so the usual excuse "we customized ourselves into a corner, now you can only get security updates if you buy new hardware" is out of the picture.
It's technologically possible to combine $600 smartphone and dumb phone and make smartphone that has has 1 month battery and all day speaking if you don't activate smartphone features (you might want to add low power dummy display on the backside).
Consumers might like it but everybody else would hate it. It cuts into profits and teaches wrong habits to consumers.
The truth is, nobody wants that. I got a Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. I turned on "stamina mode", where almost everything is disabled. In that case the battery lasts more than 1 week.
However friends want to messsage me on Whatsapp (ergo wifi or mobile data), I want to use the GPS from time to time, I want to google things from time to time (ergo more wifi or mobile data), etc., etc.
I agree. It's important to direct wants of the consumer into frequent use. The real value in marketing is creating cultures where people must consume to participate.
Consumer needs are path dependent, so it's important to not allow avenues for countercultures or ways to avoid traps.
Why does every phone these days come out looking like the standard rounded-corners slate? Have companies stopped innovating on phone design anymore... are rounded-corners superior for deflecting drops or something?
I yearn for the days when we got unique designs like the Nokia 6820/E70/N95, the Sony Ericsson M600i, Moto Razr (as junky as that phone was), etc. Even the Nokia Icon was an edgier but classy design. I just went with a Sony Xperia XZ recently because it's one of the few smartphones that seemed like the engineers bothered to apply a modicum of creativity/differentiation to the physical design.
It is a rectangle because the screen is a rectangle. What do you want them to do?
Not round the corners? That gives you 2 options, and one is less comfortable in the hand.
The old phones could have interesting features because they had hardware keyboards, but the screen that's sometimes a keyboard (and symbols/numbers/emoji/swipe/draw) has won out over the better keyboard and smaller display options.
Most of the creativity in the phone designs you mention is around fitting or concealing physical input. Modern touch screens negate the need for buttons, and the most useful format becomes a large screen.
Yea I realized after my lament that is probably the case, we have reached "peak smartphone" until the super-flexible screens can become a reality... Maybe then we'll see the return of the physical keyboard and cool things like retractable/foldable/slidable devices again.
My beef was mainly that I went through the top rated devices on GSM/PhoneArena recently... Basically the only smartphone with squared edges or a unique design was the Galaxy Edge, the Xperia XZ, and the Xiaomi Mi Mix.
I read just now that a gamepad module may be on its way to Moto Z officially. That is perhaps the closest we will get, if Motorola or similar is willing to stay the course on device shapes (not likely given what happened to the Atrix line and accompanying laptop docks. Every damn device had slightly different spacing between HDMI and USB ports).
I liked the overall idea of the N93 and wish Nokia (or someone) would use it as inspiration for a new design. Having the camera on the side with a swivel screen, there's no need for a lower quality front-facing camera.
In this case, the explanation is simple: these new Nokia-branded phones are made by Foxconn, the company that manufactures iPhones. After years of working with Apple, they already have the equipment and process set up to manufacture unibody aluminium devices. Building anything else than iPhone clones wouldn't really make sense: it would be a substantial extra investment for a dubious return.
Nokia used to innovate with phone design because they had their own factories. Those days are long gone.
Foxconn builds much more than just iPhones and its clones though, so I doubt the investment would be that high. They also build the new 3310 which is rather different so clearly they're able to accommodate different form factors.
According to wikipedia:
> Notable customers and products the company manufactures include BlackBerry,[5] iPad,[6] iPhone, iPod,[7] Kindle,[8] Nintendo 3DS, Nokia, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One.[9]
Why? The company that makes these phones, HMD Global, is part-owned by Foxconn. They wanted to create a line of affordable phones quickly, so of course they use their existing expertise and manufacturing lines.
Experimenting with design has very limited payoffs in the phone market these days (ask HTC), and retooling at Foxconn's scale is very expensive. Design innovation wouldn't be worth it.
I concur. Perhaps after a certain level, most people fail to notice the details. And whoever designs these phones are actually people, so... you get the point.
On the other hand, Apple is known to be obsessed with design even in the most unusual places. Have you ever looked at a motherboard for a MacBook? It's just beautiful; the colors, the arrangement. But not everyone will notice.
Moto Z has a nice innovative design - big magnetic attachment plate in the back for external modules. Still waiting for the killer mods like slide-out keyboards and gamepads though
The big deal will be to see if this end up with the same fate as the Atrix lapdock, where every subsequence device generation needed a new dock because of different spacing between ports. Until Motorola basically threw up its arms and released a dock with the plugs on flexible cables (actually made it an interesting RPi accessory)...
I don't understand why companies have such a hard time crafting smartphones that are as good looking as Xiaomi or Apple devices. The front of the 5 & 6 is acceptable, but the back just kills it for me. Also the 5 looks the best in my opinion but the specs are so bad that I'd not even consider it
As an Android developer, I don't know whether I should be happy that this knowledge is basically applicable on all kind of electronic device or lament that the competition has been so thoroughly obliterated.
