Nokia's New Product Blurs the Featurephone / Smartphone Divide
Nokia's (NOK) new 6260 Slide, which is due for release in early 2009 at around €299 unlocked is technically a featurephone, as it's based on Nokia's proprietary S40 platform rather than its open smartphone S60/Symbian OS. Although with a 5MP camera, 320x480 screen, GPS and maps, WiFi and presumably a full-spec browser, it's really a smartphone in all but name and "native" openness.
It is devices like this that really blur the line between smart and non-smart. The iPhone has already shown that full multi-tasking and background applications aren't really necessary if the device is fast enough. And this phone should be capable of running some pretty decent apps in the browser, Flash Lite or Java.
Sure, something like the similar (but more expensive) N85 has Symbian if you really want to download complex native software, but in the absence of a Nokia equivalent of the AppStore, I'd guess that most customers will go for the better radio and screen of the 6260.
The new phone's full spec is here.
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This article has 3 comments:
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jmmx
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260 Comments
Nov 27 12:45 PMnytimes.com/2008/1...
The lesson of the article is this: IT AIN'T EASY JACK!
I just is not easy to make a phone like this. Most of all, it is not easy to make an Operating System. MS has been trying for decades, and many think their products are terrible. SO - THIS (the OS) is one of the barriers to entry into the true-smartphone market (i.e. real web and apps capability).
We will see if Nokia fares better.
Google was smart to build Android on Linux. So what if the G1 is heavy and ugly - it is a prototype that shows that the OS works. They can build from there.
If Pogue's analysis is accurate, and RIMM can't fix it real quick, then Storm will just be wind in iPhone's sails!
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KenC
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148 Comments
Nov 27 12:50 PMWhen it's a Nokia! There's a disconnect between so-called smart phones, and actual smart phone usage. By every measure, Nokia sells about half of the smart phones in the world, and yet, smart phone usage, as measured by internet access indicates very few people are using it as a smart phone. You wonder if usability plays a role in that. That's why spec lists are virtually useless in assessing the capabilities of a phone, those lists don't tell you how easy or difficult it is to use those so-called features.
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DeanB
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23 Comments
My Website
Nov 28 01:39 PMI tend to agree, although Internet usage isn't necessarily the only measure of the value of "smartness". Arguably the reason that Nokia sells so many is that the OS makes it easier for *Nokia itself* to spin the platform into many different handset variants. And if you look at Japan, NTT DoCoMo uses Symbian for its own purposes, to create its own handset platform.
But in terms of end users actually doing "interactive stuff",and especially browsing the web with large volumes of traffic, you're probably right, although there's quite a large number of people using downloaded Symbian apps for things like VoIP. Also there's huge differences between the US, Europe and Asia in all of this
Dean
On Nov 27 12:50 PM KenC wrote:
Nokia sells about
> half of the smart phones in the world, and yet, smart phone usage,
> as measured by internet access indicates very few people are using
> it as a smart phone. You wonder if usability plays a role in that.