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#271
Originally Posted by Crashdamage View Post
Point is, Nokia has supported the N900 with updates for a year, about what I expected when I got it. That's about as long as my old G1 Android phone was supported. With things changing so fast and devices obsolete in not years or months, but weeks, it's probably no longer realistic to expect companies to support such devices much more than a year.
If you as a consumer begin to expect a product to EOSL one year after release then you're rewarding Nokia's bad behavior. Just because you have disposable income doesn't everyone can or even wants to buy a new phone that quickly.

When it comes to support, it is not unreasonable to have a company continue to provide adequate support at least ONE year AFTER the the follow-on product has released. Yes, this may seem strange and unreasonable to you, but it is normal for companies to continue to provide support for products even after the follow-on has released. NEVER have I heard it to be standard practice to EOSL a product before its follow-on has arrived. Now, you can argue the one year after, but at minimum you move into sustaining level support the day the follow-on arrives.

YES, this is NORMAL.

The assumption you also have is that the N900 was "feature complete" when it released and we know that it was beta at release. That's fine, but that doesn't mean you don't finish what you start. The fact that you would suggest that Nokia's behavior of moving quickly to sustaining level support at PR 1.3 with no more support updates 1 year after release has more to do with your desire to buy a new toy than most who desire to receive adequate support for the life of the product.

So let's say you don't like my sustaining level support after the follow-on (In this case the N9) releases. Let's take another example. Most cellphone plans are two years.

What does that mean? Carriers and manufactures expect a consumer to keep a phone for AT LEAST 2 years.

Now, some plans are one and some are three, but I think two years is a good median. If consumers are expected to be on contract with a phone for 2 years, it is not unreasonable for the handset manufacturer to continue to bring updates to products in that two year window as well. This is an industry standard.

The fact of the matter is that you can't move into "sustaining level support" until you STOP selling a product, then starts the final 2 year that a consumer is EXPECTED to be on contract and the handset is ALSO expected to continue to provide support.

One year to support a device is simply wrong. I hope you don't work for Nokia. Nokia needs consumer advocates that want the best for the customer and not those that try to squeeze the bottom line when its convenient for them to be lazy.

Last edited by geohsia; 2010-12-12 at 09:48.
 

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#272
Originally Posted by geohsia View Post
If you as a consumer begin to expect a product to EOSL one year after release then you're rewarding Nokia's bad behavior. Just because you have disposable income doesn't everyone can or even wants to buy a new phone that quickly.

When it comes to support, it is not unreasonable to have a company continue to provide adequate support at least ONE year AFTER the the follow-on product has released. Yes, this may seem strange and unreasonable to you, but it is normal for companies to continue to provide support for products even after the follow-on has released. NEVER have I heard it to be standard practice to EOSL a product before its follow-on has arrived. Now, you can argue the one year after, but at minimum you move into sustaining level support the day the follow-on arrives.

YES, this is NORMAL.

The assumption you also have is that the N900 was "feature complete" when it released and we know that it was beta at release. That's fine, but that doesn't mean you don't finish what you start. The fact that you would suggest that Nokia's behavior of moving quickly to sustaining level support at PR 1.3 with no more support updates 1 year after release has more to do with your desire to buy a new toy than most who desire to receive adequate support for the life of the product.

So let's say you don't like my sustaining level support after the follow-on (In this case the N9) releases. Let's take another example. Most cellphone plans are two years.

What does that mean? Carriers and manufactures expect a consumer to keep a phone for AT LEAST 2 years.

Now, some plans are one and some are three, but I think two years is a good median. If consumers are expected to be on contract with a phone for 2 years, it is not unreasonable for the handset manufacturer to continue to bring updates to products in that two year window as well. This is an industry standard.

One year to support a device is simply wrong. I hope you don't work for Nokia. Nokia needs consumer advocates that want the best for the customer and not those that try to squeeze the bottom line when its convenient for them to be lazy.
Nonsense! In Europe the average person gets a new phone every 9-15 months. And keep in mind, this is the average. A typical phone geek gets a new phone every month or even more often. This doesn't mean that some devices are kept longer than others (N900 vs iPhone for instance ).

The contract enslavement is a US phenomenon, a small percentage of the total users and not at all representative of the average user.
 
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#273
Can someone change the bloody title?
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#274
Originally Posted by ericsson View Post
Nonsense! In Europe the average person gets a new phone every 9-15 months. And keep in mind, this is the average. A typical phone geek gets a new phone every month or even more often. This doesn't mean that some devices are kept longer than others (N900 vs iPhone for instance ).

The contract enslavement is a US phenomenon, a small percentage of the total users and not at all representative of the average user.
Let's think this through.

Does everyone buy the phone the day it releases? NO. The N900 is still actively being sold. Should support end now? NO. If today someone starts a 2 year contract in US or Europe or wherever, what expectations should there be for Nokia? I think the expectations are that they should support it for the life of the user's contract. If they stopped selling it tomorrow, then support should end two years after tomorrow.

