Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

As a fellow N900 owner (hey, are all 10 of us here now?) I'd have to say Nokia's execution on it sucked. They either needed to truly put the full force of company behind it (in which case it could've been well ahead of Android), or kill it before it became a phone. As a computer geek, I'm grateful that I got one. Nothing about it, however, makes commercial sense to me. I can't recommend it to anyone in my family.

Nokia was too wedded to Symbian. I don't care how much you polish S60. The only people who will appreciate it are existing Symbian users. My last phone was an N82, and quite frankly, it was a far better phone than the N900. Better camera too (despite very similar specs on paper), and it could actually do "modern" phone things such as MMS and voice dial. (Modern by, oh, 2005 standards.) But, being a Symbian S60 device, it had all the quirks and annoyances that came with that, such as each app seeming to have its own private network stack. I don't know how much they might've polished Symbian since I got the N82, but given how far ahead iOS was when it debuted around that same time, it's clear Nokia had lost the plot.

The N900 didn't have to be such a gigantic step back. It's got the same processor as the original Droid, but unrivaled clunkiness as a consumer gadget. Had Nokia put Symbian on life support 4 years ago and put their full force behind Maemo, it could've taken much of the space that Android it. Instead, Nokia got a few geeks interested, hoping they could get us to build their ecosystem for them before it ever had critical mass in the market. Hrm... I don't think that works.

I stick with mine 'cause I like not having to root my phone to get a bash prompt. But unless something seriously awesome happens with MeeGo, I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my next phone.

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