Jolla Smartphone (2013)

Jolla Smartphone (2013)

Announced May 2013

A brief history lesson – back in May 2005 Nokia announced their Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet, running an operating system called Maemo. This had most of the ingredients of the modern smartphone apart from the actual phone, and it went through several revisions such as the N800 and N810 before being turned into a pretty capable smartphone in 2009 with the N900. But then a disastrous attempt to merge Maemo with Intel’s Moblin OS to create a new OS called MeeGo caused the project to stall and at a key part of the smartphone wars, Nokia found itself without a competitive product. The follow-up to the N900, the Nokia N9 was launched 2 years afterwards, but by this time Nokia had already given up on MeeGo and had decided to base future smartphones on Windows.

The N9 caused quite a stir, but Nokia deliberately restricted its launch to smaller markets, presumably to meet a contractual obligation rather than just cancelling it. The N9 was the phone that Nokia didn’t want you to buy, and yet people did and they found that this latest incarnation of the Maemo / MeeGo operating system was rather elegant and had potential.

Sailfish OS screenshot

Nokia’s cancellation of the N9 was a death-knell for MeeGo, and that operating system was eventually merged with another Linux-based OS called LiMo to become Tizen which eventually found a niche as an embedded systems OS, especially with Samsung.

To some, the effectively cancellation of MeeGo seemed to be a squandering of something valuable. So, a group of engineering (most former Nokia employees) created a company called Jolla to develop the MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS. And in May 2013 they announced the Jolla smartphone (just called "Jolla" and pronounced "Yo-La")).

The Jolla shared a similar design philosophy to the N9, with simple and clean lines and a brightly coloured back. The operating system was as powerful as anything else on the market, but with a swipe-based user interface that made it stand out from Android and iOS offerings. The Jolla smartphone appealed to Nokia and Linux fans in particular, and it ended up being a niche success.

An attempt to launch a Jolla Tablet nearly ended in disaster when the company couldn’t bring it to market in time and had to offer refunds to customers who had crowdfunded it. However the company persisted and the Sailfish OS continues to be ported to other devices, and is still around 5 years later.

Jolla and Sailfish haven’t quite had the breakthrough success that they need, however the Sailfish OS is finding its way into devices for emerging markets and more specialist applications such as the highly secure Turing Phone. It seems that seven years after Nokia abandoned this particular platform, it is still going strong.

Image credits: Jolla and Towel401 via Wikimedia Commons

Video: Jolla Smartphone Preview

Video: Jolla Tablet

Nokia N9 (2011)

Launched June 2011

2011 was a time of turmoil for Nokia. Having announced in February that they were going to switch their smartphone platform to Windows, the writing was on the wall for the those smartphones running on other environments. Symbian was one obvious casualty, but Nokia's MeeGo (formerly Maemo) operating system was another.

The Nokia N9 was the final handset in a series of devices running the Linux-based Maemo OS that had kicked off in 2005 with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and ending up with the promising Nokia N900 in 2009. Despite some flaws, the N900 was a pretty decent effort and timely development could well have made a very competitive handset that could have fended off Android and the iPhone. But a disastrous decision to merge Maemo with Intel's Moblin operating system stalled development of any new devices, and the planned follow-up to the N900 never happened.

By 2011 the die had already been cast in favour of Nokia's rivals. Despite this, the nearly two-year gestation period for the N9 was coming to an end and Nokia were too far into the project to cancel it. Just as the N9 was about to be launched, Nokia slashed staff in the MeeGo division and it was clear that whatever was going to be produced was likely to be not only the first, but also the last MeeGo consumer device from Nokia.

Despite being primed to disappoint, the N9 instead created quite a stir. Housed in a brightly-coloured plastic unibody case, the N9 set the design standards that were then picked up by the Lumia range. On the front was a relatively large 3.9" 480 x 854 pixel AMOLED display, on the back was an 8 megapixel camera and inside was a 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM. The operating system was the main feature though, and MeeGo was different from everything else on the market with a highly polished swipe-based interface that still managed to have a traditional Nokia look and feel. The N9 was beautiful but doomed.

Despite the wait, Nokia fans were keen to get their hands on the device. But Nokia had other ideas, and deliberately didn't make the N9 available in major markets such as the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain or Italy. Instead, the N9 was launched in secondary markets only. Why would they produce such an interesting device and then deny access to it? Well, Nokia were also working on their first Windows device (the Lumia 800) which was physically very similar to the N9, and presumably they wanted to ensure success by not having the N9 to compete. Well, we know how that turned out.