The best thing in these new phones is vanilla no-clutter Android with tight integration (both directions) with Google/Android. These get just as fast updates, upgrades and fixes as Pixel phones.
I really, really wish someone would make a smaller Android device. I was hoping the Nokia 3 would be it, but alas.
Surely I'm not alone and there is a market out there? The iPhone SE sells well, and will be my next phone after I lost my trust in Sony's compact Android devices.
The Z3C wasn't a bad device. The Z5C is awful, primarily due to a processor that overheats at the drop or a hat, causing the entire phone to be unacceptably slow. (neither are even all that small, but by 2017 Android standards they're tiny)
More crucially, their support is awful - I had to send both a Z3C and Z5C in for repair shortly after receiving them, and in both instances they kept onto the phones for more than a month because they didn't have available parts. And with the Z5C refused to admit that it overheats. On that basis alone I can't justify buying another Sony device.
I sent a Z3C in for replacement due to water damage, and a new one was delivered very quickly. Two days, according to the old tracking messages in my email.
Much less good experience here on Z3C return. First failure (randomly lost network, etc.) they repaired it, but it came back with more things broken. Returned that one and got a new one with a badly glued screen. Used until screen cracked, then returned it. They held onto it for a few months while they moved their warranty service from El Paso to the Midwest. Then returned it unrepaired with a won't fix note...
I replied above - I haven't actually gotten to try an X Compact. But had to send a Z3C and Z5C in for repairs (both were faulty when I received them) and the experience was bad enough that I don't trust Sony for support any more.
Seconded - I have the x-compact, which I mainly bought for dev stuff, but have ended up really liking it. It's nice and small, battery is pretty decent, and camera is very good.
Yeah definitely- also seems to hold up in the rain outside. I have no idea about the camera button- my previous phone was a nokia windows phone which also had that, so I just assumed it was a standard thing for phones these days.
Apparently, since Android 7 you can double click the power button to go straight to camera. So it's sort of a camera button for all phones. You don't get the two stage button for locking focus though.
I've been using Android since the HTC G1 and I'm planning to switch to the iPhone SE after Apple's rumoured March event where they are said to be introducing a 128gb model. I've had it with big phones and lack of OS updates (even on a current-gen flagship Galaxy S7). As far as I know, the only smallish Android phones available make huge sacrifices in performance and storage space, and if my S7 still doesn't have Nougat after 6 months, you can forget about some inexpensive small Android phone.
Realistically you can never expect updates from any non-nexus android phones. If you don't want an iphone (like me) and you want a phone that will get regular updates you have to get a nexus (or pixel now).
they also had the OnePlus X which was OPO hardware crammed into a smaller form factor. I would have loved to migrate from my OPO to that but alas they don't make the X anymore.
One plus 3 owner here. Received nougat back in December and 3 additional updates since. For a fairly cheap phone I'm surprised with their commitment to software updates.
But is Xiaomi available in the US and what is version is their is based on?
I haven't seen an authorized seller for Xiaomi and I was under the impression that they are still using marshmallow or earlier. Also all their phones are 4.5"+ which is much larger than the comparably compact SE.
I'd love to get a xiaomi phone (esp. based on the price and alleged build quality) but it's just not worth the tradeoffs.
Xiaomi can be used in the US if you get it shipped over, but it's hard to find the right band coverage for the best experience.
I found that despite not always being on the latest version of Android, they had enough polish and stability on their OS to make it worth being a version behind. I used their ROMs back before they made hardware, and if there was ever a bug, it was usually fixed within a week (or at least acknowledged).
And I agree, I'd love for Xiaomi to sell phones, but like everyone else is stating, the iPhone SE is arguably one of the best compact phones. I hope to have mine for many years.
A very happy xiaomi note 4 user here; have switched from nexus (after battery on three nexus phones in my family became unsuable 2 hours of charge ...); I thought I'd miss nexus more; but xiaomi has been great.
I have a Sony Xperia Z5 Compact that just updated to Android 7.0. It's not 7.1 yet, but it's quite up to date. I think Sony updates their phones quite often.
Sony is one of the few Android vendors that mainlines the device drivers for their hardware, so you can reasonably build the newest AOSP version and go to 7.1 if you feel the inclination.
How would rooting your phone (to be clear: enabling the ability to "su" to root, thus giving you full power over your system) screw your camera/image quality?
I totally understand flashing 3rd Party ROMs where they can't speak to the hardware as well.
I don't know who is in charge of Sony's smartphone business, but boy did they fucked up. What a confusing mess. Sony used to be a huge brand, innovative and look what happened.
I mean, they had everything; the design chops, the brand power, the tech, the Sony Stores, etc... Everybody knows the iPhone, Sams's Galaxy, LG G series, Moto phones, but Sony really failed to market their Xperia phones properly.
