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Comment by rrrazdan | Hacker News Reader

Because Nokia R&D spend is 8 times that of HTC, and 5 times of Apple for that matter.[1] Nokia needs the flexibility with the OS. In an ideal world, Nokia most certainly should make an OS by themselves, but clearly that didn't happen, so they choose the one that gives them the most flexibility to do what they want, much more than just putting a custom UI on top. And yes, the shock is risky. But the way things were going, very necessary.

[1]http://www.itpro.co.uk/630721/nokia-r-d-spend-outweighs-appl...

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Judging from the Symbian phone I'm typing this on, Nokia is actually incapable of writing a decent phone os. The hardware is great (after four years the corners of the case have a few scratches from falling out of a shirt pocket on the concrete pavement several times and the chome color on the D-pad is mostly gone) but the software, ah, how to say it, less so. The browser randomly reorders all bookmarks every time you open the mail client, sometime the phone will stay offline after you have left cell coverage in the wrong moment and ever so often you have to use the hardware garbage collect button (the one with the circle with the small vertical bar within) if you want to keep using it. I'm mostly using third party software now (opera mini for the web and mutt in a putty session for mail).

So in a way it is fitting that they go with Microsoft, Microsoft has a reputation of being a better hardware than software manufacturer, too (at least for keyboards and mice, which cannot RROD).

What flexibility? According to Microsoft, WinMo7 is allowing less flexibility than Android, that being one of its selling points (less fragmentation).

From the article, "To that point, Microsoft had forced handset makers to obey strict rules about how they could customize Windows Phone 7, and they wanted the same from Nokia. Not only did Nokia respond that it wanted the right to innovate freely, it asked Microsoft to commit to using Nokia technology as a foundation of the Windows Phone platform, particularly its detailed Navteq maps database."

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