Imagine our luck: we just happened to stroll into Nokia's New York flagship store today on 57th between 5th and Madison Avenue, only to discover that it was practically torn down and set to close permanently today, a move that Nokia
announced late last year. A representative approached us as soon as we entered and said, "the only phones we have are from this point forward; there's nothing else in the store." Interestingly, a call over to Nokia's other North American flagship in Chicago confirmed that it
isn't closing today and no date has been set (at least, not a date that anyone is talking about) -- so there's one more outpost in the States if you want to get your Nokia on one last time. Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of Americans won't be shedding any tears over the closure, but it's always disappointing to see a neat and beautifully-designed place to geek out go belly-up. And where are we going to play with an
N8 before we buy now, anyway?
posted May 23rd 2010 6:57PM
Nokia is a huge player but just not in the us. They can't sell unsubsidized phones for big dollars and expect floods of customers. Too bad.
@OC Technophile I just wish they'd ditch the dated Symbian platform and develop Maemo if they wish to catch up...
@OC Technophile
Also, symbian sucks. I just picked up an E72, and the hardware is really awesome, but I find myself wishing it was winMo, iPhone, or android.
Symbian is dying. It is pretty devoid of a developer base, and nokia has been doing a poor job keeping it fresh. Nokia has some terrific hardware, but will become another motorola if they don't do something about it's OS's
@someguy7234 what the hell is wrong with you guys? Is it some fashion to bash on Symbian? Symbian is the oldest and most mature mobile OS around. The problem with Symbian is that there wasn't enough advertising and many people simply do no not realize how much they can do with it. Bashing Symbian is nothing else than a fashion, it's just trendy to do that.
@someguy7234
I love my new E63... first Symbian phone. For a little blackberry style phone Symbian works amazing... def a better OS than the Curve had. But I can see how on a full featured touchscreen/smartphone like the Nexus One or the Droid it would be somewhat lacking.
@someguy7234 Actually, it has a massive developer community. Possibly the largest. Nokia IS still the world's biggest.
@stoffer
Can you link me to some videos showing the awesomeness of Symbian? Because I agree with the guys above, while the OS may have a shit ton of potential and flexibility it's lacking in the area of user-friendliness. Well, mainly for touchscreen devices - the E70 (series) is quite good.
@Cats
Right. Let's clear things up once and for all.
Symbian has multi tasking, copy and paste, allows file installation through multiple channels, permits OTS firmware updates, endless customisation and a million other features that some of the 'new and fresh' operating systems are just getting round to now. In addition it's power efficient so it can operate on lower spec hardware and promote battery life.
Now what it also has is a UI that's a bit ropey, especially on touch screens. Fortunately, Symbian^3 has just taken care of that apparently.
So what exactly do the other operating systems have that Symbian doesn't? Specifically.
@stoffer Bashing on Symbian is not as uncalled for as you make it seem. I'm a current Symbian user. Just waiting for the right moment to move on to Android. Symbian is a featurephone OS made slightly better to seem like a smartphone OS. Tell me, how exactly do you download apps on Symbian? How many people actually know how to do that? How many Symbian holders even know that they can install apps on their phone? Email management is ABYSMAL. Notifications are non-existent. The system lags like hell and multitasking freezes apps in the background. I think its better off staying as a featurephone OS.
@stoffer
Symbian SUCKS...sorry if you can't handle that.
Just because you like doesn't mean its the best thing since sliced bread.
Obviously most of America agrees with me....which is why they're shutting down...
@stoffer I've been a symbian user for ages, but come this summer, even i'm thinking of going android. nokia's taking way too long with symbian^3, and it's getting really annoying. not a lot of apps/games are coming out for symbian anymore, and i believe that will probably change once symbian^3 comes out.
till then, i'll take my android phone please.
@TheLondonExchange
"Obviously most of America agrees with me!"
The rest of the world doesn't though.
@Prairiedog:
The E63 is an incredible phone. I'm glad you like Symbian S60.
@someguy7234:
sqrt(-1)/10
Stop trolling and go away, please.
@TareG
Are you for real?
Ovi store has about 1.7 million downloads a day and rising. Nokia Messaging is an excellent e-mail handler. The OS is solid.
There are a lot of genuine things Nokia need to sort out. You don't have to make stuff up.
@Cats
I disagree...Symbian is the most popular smartphone OS in the world...and with Symbian ^3 and ^4 coming later this year and early 2011, the improvements are enormous...and given Nokia's marketshare, no matter how great Android, iPhone OS, or WP7 are, Symbian is still going to dominate.
I do agree with the Linux part though...MeeGo has immense potential to be a great mobile OS, and Nokia should concentrate on it more...
@Prairiedog
I bought my wife a E63 and it isn't the best phone but $180 for a unlocked phone isn't bad. It gets the job done just not to graceful on the UI side.
