Sunday Thought: Should S40 Sport Better Hardware?
Devin Ballentina from The Nokia Guide asked a highly pertinent question a few days ago: Should Nokia get more advanced S40 phones? His post made me stop for a while and ponder. Sure, he is absolutely right, but then again he isn’t… I’ve been thinking about this question for a few days, and I still don’t know whether I agree or disagree with him. Here are my reasons:
S40 handsets should sport better hardware
Today, I celebrate my one month anniversary in Paris. Ever since I came here, I’ve been spinning my head right and left, trying to catch the trends, see which devices are most prominent, and make connotations between devices and owners’ style. I was surprised to see so many N95s and N95 8GBs around, mostly carried by young men, hip or businessmen at the same rate. I guess the N95 still totts that iconic halo around it. Yet, aside from the N95s and N95 8GBs, I have barely spotted any other N or Eseries. One E71, two E65s. That’s about it. What other handsets do people carry? Well, most middle-aged people carry old Nokias, you know, old S40 “dumbphones”. As for teenage girls and women aged around 20 to 30 years, the most frequent handset is any Samsung or LG slider. It’s a crystal clear victory for Samsung/LG with the female audience. Of course, this is just the big picture.
I visited the operators shops, looking for clues and explanations to this trend, and noticed that amongst the cheap offerings (1-10 euros with a contract), there are a lot of Samsung/LG sliders. These don’t run on Windows Mobile or on S60, they are just superbly well-built and compact handsets, that have some pretty decent hardware specs to back them up, and don’t scare people away with an overcomplicated key cluster like that swirly button (Menu key on S60). It’s clear that Samsung and LG have nailed this demographic segment. They understood that decent hardware is NOT NECESSARILY supposed to be featured on a smartphone, and that some people would want a 3.2MP or 5MP camera without the bells and whistles of WM or S60.
As for Nokia, their most decent proposals in this category are the 5610 and the 6500 Slide. There is no S40 handset with a 5MP camera or with GPS and very very few S40 handsets with WiFi for example. This is why I am keen to believe that it would make sense somehow if they took the E66’s exterior and hardware features and put S40 on it. With an extremely decent price unsubsidized (EUR200 maximum) and almost free with operator contracts, that handset could kill!
Instead of making the smart cheaper, let’s make the cheap smarter
Nokia knows where they came from and that their greatest sales reside in the S40 category. They also know that although Nseries and Eseries don’t generate as much sales as S40, they play an immense role in S40’s own sales. I have heard a lot of people tell me “I buy Nokia handsets because they have the best handsets out there, but I can’t afford them, so I get their cheaper offerings”. This leads me to think that S40 is highly tied to S60 in Nokia’s portfolio, even though for us, S60 fanatics, the difference is huge.
This tight relationship is something I have been pondering about ever since Nokia bought Symbian and decided to make it Open Source. What becomes of S40? Does it survive the Symbian Foundation, or does it get dropped out steadily and slowly? I am more inclined to the 2nd answer because Nokia has done a lot of moves recently to higher the resemblance between S40 and S60: I recently bought my mother a 7310 Supernova and found the interface more similar to my N82 than to my old 6610. Another reason is that if Nokia wants to focus on software & services right now, as much as on hardware, they would need all their arsenal to be services-ready, and N-Gage, Nokia Maps and Share Online only work on S60. Has Nokia been working in the background for a few years now to prepare the doom of S40 and ease up the transition for S40 users to S60? I don’t know, but probably yes.
So where does that leave us from the better hardware on S40 debate? Well, I tend to disagree with Devin, and think that instead of bringing better hardware features to S40, Nokia is about to let go of S40 progressively in at least 3-4 years time, and hence negate the reason for the debate. There will be cheap smartphones with fewer hardware specs, and expensive smartphones with cooler features, but all will be smartphones. In the meantime, it would be reasonable for them to make a few higher-specc’ed S40 handsets.
This is my two cents, what’s yours?
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptDevin Ballentina from The Nokia Guide asked a highly pertinent question a few days ago: Should Nokia get more advanced S40 phones? His post made me stop for a while and ponder. Sure, he is absolutely right, but then again he isn’t… I’ve been thinking about this question for a few days, and I still don’t know whether I agree or disagree with him. Here are my reasons: S40 handsets should sport better hardware Today, I celebrate my one month anniversary in Paris. Ever since I came here, I’ve [...]
