Orange and Nokia to co-operate on services

[Rafe]

Orange and Nokia today announced a three year strategic international partnership on mobile services. The two companies will work together to provider users with an offering of music, games, advertising, maps and location based services. The relationship will see 10 Nokia handsets added to the Orange Signature range with services integrated into the familiar Orange user interface.

Read on in the full article.

Hmm, interesting. Isn't it Orange's branding that's traditionally notorious (especially on NSeries phones) for killing both features and phone performance? (anyone would think they were running Windows Vista ;-) ) The forums used to be full of people who'd noticed huge benefits to having all Orange branding removed...

[lovesign]

Indeed. I've had 2 Orange branded N Series (N73 & N95) and have found them to have been crippled by the Orange FW. I instantly debranded and haven't looked back.

I'm treating this announcement with caution until I see for myself what happens.

I don't mind having Orange themes or wallpapers, or even Orange apps (All of which I can remove/turn off/choose not to use), but if they turn off built in generic, crucial and essential aspects of the devices firmware as they have done in the past, then we are no further on and I will keep debranding.