@TheLondonExchange And just because you and a 1/20 of the world think it sucks doesn't make it so, otherwise it wouldn't be selling like hotcakes outside of the US.
See, it goes both ways.
@TareG
That is kind of funny considering the 2 guys I overheard in train, talking about their phones. One had iPhone and the other a symbian phone. They were talking about installing programs and both were dissatisfied with one of the phones thinking you couldn't install any programs on it, and it was the iphone they were dissatisfied with.Nope, I didn't mishear or misunderstand them. They were both clearly complaining about how you couldn't install any programs on iphone.
So this argument is moot. Any phone have stupid enough users that they don't know how to install programs into it.
@TareG
Well I've been down that path (got rid of my N81 for a HTC Tattoo) and let me tell you that I miss S60 a lot. Sure Android is cool and has a lot of neat stuff but S60 was mature.
S60 is better as a phone, Android is better as a web device... The problem is I want a phone, not just a browser and as such Android sucks for me (Calendar app has some bugs, no native tasks or notes app, bluetooth is a joke, etc). Android will eventually be awesome but right now it's more of a geek and casual user thing than something I could recommend to a power user.
PS: I still miss a physical keyboard, virtual keyboards just aren't the same...
@OC Technophile I dunno about that, slickdeals.net just had two great deals on unlocked Nokia smartphones.
I personally don't understand what the point of a Nokia store is when you have carrier stores where you can not only see the same Nokia phones, but see it right next to competitors.
Totally redundant and less useful for the consumer.
Good riddance, waste of money. =)
@Ducman69 Carrier stores sell you carrier-branded, locked phones. The Nokia store probably sold you everything unlocked, with no ugly-ass carrier logo. Big difference.
@Ducman69
That's what I was thinking too. Every good electronics store has a cellphone area. I think I wouldn't visit a flagship store as well. No need to. Flagship stores are mostly for representation. Most companies who have them lose money with them and that's totally understandable.
And as I can see from their website Nokia has/had only 9 of them anyway. Worldwide. That's 3 in europe and there Nokia is huge... bigger than huge. It shows that the flagship store concept doesn't really work for some companies. But it doesn't mean that they aren't greatly successful anyway.
@Prairiedog
exactly, symbian was design right from the start to be optimally used on non-touch devices. That's where Symbian's strength lies.
It isn't a bad OS. In fact it is down right good. As long as it stays on non touch phones, there's no other OS that can compete with it.
On touch phones, on the other hand.. not so hot.. Let's see what they do with Sym 3/4 and Meego.
@MarkAnderson
Most of america also calls the iphone a smartphone.
when all it is is:
a phone (with a poor radio chipset)
a good music player, but sub-par in quality to a 49$ sansa.
it is a good multimedia player , yet you cannot even have a 5 level equalizer.
and as a smatphone should go, well, you can only install apps that are built in objective C, meant for apple, and even then, if not refused by apple, sounds even more restrictive than a sony ericsson T510 of 2001, where you could install apps from a cab file, create your own ones with codewarrior, and install them, or download directly java apps.
also US is 307 million people 9counting babies and elders, in 2009 estimate. the number of mobile phone users worldwise is: 4.1 billion, and africa had 3G in 2005.
so you might want to consider the references.
reminds me in 2001 coming to the US for a business trip and being told, with tough conviction that TDMA is the future, and that US does not care about GMS standards, and I was explaining that the market of US is too small to cope for the cost of developping one standard, then have to pay for the interoperability as the rest of the world would not spend money to cover for US decisions to go alone. well, see what happens, almost all went 3G (wcdma) and now going LTE. and the ones that did not are loosing customers. even China with 1.2 billion cannot make their own UMTS version to be accepted.
anyways, it is just a fad here, and it will pass, Iphone opened the eyes of US to the fact that you can do a lot more with your phone than talk and 2way messging. now the mature companies start taking the market.
I wish we had renewal rates for iphones, and ration of people going to something else.
@MarkAnderson Yeah, let's clear it up a bit...'Stability', 'dev enthusiasm', and 'better hardware to run on' are two things I can think of that other OSes have on Symbian.
I used it on two SE phones for nearly three years... It seemed ok at the time, it was cool having computer-os features on my phone, but when the iPhone came out and newer OSes (Android, WebOS) started becoming available, I realized Symbian was just from another time. It's not fluid, it's not modern. Devs are not behind it like they are the new breed of OSes.
You raise some optimistic points but you're fighting for something that will not love you back.
@Dextro Wait a second there. So you dumped a high-end S60 phone for the lowest end Android phone (whoever bought the Tattoo) with a QVGA screen making available apps very limited, and you wonder why you miss your S60 phone?
@stoffer Symbian Yes symbian is old, maybe too old and needs renew their UI, but they are not doing it..
@hey buddy
"I realized Symbian was just from another time. It's not fluid, it's not modern. Devs are not behind it like they are the new breed of OSes."