I have a Z5 Compact as well. Nice little phone, and quite fast. However, I don't think that many developers test their apps on a sub-5" screen, because I've encountered issues with several apps where controls overlap. For example, in VLC's file list the context menu button overlaps with the invisible scroll bar track. It is easy to scroll accidentally. Amazon Music has exactly the same problem, too.
The Android ecosystem is difficult to recommend, and a small Android phone is even more difficult to recommend.
I used that phone (the unlocked international w/ fingerprint scanner) for about a year, but the heat problems in the one I had left me helpless/incommunicado in a few inconvenient situations. Eventually preordered a Pixel and haven't looked back.
The only good Android phones I've used (and I've been using Android since the G1) have been ones Google had a hand in: Nexuses, the original Moto X, and the Pixel. The Sony came close, but the heat problems killed it for me.
I would still jump on a well done, small, Android phone.
If you're referring to the Z5C with the 810 I can tell you every phone that year with the 810 and some with the 808 ran very, very hot. Most companies ended up having the software throttle the processor to keep it from getting so hot. I've never used a sony personally but I hear lots of good things about them (except lack of models in the US).
I love mine, especially when I'm out in the bush where it'll survive ten days on ultra battery saver mode thingy. On the other hand, I have to admit that mine does get uncomfortably hot at times. If they could replace the Snapdragon 810 it would be the perfect phone.
Yes, I'd love this too -- the killer app of smartphones is navigation. I'd be better off leaving the house without HN and Facebook in my pocket, but knowing how to get where I'm going without a paper map pre-written directions is really hard to give up.
How about a 3310-like phone that works as a portable wifi hub? Then you could use the phone for communication and a tablet/ laptop for anything else. Would battery life be awful though?
In 2006 I had an extra Nokia dumbphone in my backpack just for Bluetooth tethering. Unlimited GPRS was cheap and the web was not yet shitty. I only had to charge it once or twice a week even though I used it every day on the commute.
But for maps/navigation, you could just use a tablet or laptop with offline maps (e.g. maps.me).
I can't agree more. Seems like such an a NB feature to skimp on. I might even still buy this for the SD card / bluetooth, which I want for playing music, but the lack of GPS really kills it's chances of being a primary phone.
I have the SE. Amazing phone, highly recommended, and I'm sure it will continue to get updates for several years, the same can't be said for most Android devices especially from Sony.
Replaced my 5S by an SE a couple of weeks ago. I fully agree, it's a great phone.
Be sure that you get the 64GB version though! My wife had the 16GB version and had to upgrade to the 64GB version, because the live photos, etc. took up quite a lot of space.
> Be sure that you get the 64GB version though! My wife had the 16GB version and had to upgrade to the 64GB version, because the live photos, etc. took up quite a lot of space
+1000 I got the 16GB version and I've had to micromanage some of my apps and definitely the photos and stuff to free up space. Luckily I don't take that many pictures so I'm ok with occasionally deleting data. Can't imagine using something like Snapchat though (which I used to use but now don't) it uses a TON of space.
They waited several generations too long to up the lowest disk size. Gotta wonder if any Apple employees ever used one of the 8GB devices in real life.
I also have the SE and love it. What's interesting to me is that if the entire surface area of the SE were screen space (no bezel) then the screen would be as large as an iPhone 7's.
The same can be said for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. I hope that this is the direction that Apple is going with new designs. This also leaves the door open for bezel-free iPhone nano that would fit within the current SE screen.
Maybe it's just my generation but me and pretty much all of my friends have not made a POTS phone call in at least many years traditionally; none of us know our phone numbers nor use them day to day.
If I end up actually calling someone (and pretty much everyone I know despises this and will do anything possible to avoid it) it's usually by tapping their number on a web page or in an app like yelp.
With the right sort of directionality you might be able to get away with having the speaker on the top side and the mic on the bottom, leaving the whole front panel for the screen.
Or be super cool and have a mechanical system that pops out a little speaker at the top and a little mic at the bottom.
The problem with that is it defeats the reason I use an SE. I imagine some people use it because they want a physically smaller device, but I use it because I use my phone one handed almost all the time. Keeping the same size but making the screen portion larger kind of defeats the purpose for me (I think the iPhone 4 was the perfect size, but I can't have everything.) If they want to go edge to edge, ok, but sharing the device to the current screen size.
(I also worry about accidental touch rejection on an edge to edge screen. My AppleTV 4 remote is the most useless apple product since the hockey puck mouse of 1998 because the touch pad was registering input when I just picked up the remote. Now I use my AppleTV 3 remote with the 4.)
That seems like an odd jab, given Sony are rolling 7 out for discontinued models. Compare with Samsung who axe updates in less than a year in some cases.
5/5s/SE will forever remain Apple's greatest phone in my opinion. I have had my 5 since 2013, and dropped it too many times to possibly count. The metal body is completely worn down and scratched from years of abuse, yet the screen is flawless. I just ordered an $8 battery on Amazon, replaced it in 5 minutes, and my phone is now back to working like new condition. It's the perfect phone.