The way i see it, Symbian OS is way too complicated for average users, and less than average ones. I’d been using S40 devices for over 8 years before switching to S60, and i wouldn’t call the S40 dumb ones. Like Ricky said back in Feb, there’s much S60 must learn from S40 – the Symbianless devices – if there’s such a word.
I’m not sure if I totally agree with the idea that S40 devices will perish, I just feel it would be a loss for Nokia if they do that because like you said some people tend to go for LG and Samsung – which in my opinion have some dumber devices than Nokia S40s, the latters now sporting features similar to S60 but with a faster UI, and ruling out the S40s would mean no more competition in that market sector.
You see S40 devices have come a long way, and though they tend to become similar to S60, they still have a few tricks to outperform the more powerful Nseries for instance. My last S40 device was the 5610 XpressMusic which i really loved, it had an amazing cam, crystal clear sound, loaded music in no time, and had FULL SCREEN WALLPAPERS! I totally agree that S60 devices are the real deal here, in fact I’m the proud owner of the almighty N82 but i still feel some people don’t need that much complication in their lives. You can still copy, paste text, send/get emails, and have fun with a couple of Java apps on an S40 and that would be enough for average Joe. Bear in mind that not all people are mobile freaks like us, not all of them are interested in music, or need Wi-Fi, and surely not all of them would tolerate that split second it takes to load the contact list or open the inbox in S60 devices… so here’s where S40 comes to the rescue. So I say let’s make the cheap smarter.
Oh and by the way, i used to love how the name of the caller would appear with a photo next to it (if assigned) on the home screen after a missed call or sms on S40 5th edition devices, something i miss now on my N82.
First of all I’m glad you’re in France now Dotsisx. It will give you the opportunity to have an insight of the french mobile market and to share your opinions with all of us (beside of your studies, of course :-p), so welcome in France, and happy first month to you !!
I think it will be very interesting to have insights of two very different market here on S-G: the US market with the Guru, and the french one, with you now.
Back to the topic.
One of my friends decided to go to another operator (for a ‘better’ contract) today and he decided to change his mobile phone as well (subsidized). Guess what brand he chose ? LG !! He took an LG KF600 and when I asked him what particular features does the phone have, he didn’t have any idea (apart from the evident touch ‘pad’ under the screen) !! I mean, we were a group of 4 person at the moment, two of us had smartphones (me with my E71 and another friend with an HTC Touch Diamond) and the other two had dumbphones. He could have picked a smartphone in the choice offered by his new operator, but he just went for the first (and most) “look-how-shiny-I-am” phone he saw. It cost him a single euro (yes, you read right: 1€), so that pretty settles it for him: it was shiny and almost free (and unlocked) so that’s it.
People just go for the most beautiful phone you give them, so I think Nokia should really let go of S40 and begin to put S60 in beautiful “cases”. The more beautiful and affordable phones with wifi, gps, camera we get, the happier we will all be.
@nt1,
I realize that S40 has a huge popularity and a lot of benefits over S60 (and thank you for showing me those over the past months), BUT what I’m trying to say here, since I think I failed at making my point clear, is that due to the Symbian Foundation and S60 going open source, S40 will no longer be, in the long run (we’re not talking about today or tomorrow). Nokia is doing its best to higher S40’s performance/features in order to make it easier on people to switch from S40 to S60, whenever that happens.
It is also my belief that the more we move ahead in time, the more people are going to need handsets to be more connected, more featured, more capable. Look at today’s youth, they almost all carry smartphones, not just S60 but others as well. They know how to go online, search for devices features and choose the best ones, not just based on looks but also on what it can accomplish. Email, gaming, maps, web browsing, all are becoming more and more incorporated into their lifestyle. Just yesterday, I spotted (at separate times) two 15-16 yr old girls in the metro with an N95 8GB! That’s not a handset you would normally fit in this market! Anyway, my point is, before I drift again, that tomorrow’s youth will be even more demanding than today’s, and so the cycle goes, more and more people wanting more and more features. I doubt S40 could respond to all demands, though I am sure it will respond to many.
A good thing would be for Nokia to take the awesome unique features of S40, and implement them somehow in S60. Or we can wait for someone else from the Symbian Foundation to do that ;)
Merlin,
Right on the money. There are still a lot of people who buy a handset based on looks, and in the short term, Nokia needs to work on its smartphone look and feel. But as I said to @nt1 above, more people are becoming aware of the endless possibilities on their handsets, and going for features instead of looks. That’s compared to a few years ago where smartphones were just geeks’ toys.