A strange thing happened though - people still wanted the N9, so there was a lively market on eBay with devices selling for €400 or more. Prices have subsided a little since then,  with prices ranging between about €80 to €300 depending on condition. Much rarer is the Nokia N950, a phone given to developers that has a QWERTY keyboard which can command prices of €1000 or even more.

There are perhaps few devices that highlight the failures within Nokia as well as the N9 does. A brilliant device in many ways, it came out far too late and was killed off at birth by a company that had moved on to a different.. and ultimately unsuccessful strategy. Had this launched a year or 18 months earlier then it would have had an easier time up against the somewhat uneven Android platform that was eating Nokia's sales. But as it is, the Nokia N9 is an interesting and rather sad footnote in the tale of the decline of Nokia.

Retro 5|10: February 2005 and 2010

The Mobile World Congress usually takes place in February, and as a result this is the biggest month in the calendar for new releases. We look at some of the more memorable devices announced five and ten years ago this month.

February 2005

The T-Mobile MDA IV (otherwise known as the HTC Universal and a wide variety of other names) was one of the first smartphones that really did try to offer everything including the kitchen sink. It had a 3.6" VGA-resolution display, QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, dual cameras and expandable memory. The Universal ran Windows Mobile 5.0 and it was probably the most powerful smartphone launched up until that point. It never sold in great numbers and is quite rare today.

T-Mobile MDA IV

Motorola announced several devices this month, but not all of them came to market. The Motorola SLVR L7 was an attempt to bring RAZR-type design to a monoblock phone. Although we noted at the time that the SLVR had a ramshackle launch, it went on to sell quite well. Alongside it was the Motorola PEBL which tool the same basic package and put it into a pebble-like clamshell, although what eventually got to market was not as interesting as the device that was originally shown.

Motorola SLVR

Motorola PEBL

The Motorola E1120 was one of a series of phones that were announced and eventually cancelled. This device had 3G, a QVGA display, expandable memory and a 3 megapixel camera with a photo light, and it ever it had come to market it would have easily out-specified most of the competition. Announced alongside it was the Motorola E1060 which was basically a cheaper but still useful 3G phone, but this was also cancelled. The promising-looking Motorola A1010 smartphone would also have been highly competitive, but this too was canned. Instead, Motorola concentrated on underpowered feature phones such as the RAZR, SLVR and PEBL which eventually led to catastrophe.

Motorola E1120

Motorola E1060

Motorola A1010

Nokia were beginning to develop some very competitive 3G devices, and the Nokia 6680 ran Symbian (which made it a smartphone, even if it didn't have a touchscreen), supported video calling and also had expandable memory. At this moment in time, Nokia had the edge in usability and the 6680 (and the 2G 6681 and 6682) sold rather well.

Nokia 6680, 6681 and 6682

Symbian again featured in the British Sendo X2, a device that would have competed well with everything in its class, except that Sendo went bust and many of their technologies ended up with Motorola instead.

Sendo X2

Also at MWC we saw the Sony Ericsson K600, a 3G phone in a rather elegant package, the almost impossibly compact 3G Samsung Z500 and the almost impossibly rugged Siemens M75.