I was going to buy an SE once they updated it (a newer processor is all I cared about) but they never did. They're talking about adding a 128gb version but sounds like it's still going to include the A9. Why Apple?!
It's an amazing phone. But I brought the 16gb version and lack of space is wearing on me. I really want to listen to music on it without streaming.
So I'm going to ditch it soon :/ Terrible feeling ditching a perfectly functional thing, I wish I had the foresight when I purchased it get the larger HD.
> the same can't be said for most Android devices especially from Sony.
I guess that might be true for most Sony devices - but my z3+ recently got updated to Android 7 - and the "high end" Sony phones have pretty decent open source support:
Now, I would indeed like to see even better updates (like 7.1 ota) - but so far my experience with Sony is better than other android manufacturers.
On the other hand k-9 just slowed to a crawl - not sure if it's a coincidence with having a "big" inbox and downloading the last 1000 messages - but I fear not.
I'm also a convert from a 2013 Moto X which I absolutely adored. I looked for an entire year for another decent, solid, affordable android phone that I could fit in a pocket easily (4.7"ish). No dice. The pixel looked good but was too expensive. I switched grudgingly to an SE, which cost around 200 bucks less at the time. Couldn't be happier.
Yeah me too. I have small hands and want to be able to use my phone with one hand but there haven't really been any phones like that in the last five years. Sony's Xperia U was pretty nice but too low on ram.
same boat here. there's hope if iphone 8 goes bezel-less that they can fit a 5" screen in a form factor not significantly bigger than a se, but it's speculation for now. I skipped the SE tho because why pay flagship prices for previous gen hardware? if a new se appears it needs to be on current-gen hardware or at a significant lesser price (europe pricing is mad btw)
I'm committed to the app store, but if the apple offering doesn't change I'm gonna jump to android right after the 8 announcement. googling around the samsung a3 seems a solid midrange offer (albeit I'm worried about operating system not getting updates) for the pocketable for factor
Me too. Sony's Xperia Compact series was quite good.
I think the new thing though is going to be same sized screens with smaller bezels, resulting in smaller phones. Samsung and LG's upcoming flagships both look to be substantially shrinking the bezel.
I had a ton of build quality issues with my Z3 compact (as did pretty much everyone I knew who had the phone). Quite a bit online about the flaky build quality as well. Unsure if the Z5 was any better as I opted for the Samsung A3 after that
They mention durable earphones.That's important - really big different at public transportation or a busy workplace.
But more interesting would be earphones with decent noise cancellation, which get power from the phone. Huawei has those at $80. But earphones are delicate.
If Nokia can them long lasting - and create good demo videos showing the real effects on user life - they may have a nice niche.
I remember my Nokia 3310 clearly. I still think I can type texts faster using that than I can on my iPhone now. It just required that you memorize the built-in dictionary.
Does anyone know what apps you can run on the 3310 and if you can perhaps 'sideload' them? I see an 'O' - would that be Opera Mini? That would be nice, also I am not sure but wasn't there a version of Whatsapp running on the older Series 30+ Nokia phone? If so, such a phone would be ideal for hikes. Add water resistance and for 50$ you have an amazing thing in a small form factor with long battery life.
Appearently there wasn't in the previous ones, but there was an Opera Mini browser, so the 'O' icon might really be Opera. It makes me wonder what the other 'O' does and the upper right dual-arrow icon.
So you could use the browser to e-mail through webmail which might be good enough. They talk about a previous model here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mobiledevices/forum/mdas...
Now could you use Opera Mini to execute local javascript apps or games on the 240x320 screen? For example could I use parchment.js to load local text adventures or play local hosted 2048, sodoku or minichess games? What about a 2FA javascript app?
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 392 ms ] threadI hope they have similar build quality as the Lumia 920 although that seems unlikely.
Otherwise SD card support, the type of lenses, regular Android and promise to actually care about updates are very enticing.
In any case, my device is not going to die yet, so I still get to see how they actually will look like.
Either way, I look forward to the real world reviews, I hope they live up to all the expectations.
It could be all lies, but then why should they? Given the current market situation it is quite clear that absence of brand "improvements" will create more loyalty than the add-on ever did.
That is a legitimate selling point for me, I'm not a fan of the customised Android versions sold by the likes of Samsung, it reminds me too much of the old Windows days where every OEM would sell computers with their own customised versions of Windows, loaded up with their own software.
Unfortunately the 5.5" Google Pixel (the one I want) seems to be perpetually out of stock.
A big plus with Apple is that they just don't let this happen, you always get stock iOS on an iPhone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_30%2B
I know J2ME was not really good, but they managed to get something even worse. It's almost* impossible to develop applications to their new phones.
* http://mre.mediatek.com/ is down for good since the start of 2017 and they announced that they would shutdown in 2015/12/31, so I don't think there's any official way to download the SDK.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_30%2B
Seems like it will ship with an integrated Opera Mini btw, as one of the press shots had that stylized O as one of the icons on screen.
