A Nokia WP7 phone would suck, since Nokia's hardware sucks and the only real thing that separates the WP7 phones is their hardware.
But if the only separation in the other WP7 phones is just the hardware... and Nokia produces great hardware, you've basically invalidated your own argument.
But if the only separation in the other WP7 phones is just the hardware... and Nokia produces great hardware, you've basically invalidated your own argument.
</devil's advocate>
Of course, but that's purely hypothetical. Nokia haven't produced great hardware since the days of the N95. I'm not talking about build quality, I'm talking about the guts of the device. When talking about that hardware, Nokia is mediocre at best right now.
After all, the N900 is Nokia's lone A8-based device, which they were so proud of that they even tattooed it onto it!
Well, Samsung made Bada out of nowhere in less than a year as Intel made the MeeGo netbook edition out of nowhere in three months -> i.e. it didn't. Bada includes a lot of previous Samsung developments, Bada was just the moniker/rebrand around the major platform overhaul.
Bada's target audience is not that of Maemo's, nor is there a technical equivalence. If you want to talk Bada, you would have to compare it to Qt, as it's more of an API level thing, and I'm pretty sure Qt-enabled devices have outsold Bada by a factor of 10
Well, I went to get myself a Samsung Wave S8500. Dirt cheap right now (not exactly, the prices have risen again, the day after I got it). Anyway, Bada is a platform. It is unlike everything previously made. Bada is lots of bits and pieces at Samsung put together into a platform. You could say the development is at least 10 years old, but then you could also say that MeeGo is 20 since Linux is 20 (or thereabout).
But, the main point, Bada needs an OS core, a kernel. Bada may run any kernel, be it Linux, Symbian, or whatever. For the Wave, Samsung chose OpenBSD or FreeBSD (don't now exactly, but it doesn't matter). The platform had to be put together, and the OS core had to be (heavily) modified and made to work on Samsung's mobile platform. Let's look at Nokia and MeeGo. Qt is 15 years old, Linux is 20 years old. Nokia has worked on Maemo for 5-6 years. The Bada OS in the Wave is exactly the same amount of work as a working MeeGo OS (a working kernel and a platform). Samsung did it in a year, for Nokia it takes forever.
Besides, I am Nokia's target audience for MeeGo/Maemo, but since there are no MeeGo devices coming at least not within 6 months, I went to get a Bada device. What does that mean? it means Nokia has lost one phone, Samsung has gained one, and why? because although Nokia has a great plan, they simply do not know how to execute it. That is Nokia's problem - execution. (got a N8 for my wife though )
The Wave has a SAMOLED 480x800 resolution (the best screen ever produced on a mobile device), a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8, HD video, GPS etc etc. 1500 mA battery, talk time 15 hours, standby of 25 days. A fully multitasking OS based on OpenBSD/Bada. Now, show me a Nokia phone with these specs, and we can talk target audience. I am not really arguing though, Bada can also run on RTOS for the very cheapest of smartphones, but if you look at how Samsung is developing the Bada portfolio, they start from the top going slowly down.
The wave started selling in May-June in a few places only, and Samsung has sold 5 million Bada devices in 2010 (mostly Wave S8500). By comparison Nokia has sold 4 million N8 in the last couple of months last year. Both have sold more than expected. As a comparison, the most selling Android phone ever, the mega-hit Samsung Galaxy S has sold 10 million all together last year, and the iPhone 4 has sold around 16 million.
The best phone out there right now is the N8, no question about it. Yes, Symbian^3 is a (tiny) bit more clunky than Android, Bada, iOS, WP7, but that will improve in January (now). What it looses in clunkyness, it more than makes up in functionality, and when the clunkyness is gone - Symbian will be the best OS in every respect. After Symbian comes Bada. Bada is good because it is the perfect mobile platform in an industrial sense, and it is smooth and nice and "modern".
So I start wondering, why does Nokia need MeeGo? It seems to me that right now MeeGo needs Nokia more than Nokia needs MeeGo. For Intel HW, yes, that would be a path for Nokia, a path that makes sense. For ARM I see no point anymore, and with Qt as a platform (somewhat) similar to Bada, it is a total waste of time and money.
1. You seem to think an OS is an OS, a 'platform' is a 'platform'. "The Bada OS in the Wave is exactly the same amount of work as a working MeeGo OS (a working kernel and a platform)." It's not so simple as that. They are not the same and so not the same amount of work.
2. You wonder why Nokia needs MeeGo since they have Symbian. Very simply, Symbian is not capable of keeping up with future demands of mobile hardware and software. MeeGo is.
If the Android and Window Phone 7 rumors are all false, and if Nokia did step up communication in response to them, would that prove entertaining or just monotonous?
But have they come out to point out that the rumors are false? Saying you're dedicated to QT, Symbian and MeeGo isn't the same as saying that you're not doing Android and Windows Phone 7. That's the communication problem at hand. It's even carried on throughout most of the press.
But then, as NDI points out, they seem to have commitment issues. Didn't they also keep saying they were committed to Maemo too? How about those backports of Fremantle to the N8x0 for the community? How's that going? Before that, how about their support for Mer? How did that work out? Sometimes Nokia says one thing but does another.
I just did say it cause you seems so sure it will NOT happen. soo now I ask u what backup do you have?