Sony Ericsson K600

Samsung Z500

Siemens M75

February 2010 The HTC Desire was a highly successful Android smartphone with a 3.7" OLED WVGA screen, 1GHz processor and it was very elegantly designed. The Desire was one of the first Android 2.1 phones on the market, so it shipped with a much more polished and stable OS than earlier Android devices. The cheaper HTC Legend was launched alongside it, featuring a more elegant metal design but the modest specifications meant that it never really became a legend at all. HTC Desire HTC Legend Featuring an absurdly long pair of names, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro were two very tiny Android devices, each featuring a 2.55" QVGA screen and a full Android feature set. The Pro version came with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and the standard version weighed just 88 grams. Although they were quite popular, the tiny screen also rendered them fairly useless except for really basic tasks which a feature phone might have done better, and they were quite unlike the superlative full-sized XPERIA X10 in every way. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Following on from the Vivaz launched in January, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro added a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and looked promising on paper, but the cheap touchscreen and general consumer indifference towards its Symbian operating system meant that it was something of a failure, and this was Sony Ericsson's final Symbian device. Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Where the Vivaz marked something of the end of an era for Sony Ericsson, the Sagem Puma phone was the end of an era for this particular niche French manufacturer. The final Sagem handset to market, this touchscreen feature phone was made in conjunction with sportswear company Puma. Despite some interesting features (such a solar panel), it was not exactly a game changer. Sagem Puma Phone Five years ago manufacturers were still trying to sell touchscreen feature phones, with the very elegant and compact LG GD880 featured alongside the LG Cookie Plus, a replacement for the popular Cookie. In the end, smartphones simply got cheaper and wiped this sort of device out. LG GD880 LG Cookie Plus A detour into kitschiness, the Samsung Diva was an attempt to make a "girly" compact touchscreen phone, with a quilted back and a jewel-shaped navigation key on the front. But the feature set was very disappointing, and frankly the whole thing was rather patronising. Samsung Diva Toshiba are well-known for their Windows laptops, but they had struggled to make an impact in the smartphone market. The Windows-based Toshiba TG02 and K01 attempted to build on the slightly successful TG01. Although the package had some powerful features, it came at a time when Windows sales were tanking, and the tiny 1000 mAh battery meant that it would run out of juice quite quickly. Toshiba K01 Toshiba TG02 Like the Siemens M75 from five years before, the Sonim XP2 Spirit was designed to be very tough, but Sonim took toughness to an entirely new level. Housed in a tough, waterproof chassis the XP2 Spirit could probably survive just about any environment that you would want to use a phone in. Sonim XP2 Spirit The competition from Android meant that sales of Windows phones had almost collapsed, but Microsoft was not prepared to give up. Instead, they went away and completely rethought how a smartphone should work and they came up with the radical Windows Phone 7 instead. In particular, the user interface was very different from rivals and it felt much more modern, and it was very usable on a small device. However, when Microsoft attempted to add this modern UI to their desktop operating systems then things started to go wrong. Windows Phone 7 The Maemo-based Nokia N900 had been announced the previous year, and many people were expecting Nokia to announce a follow-up device at MWC. What happened instead was that Nokia announced that they would merge their Maemo OS with Intel's Moblin OS and come up with a new platform called MeeGo. This was a catastrophic decision as it meant that there was no follow-up to the N900 at a crucial time, and Nokia didn't manage to ship a MeeGo phone until late in 2011. This disruptive merger is probably a major reason why Nokia no longer exists as an independent mobile phone manufacturer today, however MeeGo still lives on, having been absorbed into the Tizen and Jolla operating systems. MeeGo

Retro 5|10: January 2005 and 2010

The beginning of the year traditionally kicks off with the CES show in Las Vegas, which often leads to a lot of US-centric handsets being launched this month.

January 2005

The problem of how to type text on a phone has always been a thorny one, Nokia's idea was to use a sort of "butterfly" keyboard. The Nokia 6822 was another attempt to popularise this type of design, but it didn't really catch on.

Nokia 6822

Samsung were masters of the clamshell phone, and the Samsung E720 was an understated but quite powerful example, featuring an MP3 player with built-in media controls on the outside and it also marked a change of direction for Samsung who finally included Bluetooth.

Samsung E720

Motorola always used to be have a strong presence at CES, and this was certainly the case this year. The two most interesting devices they launched were the attractive Motorola V635 clamshell phone, and the Motorola C698p which featured walkie-talkie style Push-To-Talk (PTT) which was another technology that never really caught on.

Motorola V635

Motorola v698p

January 2010

Five years ago the Android market was beginning to grow rapidly, but all manufacturers were trying to make it their own with different skins and software add-ons. The Google Nexus One was Google's attempt to give consumers a handset that was free of all these additions and to create something that gave a pure Android experience. Nexus owners would also get earlier software updates, and get them for longer. The Nexus was quite successful and its successors are still around today.

Google Nexus One

Smartphone design can be quite dull, with a tendency to produce black or white slabs with no character. The Android-based LG Optimus GT540 was certainly a much more interesting design and was a good attempt to differentiate a product which was a bit dull underneath. Despite the looks, it seemed that consumers were quite happy with their slabs after all.

LG Optimus GT540

Another Android phone - and another phone trying to include a QWERTY keyboard in the design - the Motorola BACKFLIP had a clever hinge arrangement that flipped it between a device with a keyboard and a more conventional tablet. You can gauge the success of this idea by the fact that physical keyboards are essentially extinct today.

Motorola BACKFLIP

Not every smartphone launched this month was an Android phone. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz ran Symbian, but despite an attractive design this was almost Sony Ericsson's last Symbian device. And underwhelming specification and an unappealing cheap touchscreen didn't help.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Just in case you thought that HTC only made Android and Windows smartphones, here is something rather different. Running its own "HTC Sense" platform based on Qualcomm's BREW environment, the HTC Smart attempted to bring smartphone-style features to consumers on a budget. It was not a success.

HTC Smart

The LG GW990 was announced five years ago this month. Running the Intel-backed Moblin operating system, the GW990 also packed an Intel CPU inside and it was envisaged that there would be an LTE variant. Moblin was a version of Linux, functionally similar to Android or iOS, but the GW990 never came to market and Moblin eventually merged with Maemo to become the ill-fated MeeGo operating system.

LG GW990