Question Serious Question: what happened to premium Nokia phones?

[shortylickens]

I am not the kind of guy who goes thru 2 or 3 phones a year. I never was. Not unless I got a junk product and needed to change. Recently AT&T forced me to give up my Nokia 6 which had a solid aluminum body and nice display and good battery. By the way it does support their 4g network but never made it on the "Approved" list so it was not going to be allowed on their network. The new Nokias were all plastic and had relatively poor features across the board, like weak batteries (relative to other brands) low res screens and flimsy plastic bodies. Went with a Samsung and its passable but not ideal.
Does anybody remember when they always had one or two high end models for Android at any given time? Sure they had plenty of small, slow, plastic phones but there was always at least one premium phone around. I used to like them back in the glory days, and even thru most of the Android years, but they aren't doing much to impress me today.

/rant

 

[quikah]

They haven't had a premium phone since the Windows days. Once MS sold the mobile division to in 2016 they released nothing but midrange phones. Frankly, there is no money in the premium phone business unless you are Apple or Samsung.

 

[Tech Junky]

Nokia hasn't been a player in the handset realm for at least a decade now.

You don't want SS or apple then the next best is OnePlus. The op11 holds its weight against both of them. No one needs a 200MP selfie camera unless you want to count your pores. The op11 has everything they have and then some like WiFi 7/ esim or dual physical sims. Charges in minutes even with USB PD or the proprietary charger.

 

[nOOky]

The OP11 doesn't have wireless charging or an IP68 rating, which is huge. Other than that for the price it would sell much better imho. I miss LG phones, at least they stuffed everything in and could be had for a decent price. Sony isn't even a viable option if you read about the issues with their top tier phone. You'd think a giant like Sony could put out a competitive product. And Motorola, I'm not even sure what they have these days. I think the best option that's not Samsung or Apple is the Pixel, and when you option those with 512gb of storage the price is up there also.

 

[Tech Junky]

wireless charging

Considering you can charge it 100% on the average daily commute waiting hours for wireless charging doesn't make sense anymore. Doing wireless charging slows it down to apple / SS speeds of 15-20W when wired charging pushes up to 100W. Simple math says it would take 5X longer.

IP68

Snorkeling with your phone?

Sony

Never did take them seriously when it came to phones. They did have some intrigue for a period of time but then faded off in the sunset quickly.

LG

They had some things going for them early on but the plastic chassis didn't have the right feel.

Motorola

This is the OG legacy maker. They have some stuff keeping them relevant but, just lack enough appeal at the moment. The only intrigue right now is their flip phones which takes us back to the 90's / 00's but with better HW.

Pixel

Was an option until they went in house with the CPUGPU. Now, it's a one off to compare to Qualcomm based units. The 6 felt a bit light and dangerous w/o a case as it was likely to be dropped.

512gb of storage

That's a bit overkill unless you're using your phone to backup your Windows PC. 128GB is decent enough for music + photos but the sweet spot for not worrying about space would be 256GB w/o getting kicked in the nuts for price of a 512 option. The phone storage game has always been an issue when you compare prices to similar storage prices on the PC side. In reality a 512 model should only be about $50 more than the 256 but, they want 100-200+ for the extra space.


It all comes down to what you want / use though when picking a handset though. There are some nice international options though but, the tradeoff though will be the channels / bands they support domestically. Even some brands are region locking them to protect sales in other markets. This frequency check is a thing to keep an eye on though when considering a $500+ investment while wandering around and needing data / voice. Then the other issue is the provider side of things where ATT / VZW are playing catchup for network speed and messing around with mmWave and failing still.

 

[nOOky]

You made several assumptions about what people really need or can do without in a phone. However going backwards in specs such as wireless charging and IP rating doesn't sell mainstream any more. I for one carry my current phone in a pocket and it gets sweaty and even wet, and I have taken video underwater of fish, it's cool. I also charge wirelessly in my vehicle and at work, and it's easier than plugging and unplugging a cable etc. and you don't get the port damage if you like to handle your phone roughly, like my wife does. Plus the OP11 requires the charging brick that comes with it, but at least they supply it I guess.

I also have all of my pictures and music on my phone from 2018, they won't fit on 256gig and I don't want to carry a device to plug into my phone to find an image from 2019 so assuming 512 is too much or not needed is only an assumption. I also like to keep my work pictures and video on the internal storage, and switch my personal stuff to the memory card. I use my phone a lot for work. I can make do without all sorts of features, but don't want to go back.

Samsung ads pop up for the new S23 on my social media all the time, and the biggest complaint is the lack of a memory card slot. People don't want to pay $100 for an extra 128 gigs of space when you can buy 4 times that with a card. Plus the dang thing still uses a sim card tray, so incorporating the card into that like my Note 20 seems like it shouldn't have been impossible.

Just my 2 cents for how I use a phone. Sometimes I even make phone calls on it!

 

[Tech Junky]

OP11 requires the charging brick that comes with it

No, that's not right. I charge mine off three different chargers and none of them are the one that came with it.

also have all of my pictures and music on my phone from 2018, they won't fit on 256gig

Hope you have them backed up.

Plus the dang thing still uses a sim card tray, so incorporating the card into that

There's dual pSIM and when you enable the eSIM it disables the 2nd pSIM. So, you can stay old school and do dual pSIM or save eSIMs internally and only use pSIM for travel. In my case I have dual sims sitting in it as one is active and the other is ready to activate when the current one expires.

 

[nOOky]

No, that's not right. I charge mine off three different chargers and none of them are the one that came with it.

It does for the full 80 watt charging, of course any other charger will work, just not at the full wattage.


Hope you have them backed up.

I do, I'm not that stupid.


There's dual pSIM and when you enable the eSIM it disables the 2nd pSIM. So, you can stay old school and do dual pSIM or save eSIMs internally and only use pSIM for travel. In my case I have dual sims sitting in it as one is active and the other is ready to activate when the current one expires.

Yes having a dual sim slot means that technologically they could still put the emery card spot in the tray, they just chose the business model that screws consumers.