BTW, your assertion that Vodaphone, Orange and T-Mobile don't have 2 year contracts outside the US is not true. Contracts are not specific to the US. Google it. The fact that the US leans heavily toward contracts does not mean contracts aren't used in other parts of the world.
 

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#275
Originally Posted by geohsia View Post
Let's think this through.

Does everyone buy the phone the day it releases? NO. The N900 is still actively being sold. Should support end now? NO. If today someone starts a 2 year contract in US or Europe or wherever, what expectations should there be for Nokia? I think the expectations are that they should support it for the life of the user's contract. If they stopped selling it tomorrow, then support should end two years after tomorrow.

BTW, your assertion that Vodaphone, Orange and T-Mobile don't have 2 year contracts outside the US is not true. Contracts are not specific to the US. Google it. The fact that the US leans heavily toward contracts does not mean contracts aren't used in other parts of the world.
Well, it's not Nokias fault that you are stupid/cheap enough to get sucked into a 2 year contract. Besides, if you are a phone enthusiast, why in heavens name would you do such a thing? I mean, if you purchase work phones for your employees - yes a two year plan makes sense in some circumstances if you get a good offer, but for private use? Why? It makes no sense at all, you give away all your benefits as a customer of both the phone and the carrier.

Anyway, my main point is that support != updates. Nokia will support the N900 for a long time, but that does not necessarily mean more updates of the OS.
 
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#276
I wonder what the problem is, besides Nokia being content with the state of the OS as it is now.

PR 1.3 is a mature OS (as mature as Nokia is able to do). The hildon desktop stuff and some other things are open source and the community can and will continue to improve it now that Nokia stopped messing with it (they already stopped that in August).
The phone works as advertised and the N900 is a good phone for everyday's use.
Nokia's continued patch support for the N900 wouldn't change a thing with the Ovi store situation.
There are lots of applications available in the maemo-extras repository, and this is not going to stop soon.
The N900 is equipped with Qt 4.7 (which not even Symbian has right now). The only two consumer devices with Qt 4.7 today are the N900 and the WeTab (since 2 days ago) AFAIK. When doing cross-device development for MeeGo, developers can treat the N900 as MeeGo device. It works. But since this is still all young, it takes its time to take off.
Instinctiv need to make money for a living. The Ovi store cannot deliver that on the N900 and will never because there are not enough units sold for a critical mass. This is Nokia's fault, but it was also their intention to make the device available mostly to early adopters and developers, instead of going mainstream immediately. Maemo6, now rebranded MeeGo, was intended for Nokia's mainstream Linux debut.
They communicated that clearly before sales started and always tried to avoid making a hype of the N900.

Phone contracts are usually for two years but people who wish to change can put the SIM card into a new phone. My SIM went from a G1 into the N900 without problems.
Still, there's no need to abandon the N900 if Nokia decided to stop publishing updates.

And if you're missing 100.000 of apps (for what? trying one after the other in boredom because they're all crap? yes, then you'd need a huge number to cover a two year's time), the N900 has never been the right phone for you and would never become.
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#277
@geoshia
-Nokia is not in favor of those contracts (check case USA,customer locked to specific SP)
-IMO those contracts are generally bad deal for customer. You should never ever buy something from this prize category if you can't afford to it.
-Contracts are not common in all the countries.
-Contracts were invetend by service provides(not by Nokia) to suck money out of customer.
---IMO Actually service provider takes responsibility give support in contracts cases.
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#278
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
It appears on every spec page of the N900. No native MMS, no 3G video calls, no individual ringtone per contact, no text2speech engine for reading text messages or announcing callers' names, OS only designed for landscape orientation, no voice dialling, ...
None of that bothers me, partly beause I knew they were missing. And, since it was a beta device, I expected them to be added in time. I mean, it was a software issue mostly. And with OTA, I thought I'd wake up one morning and see MMS added.

Let's not forget that it's not what's missing in the specs page that got everyone upset.
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#279
@Ericsson - I bought my phone unlocked. The question isn't who is stupid and who is not, but industry standards which is what I think we are discussing. While folks do not like it, it exists and understanding reasonable support timeframes that apply for a variety of contexts is important. In your logic, a person should ALWAYS buy when a phone is brand new otherwise, they will only get support for a few months. That's simply ludicrous.

Nokia also sells to non-enthusiasts. I remember when the N900 was launched in Hong Kong. You mean every Hong Kong user is a Linux hacker? That was certainly not the way they were promoting it.

Support != updates, (is true) but from intents and purposes, the N900 has moved into sustaining level service waay too early when it shouldn't be. That's the point. Go back and reread my posts in that context.

@Slender - True. The context of the discussion is what is "industry standard" and I still refute the point that 1 year of support (updates) is sufficient as others claim.
 

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#280
Originally Posted by ndi View Post
And, since it was a beta device, I expected them to be added in time. I mean, it was a software issue mostly. And with OTA, I thought I'd wake up one morning and see MMS added.
what made you expect that? that's just not reasonable. consumers constructing such unrealistic expectations is probably the issue here, not nokia's way of treating the device.
 
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