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Comment by akumen | Hacker News Reader

This is the most confused device ever. A bastard child of Android and Windows: basterdised verion of Windows Phone UI on top of a forked Android that's integrated with Microsoft Cloud. The marketing has a distinct "feature phone" feel.

Seriously, Asha or X device from Nokia with Firefox OS would make more sense than this.

How many OSs does Nokia have now? 4 or 5?

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I don't think they plan making any new S40 phones, so that would make it two OSes.

I counted four. Feature phone OS (ODM), Asha, Windows Phone and Nokia X Platform as they are calling it.

The "featurephone" OS is S40 and it's in both "classic" phones (e.g. 515) and Ashas.... unless there is something I've missed completely. And come to think of it, I haven't heard any confirmation of closing the production of S40 phones, so I guess that'd make it 3.

The OS in the most basic of Nokia phones is commonly referred to as S30. It doesn't really need much active maintenance, though, because they mostly only change graphics and included games (and utilities) between those phones.

Huh, I didn't even know of its existence. But yeah, turns out things like Nokia 105 run on S30. I have to try that someday, heh.

The classic feature phones is an older Symbian variant and Asha Platform OS is S40 from what I can tell. Symbian is still king in a lot of countries so Nokia will have to support it for a long time.

Struggle to see how this helps Nokia. Nokia Xs are smart phones at a price of a feature phone. Great! Welcome to an already very crowded low-margin market of cheap Androids in India, Brazil, China and Africa, the same market MS will enter with cheap 8.1 devices and where Firefox OS devices are heading. Yet, Nokia Xs have little extra to offer to the consumers that would significantly differentiate themselves from the competition.

Asha did well in developing markets, and Nokia has an attractive app/ecosystem suite for low-end phones. But Series 40 OS is not competitive with Android. Nokia X goes straight at that problem. If you are careful about the apps, especially the browser, Android will run well on VERY cheap hardware.

Just tried Xs at MWC ... not impressed.

Symbian isn't supported any more even today and Ovi Store has been frozen. And Symbian is much more of a "smart" phone OS than WP8. Also S40 isn't really Symbian. :)

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