The problem is that Opera mini is a MITM browser that does not handle neither real HTML nor WML. This makes it so that not only most web do not work, even web apps with old WML interfaces will also not work.
So, some tasks, such as checking your e-mail or IM, are almost impossible. Note that if J2ME was supported, you would at least be able to install an e-mail/IM client (even if it was a shitty one).
As for "IM", phones already have that. Its called SMS.
https://www.cnet.com/products/nokia-105-2015/preview/
The Series 30+ operating system on these devices is kind of weird. It's basically a generic clone of the old familiar Nokia Series 30/40 phone UI, but made by MediaTek instead of Nokia itself. I guess what happened is that the internal featurephone OS teams were terminated when Microsoft acquired the business, and they just picked up the closest replacement from the Chinese clone masters at MediaTek.
Now, the atrocity that was the OS for the Nokia Asha phones, that is a completely different story.
I just wanted a small dual-sim phone, don't need any other features than the ones it provides.
Nokia is back!!!
The Nokia 5 has the same basic hardware as a Moto G4 Play, but costs twice as much ($200 instead of $100). You're paying double for a possibly better camera and a metal back.
Similarly, the Nokia 6 is a $242 5.5" 1080p phone. The Moto G4 is a 5.5" 1080p phone, but has a Snapdragon 6xx processor rather than 4xx - and costs less. Again, the Moto is lacking the metal design.
The Nokia reputation doesn't really have anything to do with these devices. They're certainly playing it up in marketing, but I think that's yet to be seen. It's possible they'll have good build quality, but looking at the Nokia 6, it's not going to be more durable than an iPhone. In the video, they clearly want to leave you with the impression that they're somehow more durable than other smartphones, but the display is just Gorilla Glass (of unknown generation) completely unprotected (there's no lip or anything to deflect some falls).
The Nokias definitely look cool, but are they offering a better option? In addition to the Motos, you can get a Huawei Honor 5X with a Snapdragon 6xx for well under $170 unlocked on Amazon. That has a better processor for $70 less. Again, they definitely look good, but they also seem expensive (42% more expensive) compared to, well, more powerful options.
When put in the perspective of 42% more expensive, they don't look as great. It's like, "yea, they're fine, but if I'm being cheap, I should get a Moto G or Huawei Honor. If I'm not being cheap, I should get something with a better processor than a Snapdragon 4xx series." I mean, a OnePlus X is $200 with a Snapdragon 8xx series processor. The OnePlus X isn't a great option for Americans since it doesn't support enough of the North American bands to get good coverage, but the Nokias don't really support North America at all. I have nostalgia for Nokia too and the phones do look pretty, but I'd definitely take a $200 OnePlus X over a $242 Nokia 6. Similarly, a Huawei Honor 5X or Moto G4 looks to have a better processor than a Nokia 6 and they cost less. A Moto G4 Play has similar specs to a Nokia 5 for half the price. And I think Motorola/Lenovo are coming out with a G5 this Spring (which might be before the Nokia gets into customers' hands). LeEco and ZTE also have devices with more power.
The thing about the mobile industry today is that it's reasonably saturated with good options. The Nokia devices look nice, but they're in the "get notified when you can actually get one" stage. Let's say you can get your hands on one in June. By then a whole slew of new Android slabs could be out - possibly with better specs and prices. I do love CNC machined aluminum like the Nokia 6, but I also like a phone that has enough performance to be great to use for a while.
I'm guessing that Nokia is going to push these in cheaper markets. There are European countries like Poland and Greece that have lower GDP per capita, markets like India where Nokia has been historically strong where people might be willing to shell out an extra $75 for the Nokia, and China where the cachet of having a Nokia could play well (Volvo, another Scandinavian brand, plays well there). But it's a hard market that's saturated with plenty of good options and it's hard to one-up anyone given that all players (other than Apple and maybe to a small extent Samsung) are essentially pulling from the same parts (and OS) bin.
They look like fine devices, but they're not a value you can't already get for multiple manufacturers today and given that they aren't available yet, it remains to be seen what this Spring will bring from competitors. I mean, they're super pretty and that almost makes me want to cast off all my cynicism aside and say "screw-it, I want a pretty blue or copper metal Nokia",...
The long battery life of feature phones is fantastic, and I could certainly type faster with T9.
The experience often falls apart when you want to join a group text, book an Uber, get directions etc. There are lo-fi versions of these, but the experience is bad enough to just not be worth it.
Other than that I have no reason to own one and would love to get rid of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, I use normal taxi services and public transport, I memorize directions from my computers and so on. I don't even check my emails on the thing.
I went back to a feature phone for almost a year, though I had a smartphone in "airplane mode" with me for most of the same time, but I'd just connect that to wifi.
> I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either.
Probably not. One thing that I couldn't get used to with the feature phone was call quality. It was terrible. I don't know if that's GSM (as compared to what 4G was like on my smartphone) or if that was the build quality of the feature phone (which was a rather cheap phone). But I agree that the 3310 isn't likely to entice many people to take the leap.