That's a UI you're describing, not an OS. As mentioned Symbian has a massive developer community, considerably bigger than any other platform.
@TareG I can't believe you own a Symbian phone with the comments you make. I install apps on my phones in multiple ways - directly downloading and installing with the built-in browser, using the on-phone marketplace app, browsing on my PC and installing via PC Suite, getting apps from friends via Bluetooth...
I also use my phone for work email. Its notifications are a damn sight better than the iPhone (which was my previous phone), where I can't even snooze a meeting reminder notification on the latest iPhone OS - about as basic a functionality as I require from my phone.
One of the previous posters made a very valid comment about S60 basing being very popular, especially on Engadget.
@Cats
They are developing Maemo, it is called MeeGo, and from the looks of it it is going to be fantastic.
@tauttvisz
Yes they are, in case you missed it, there is a later article where it states the N8 running S^3 is 180% faster than the N97. There ARE working on it.
@Ducman69 Americans are on a love hate relationship with their contracts. At least give us a option to have our Nokia's subsidized to save us hundreds. We have been trained for years to except the benefits of contracts.
@MarkAnderson Extract what I'm saying from the equation - you can't. I'm not simply talking about "user interface"; you can try to make it seem like that's all I'm talking about by quoting me out of context from the rest of what I wrote. There is no extracting what I'm talking about and still having an OS. It is a total experience in the real world. It's like talking about if the iPhone had flash - it would be a hypothetical.
@hey buddy
Sorry. Not sure what you're on about unless you can give me specific examples of things Mobile OS X and Android can do that Symbian can't.
@michaspi
I feel like I need to defend my comment a little bit since it got destroyed. First off, its not really trolling if I offer a few comments beyond a "it sucks" so kindly get bent. If you want to talk about what I said, feel free but don't pull the troll card... thats just stupid.
I'd be willing to agree with all the people who say its the UI not the OS, but I routinely crash my phone (E72). Its not because "i'm too stupid to use it" its because its an embedded device that demands that you manage your memory... that it absurd.
I love Qt, I develop for it, that being said, I don't know anyone else (not here in the US, and not among the 20 or so people in sweden I know) who develop for it. I know dozens of android, and iphone developers. Sorry but the dev community sucks, check out ovi store sometime. The only apps anyone downloads are the ovi maps application and the youtube app. Find me a free stopwatch anywhere on the internet for symbian and I'll shutup.
Also specific things that symbian (at lease out of the box) can't do that you can do on android and iPhone, update 2 calendars on google calendar. Try that.. can't be done. On the E72 you have to setup an exchange account! Thats ridiculous. Sure you can buy an app, but that really should be a feature of a premium smart phone.
I'm pulling for them because I really like open source software, and I don't like where android is going. But unless you have a nokia phone in your hand and can say you like it more than the other big-4 (3 really since web OS is still finding a stable home) please shutup.
Nokia had a store?
@SteveyAyo
No, Nokia had no stores. Only service providers have stores. Unlocked, unbranded phones don't exist. Buy phone and chose any GSM provider you want concept is simply too much to handle for an average US consumer.
Why did it close? Is Nokia pulling the plug on sales in the States?
@guitarkid Wouldn't be surprised considering they're plummeting sales in North America. They're being overshadowed by newer entrants because they lack enticing products to an American audience.
I seriously hope they just become a hardware vendor only. Android with their terrific hardware would be a godsend.
@Drethis Adopt Android? Wha?
@Drethis Maybe its the Soccer/Football effect; doing well in the world bar the US.
Then again, Nokia's global profits dropped 96% last year.
Perhaps this is the first of many, and not just in the States. Theres now only 8 Nokia stores in the UK compared to over 30 Apple Stores.
@GeorgeRobo
Nokia distribute through every phone reseller though. Stores are fairly irrelevant these days when everyone goes to CPW, Phones4u or a carrier outlet.
@GeorgeRobo Apple stores are needed because you generally buy Apple products from Apple, and the Macs need to be serviced.
Consumers need to see Nokias in person, but they can do so right alongside other phones for comparison in thousands of carrier outlets all over the states.
If they want to buy an unlocked one, they can then easily do so online at a lower price shipped straight to their door.
Heck, thats what I just did. I picked up an X6 (deeply discounted) from Dell. =)
@Drethis
I do agree the e series phones are well built but the rest of nokias phones bar the arte are plasticky. I'm dissapointed with nokia. The N series was meant to be there premium built phones. I think they are going the way of sonyericsson after the p990!
@guitarkid
No, handsets will now be displayed in carrier stores instead.
@GeorgeRobo: Nokia made full year profits of more than 1 billion $ in 2009 do you imply that they made a 25+ billion $ profit for 2008???
That picture kinnnda blows my mind a little.
@rock99rock REDUX Yeah I'm trippin' out. What am I looking at?
=(
@N900 inded