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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

In theory it is great, but I'm waiting to see if they deliver. If Symbian 4 / MeeGo suck for end-users, it doesn't matter how good the SDK is.

On the other hand Nokia is dominating the low-end phone market by an order of magnitude. And personally I haven't bought an Android phone already because they are so damn expensive and I don't want 2-year contracts. And in Europe a lot of people are holding off from expensive phones just as I'm doing, preferring to go cheap with 1-year contracts or with PrePay options.

So it's not like they don't have what it takes to be winners.

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You can get decent Android phones like the T-Mobile Pulse Mini for £79 now here in the UK, on PAYG.

Or you can spend a little more - £99 - and get an Orange San Francisco with an OLED display and capacitive touchscreen.

The prices have really come down over the last few months.

Well, yeah I know, I think I'm going to buy a HTC Wildfire next week.

But these cheaper phones are cutting down on processing power / memory and Android 3 will require good hardware to receive an update, which kind of turns me off.

Still, that wasn't my point: Nokia still has over 34% of the global mobile phones marketshare (and this includes everyone selling phones, like Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Erricsson, Sagem, etc...), and while it has had declined in recent quarters they have a talent for coming back. All I'm saying is that they can leverage their huge customers base with phones that are cheaper than the iPhone or high-end Android phones.

I would also prefer to develop for MeGoo rather than the alternatives, but the SDK quality matters less than everything else: like having a good marketplace for developers or having customers that are paying for apps.

Indeed, processing power is the issue: "What's odd is that there's a decent amount of RAM on offer here, and a 600MHz Qualcomm processor - but this phone is juddery, slow and prone to freezing so often you'll want to throw it in a canal."

"Simple things like opening the contacts menu or trying to shuffle between home screens can take an age, and if you leave the phone asleep for too long it will simply freeze at times, meaning no alarms, texts or phone calls."

(from Techradar).

"Unfortunately, the Mini's anaemic processor often struggles to keep pace with the software. If you have several apps running at once, as well as the animated wallpapers, the handset will be reduced to a pitiful crawl."

(CNET)

Is it processing power or too much code bloat? The device in this video is an 8 bit AVR:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/8-bit_touch-sensiti...

?? You talk like the 731 million people in Europe are homogenous.

In my social group there are more Android phones than iPhones. Perhaps you are talking bollocks.

>>And in Europe a lot of people are holding off from expensive phones just as I'm doing

"a lot of people" != "everyone"

Let me re-iterate, he's speaking for 731 million people in 50 territories. So what constitiutes "a lot", plucked from bad_user's thin air.

Lets have a look at some actual figures

"Android's share of the UK mobile contract market has grown from 3% in Q1 2010 to reach 13.2% in Q2 2010, GfK Retail and Technology's latest figures have revealed."

http://www.gfkrt.com/news_events/market_news/single_sites/00...

UK Android Sales Up 350 Percent This Quarter

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/uk-android-sales-up-350-pe...

Holding back ?

First of all, you're comparing the growth rate of Android in the UK with the actual market share Nokia has which is over 40% in the UK.

I know, Android will be #1 if Nokia doesn't do something to stop its growth, but that also means Nokia has currently a huge costumers base which it can leverage.

Secondly, you're first arguing that I'm speaking in the name of 731 million people, but then you're exemplifying with UK which is like #6 among Europe's richest countries and probably number #1 when it comes to adoption of new technology.

I mean, WTF?!?

No, I'm highlighting that saying "a lot of people in Europe" is hearsay.

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