I don't have any social media apps installed on my phone, nor do I have my work email set up.
However, it's the 1% that really makes me love having a smartphone. Looking for a place to eat in a new area, needing maps, etc, access to banking in a quick and easy manner.
My car has navigation, so hailing a Lyft is not a thing I do and being constantly connected to social media is not a thing I desire.
The Convoy 2 has whatever Bluetooth was new in 2010 and can stream music to cars, BT speakers, etc. Its removable micro SD card and battery means I've got more storage than most iPhone users* and still only charge it about every other week.
Only Verzion tracks where I am--the phone is innocent, knowing nothing of our post-Snowden society.
Its halves are only a little thicker than an iPhone 6, but it's shorter than an iPhone 5, so it disappears into my pockets.
I really like it and have kept it after briefly trying both of its successors--the Convoy 3 was larger and looked worse, for no discernible reason, and the Convoy 4 is targeted strictly at old people. The 4 is a huge, nasty plastic thing with a slightly-improved camera, on paper, but somehow manages to run slower than the 2. Quite the disappointment.
*Buying music from Bandcamp, Amazon, Beatport, etc. instead of renting music from Spotify means you can listen to music without a 4G connection! Crazytalk, right?
I actually just spent some money to repair my 208, because it's the last of these to support 3G as well. I guess I was right not to wait for this one since it doesn't appear to support 3G.
Did they deprecate the J2ME version of Google Maps?
That 3310 will definitely be bought and tried to see if it works better than what I have right now.
I loved the 225 for its simplicity and general responsiveness but texting was abysmally slow after entering a few dozen characters: while the phone was recomputing the text layout on each keypress I could almost see the code as it was written by someone who clearly should've read about computational complexity on compsci 101. That was the sole reason I dumped the phone, especially as SMS is one of the main uses for a dumbphone. Battery was great though, and ringer volumes, speakers and the microphone were good. I suspect the new 3310 is pretty much another revision of that phone.
I would pay decent money for an old skool feature phone that:
- is small enough to fit in a tight pocket without me either feeling it in the first place or bending it broke
- doesn't have its back cover, battery, and phone flying in three directions when I drop it one the floor
- has battery life in weeks
- has a simple but usable camera, 2Mpx is enough for taking photos sharp enough for notes
- has blazing fast user interface with absolutely no delays or lag (how hard can it be?)
- its UI has predictable command paths instead of scrollable list and grid views so that I can punch MENU+5+3+2+1 or something similar to dive directly into one particular submenu. This is how you set your phone to silent/vibrate/loud in the good old times, while walking and never looking at the screen for feedback because you just knew what the phone would do.
- Has 3G/4G data and a basic mostly text-based web browser for checking out timetables, locations or opening times if absolutely necessary
- Has a native online map application: Google Maps for J2ME was, if a bit outdated, still decent
- Bluetooth for transferring contacts, audio files, and photos
All these features have been in phones ten years ago, probably earlier. The best phones at the time had probably 90% of the above list, usually by lacking something that wouldn't have been fixed by technology if only smartphones didn't take over.
I did make the leap for a nearly a year. The problems you point out are legitimate, and they made me to move back to a smartphone. Hopefully the 3310 fixes some of those bigger issues you point out (eg: group texting) just as a function of being newer.
The market for the 3310 is larger than you think. For one, there are plenty of old people that prefer to have something simple and smartphones are a nonstarter for them. I think we might actually buy two of these for my grandparents, as they're about to move onto our family plan from another provider.
Beyond that, I think a lot of people who walk around with an $800 phone might be interested in spending $50 as an insurance plan, so that if their phone breaks they have a readily available backup, or if they're doing something risky they can have something to take instead. (Of course, that means you can't post photos of your crazy exciting life to Instagram and Facebook while you're experiencing it, so I doubt most people would be interested.)
I personally won't pick one up because it lacks 3G and LTE, and I would never buy a phone that I can't tether to my laptop. I realize the lack of those radios results in the battery life it's able to get, but I'd prefer for it to be disabled by default but still available for when you need it.
Some people, including me, need two SIM, so I would not buy a new 3310 (though I had the old one and loved it) for that reason. My current phone however is a dumb dual SIM paid €20 new, and I would not swap it even for the latest iPhone or any costly Android equivalent.
I can't be unique in wanting something that's not a candy bar? I've passed peak smartphone - and toned down my app use. I'll accept a few different formats as alternative.
Yet again, after a ludicrously short time, my sealed in smartphone battery was getting tired. I was hoping Blackberry was finally going to make the "obvious" handset change - a Classic with Android. They announced they were exiting handsets instead. The Far East gets a selection of Android flip phones, mostly very expensive premium, never coming near Europe. So I settled on getting a LG V20 when it released as it at least keeps SD and removable battery. Then LG decided EU doesn't get those.
So when my "smart" phone died, I got my old V8 Motorola (The Linux based flip follow on to the v3) out the drawer. It's fantastic. It gets more signal and clearer calls than any smartphone I have owned, and the original (12 year old?) battery gives weeks of standby. It has ergonomics. Of course the camera is awful, and there's next to no storage.
Seriously, give me that form factor with modern storage, Android and keep the a tiny screen that only comes on when you flip open. I don't need a huge screen to run a chat app, or listen to "turn left in 100 yards", or book a taxi. I can't think of a single app I use that needs a 4"+ screen. The miniscule external v8 screen is perfect for notifications and music player use. Should get decent standby life...
Nope, the entirity of global capitalism offers me 23,509 near identical candy bars in a simulation of choice.
It's an antifragile plan. They would have to invest little to port and keep Maemo running on these new terminals. But if it takes off it can give great ROI. Also, it buys them independence and differentiation.
They should also provide AOSP for these phones, so that we don't get yet another Android terminal that gets no updates past a few months. It'd be nice to have alternatives for pricy Pixels to run CopperheadOS.
I'd guess that that period has expired.
(Not that they will- the Nokia name has been licenced, so the manufacturer doesn't really have an incentive to push Meego)
This is correct. ton = thousand.
Unfortunately thousands of loyal followers is not even a good start.
And the Maemo platform kinda lives on in Sailfish. If going systemd and wayland can be called "lives on". Never mind that i suspect they in part got developer attention because of some experiences developing (for) the Maemo platform.
I'd assume that UMTS would be shut down long before 2g.
https://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/why-muni-arrival-time...
You can buy a Samsung/Chinese 3G candybar format phone for $30, which gives good battery life.
Many emerging markets still sell more feature phones and dump phones than smartphones. India for example.
There is even small reverse trend when customers in developed world when people are getting fed up with smartphones.
How is this in any possible way true?
Good old 3310
At least they are offensively sticking to plain Google Android, so the usual excuse "we customized ourselves into a corner, now you can only get security updates if you buy new hardware" is out of the picture.
$600, 12 hr battery, tells me every 10 minutes how the world goes down the drain.
Mmmmh...
Consumers might like it but everybody else would hate it. It cuts into profits and teaches wrong habits to consumers.
However friends want to messsage me on Whatsapp (ergo wifi or mobile data), I want to use the GPS from time to time, I want to google things from time to time (ergo more wifi or mobile data), etc., etc.
>I want to
I agree. It's important to direct wants of the consumer into frequent use. The real value in marketing is creating cultures where people must consume to participate.
Consumer needs are path dependent, so it's important to not allow avenues for countercultures or ways to avoid traps.
Are you saying they're guiding/tricking me into wanting/using the GPS?
Said featurephone is getting long in the tooth though and pretty banged up (and is on its second battery)...
I yearn for the days when we got unique designs like the Nokia 6820/E70/N95, the Sony Ericsson M600i, Moto Razr (as junky as that phone was), etc. Even the Nokia Icon was an edgier but classy design. I just went with a Sony Xperia XZ recently because it's one of the few smartphones that seemed like the engineers bothered to apply a modicum of creativity/differentiation to the physical design.
Not round the corners? That gives you 2 options, and one is less comfortable in the hand.
The old phones could have interesting features because they had hardware keyboards, but the screen that's sometimes a keyboard (and symbols/numbers/emoji/swipe/draw) has won out over the better keyboard and smaller display options.
http://www.nbc.com/the-office/video/power-of-the-pyramid/n21...
My beef was mainly that I went through the top rated devices on GSM/PhoneArena recently... Basically the only smartphone with squared edges or a unique design was the Galaxy Edge, the Xperia XZ, and the Xiaomi Mi Mix.
Nokia used to innovate with phone design because they had their own factories. Those days are long gone.
According to wikipedia:
> Notable customers and products the company manufactures include BlackBerry,[5] iPad,[6] iPhone, iPod,[7] Kindle,[8] Nintendo 3DS, Nokia, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
Experimenting with design has very limited payoffs in the phone market these days (ask HTC), and retooling at Foxconn's scale is very expensive. Design innovation wouldn't be worth it.
According to people who seen the phones the are similar to the old Lumia line by Nokia. Guess why that is??
On the other hand, Apple is known to be obsessed with design even in the most unusual places. Have you ever looked at a motherboard for a MacBook? It's just beautiful; the colors, the arrangement. But not everyone will notice.
Surely I'm not alone and there is a market out there? The iPhone SE sells well, and will be my next phone after I lost my trust in Sony's compact Android devices.
The iPhone SE is really great, my only complaint is the 64gb limit. Rumors of a 128gb on the way though.
More crucially, their support is awful - I had to send both a Z3C and Z5C in for repair shortly after receiving them, and in both instances they kept onto the phones for more than a month because they didn't have available parts. And with the Z5C refused to admit that it overheats. On that basis alone I can't justify buying another Sony device.
This was in the EU though.
I haven't seen an authorized seller for Xiaomi and I was under the impression that they are still using marshmallow or earlier. Also all their phones are 4.5"+ which is much larger than the comparably compact SE.
I'd love to get a xiaomi phone (esp. based on the price and alleged build quality) but it's just not worth the tradeoffs.
I found that despite not always being on the latest version of Android, they had enough polish and stability on their OS to make it worth being a version behind. I used their ROMs back before they made hardware, and if there was ever a bug, it was usually fixed within a week (or at least acknowledged).
And I agree, I'd love for Xiaomi to sell phones, but like everyone else is stating, the iPhone SE is arguably one of the best compact phones. I hope to have mine for many years.
To make sure that phone's frequency will work: https://www.frequencycheck.com/
Listings of great phone: https://www.kimovil.com/en/
https://blog.al4.co.nz/2015/01/good-news-for-z3-compact-owne...
But it seems like it was a very deliberate choice by Sony.
I mean, they had everything; the design chops, the brand power, the tech, the Sony Stores, etc... Everybody knows the iPhone, Sams's Galaxy, LG G series, Moto phones, but Sony really failed to market their Xperia phones properly.
Just for fun, I went to Sony Canada's website to look at their phones and they have 21 models on the page. I'm not joking. https://www.sonymobile.com/ca-fr/products/phones/
The Android ecosystem is difficult to recommend, and a small Android phone is even more difficult to recommend.
The only good Android phones I've used (and I've been using Android since the G1) have been ones Google had a hand in: Nexuses, the original Moto X, and the Pixel. The Sony came close, but the heat problems killed it for me.
I would still jump on a well done, small, Android phone.
But for maps/navigation, you could just use a tablet or laptop with offline maps (e.g. maps.me).
Be sure that you get the 64GB version though! My wife had the 16GB version and had to upgrade to the 64GB version, because the live photos, etc. took up quite a lot of space.
+1000 I got the 16GB version and I've had to micromanage some of my apps and definitely the photos and stuff to free up space. Luckily I don't take that many pictures so I'm ok with occasionally deleting data. Can't imagine using something like Snapchat though (which I used to use but now don't) it uses a TON of space.
If I end up actually calling someone (and pretty much everyone I know despises this and will do anything possible to avoid it) it's usually by tapping their number on a web page or in an app like yelp.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14225872/apple-patent-oled...
There is another patent regarding the TouchID sensor working through a screen:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/04/apple-patents-fing...
The front facing camera is a bigger issue.
Or be super cool and have a mechanical system that pops out a little speaker at the top and a little mic at the bottom.
Why would it stop you making a phonecall?
(I also worry about accidental touch rejection on an edge to edge screen. My AppleTV 4 remote is the most useless apple product since the hockey puck mouse of 1998 because the touch pad was registering input when I just picked up the remote. Now I use my AppleTV 3 remote with the 4.)
That seems like an odd jab, given Sony are rolling 7 out for discontinued models. Compare with Samsung who axe updates in less than a year in some cases.
Who does better?
So I'm going to ditch it soon :/ Terrible feeling ditching a perfectly functional thing, I wish I had the foresight when I purchased it get the larger HD.
I guess that might be true for most Sony devices - but my z3+ recently got updated to Android 7 - and the "high end" Sony phones have pretty decent open source support:
https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/list-of-device...
Now, I would indeed like to see even better updates (like 7.1 ota) - but so far my experience with Sony is better than other android manufacturers.
On the other hand k-9 just slowed to a crawl - not sure if it's a coincidence with having a "big" inbox and downloading the last 1000 messages - but I fear not.
I'm committed to the app store, but if the apple offering doesn't change I'm gonna jump to android right after the 8 announcement. googling around the samsung a3 seems a solid midrange offer (albeit I'm worried about operating system not getting updates) for the pocketable for factor
My only gripe is software buttons so quite a bit of screen estate is taken by the button bar.
I think the new thing though is going to be same sized screens with smaller bezels, resulting in smaller phones. Samsung and LG's upcoming flagships both look to be substantially shrinking the bezel.
I'd probably be also using it if it supported a newer Android version.
I had the Xperia X8 and still have the Xperia Ray, would also love a current device using that form factor...
My wife used it, and it was a lovely wee phone. I really wanted the X10 Mini Pro, but for various reasons missed out.
Glad we've kept the X10 Mini, for reminiscing at least!
But more interesting would be earphones with decent noise cancellation, which get power from the phone. Huawei has those at $80. But earphones are delicate.
If Nokia can them long lasting - and create good demo videos showing the real effects on user life - they may have a nice niche.
In the Nokia 210 also Facebook and Messenger were usable, from the movie it's not clear if it's available this time. Perhaps there is a list of aditional apps under the squares icon. http://www.opera.com/blogs/mobile/2015/01/microsofts-afforda...
Now could you use Opera Mini to execute local javascript apps or games on the 240x320 screen? For example could I use parchment.js to load local text adventures or play local hosted 2048, sodoku or minichess games? What about a 2FA javascript app?