Nokia announce the 5250, a touchscreen smartphone for 115 Euros, all-in

Looks quite good - seems Nokia is finding its design mojo again. However, absence of virtually everything is a bummer though - it was acceptable for 523x since it had that big screen.

This is why those market share figures are so unreliable. This may run a smartphone OS, but it's not a smartphone, and is not aimed at the smartphone user.

More to the point, it shakes up the whole concept of smartphones and reinforces the point that we should perhaps simply be talking about 'phones', a device segment that goes right the way from £20 to £700.

With an acknowledgement that the companies at the top end will sell a lot less but will make a lot more profit per unit, naturally.

What do you think?

Exactly what my Mom needs. No more, no less. It will be a huge success.

"This is why those market share figures are so unreliable. This may run a smartphone OS, but it's not a smartphone, and is not aimed at the smartphone user."

However, tons of users buying these cheap smartphones, will their use their functions and download apps and games regardless. These cheap ones here ARE smartphones (just give me one reason why this is NOT a smartphone?).

So unless you want to redefine what a smartphone is.....well, I am sure Nokia is comfortable doing just that. However Apple propably finds it really annoying >:-)

I'd doubt these will be used as smartphones because they'll be sold on the types of contracts/PAYG that don't have data plans. No 3G rules it for networks like Three also.

Also, why would you buy this when a 5230 can be had for about £60-80 anyway, including 3G and GPS and card slot? My kids aren't going to want this as Facebook will be slow and there's no space for music or pictures.

What Nokia needed was a redesigned 5230 with Symbian^3 and maybe WiFi.

As has been pointed out, this phone is technically a smartphone, even though it lack many/all of the features a "true smartphone" user would want & need.

While it would be difficult to retrospectively re-define the term "smartphone", it would be possible to create a new class of phone that's more advanced than a basic smartphone --> how about a geniusphone? :cool:

Exactly - which is why the term 'superphone' has been floating around, to refer to devices like the Droid X and EVO 4G in the USA and Samsung Galaxy S and imminent Desire HD over here....

Hi Folks,

The definition of smart phone vs feature phone is totally artificial anyway. It is used by phone manufactures to mean whatever they want depending upon their market slant.

The reality is for consumers, they do not care and would struggle to see a different between say low-end Symbian and high-end S40. Multitasking might be about it, but how many people buy Symbian phones and do not know they can do multitasking.

It used to be that smartphones were defined by the hardware split, if they had a dedicated apps processor it was a smartphone, if the apps was integrated with the BB and shared typically it was a feature phone.

Of course even that is now gone as you cannot tell looking at the hardware anymore if it is a smartphone or feature phone.

Cheers,

Kevin McIntyre

Hi Steve,

Again I think this is just an attempt to define the market to suit ones particular market segmentation. Today's Superphone is tomorrows smartphone and today's smartphone is tomorrows feature phone.

Those devices you mention from a sw perspective are no different to other devices, the only difference is their hardware capability, and not convinced this is a good way to segment devices.

Kevin

Okay Nokia, you've proven you can make the cheapest....nigh, the SIX cheapest smartphones ever. It's high time to get back to releasing some nicer stuff so all my Android-toting friends will stop making fun of me.

Call it what you like according to your own peculiar definitions (it is, in fact, a smartphone - using the only accepted definition of the term (i.e. accepted by industry experts and analysts the world over) - runs a smartphone OS that one can install 3rd party apps on).

Fact is:

a.) Ordinary folk can do a LOT more with this than they could with a featurephone BECAUSE it has Symbian and you can install 3rd party apps. All those powerful apps that are available to Symbian on Ovi Store (in the future as well as now) will be available to ordinary Joe Punter. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether he knows his phone runs Symbian, is 'smart' or whatever, point is he reaps the benefits anyway. THAT is the power, and the joy in running Symbian, the world's best mobile OS by FAR.

b.) Android and even more so iPhone simply have no answer to a device of this power at this price point. And it is here at this price point (and below) that it is PROVEN how much much better the engineering, maturity, featureset, and ability of Symbian is over any other smartphone OS out there (and indeed featurephone OS too). Android (etc) is simply not architected and engineered to be able to run on hardware at this price point.

At these sort of price points and below Symbian just hit the turbo boost, floored the accelerator and left Android in the dust.

And just to ram my point home - where is all the future growth in the mobile world? In emerging markets/developing world. And what do they not have? Lots of money. So will be buying a handset with more power at a cheaper price. The only choice being this of thing running Symbian. And the icing on the cake is this segment of the world already loves Nokia far and away beyond other brands.

c.) This sort of device selling many tens of millions is why Symbian will be WAY out in the lead in smartphone sales and market share for a long time to come - the industry fully accepts this device as a smartphone, so Android/iPhone lovers need to stop trying to desperately redefine the term 'smartphone' to make themselves feel better.

d.) How many hundreds of millions of devices running Symbian AND Ovi Store do developers need before the gold rush starts to developing for Symbian? Trust me, this is going to be an app gold rush like you have not seen before.

"Okay Nokia, you've proven you can make the cheapest....nigh, the SIX cheapest smartphones ever. It's high time to get back to releasing some nicer stuff so all my Android-toting friends will stop making fun of me."

The N8, kicks the living shit out of all the Android devices currently available. Just had my hands on it again. Wow....and it is not even Nokia's flagship device. Supposedly that is supposed to be the N9 at the end of the year. Screw that, I am getting a N8 right now!

Performance wise, it would be interesting to see how this compares with, say the N70. Ok, it doesn't have 3G (not did the first iPhone), but add a Bluetooth GPS unit and you could probably run nav software on it, just like I used to do with the N70 and Navicore.

And I'd say that, by that measure, it would surely count as a smart device. Might not have all the bells and whistles, but a lot of people don't actually need those.

Too much time and energy is wasted discussing what is and isn't a smartphone.

It doesn't matter. It's pointless worrying about it. Only about 0.0000001% of the population of the world gives a s***.

Of course it does, and the iPhone 4 too (not difficult). Some of us never doubted that :) I'm glad to see others realising it.

People believed the hype about rival platforms and just don't seem to get it - Symbian really is the best mobile OS out there by a long way, Apple and Google really are amateurs at mobile devices and mobile OSes, and Nokia really are pro's after doing it for years. Yes, they had a little slip up in the UI dept for a short while. Yes they will come back and OWN the high end (as the N8 and N9 will show), mid range (as the N8 and other lower-mid-range S^3 devices will show) and low end (as the lovely little device above shows).

Some of us never lost faith :)

wow @delusional and @delusional-er ... yes nokia have a lot of experience and yes they used to be the top dog in the smartphone market but they aren't anymore ... not because i say so or because ppl here say so but because they have lost the hearts and minds of developers and the buzz that used to be around them when the N95 was lanuched ... much like microsoft these days not many people outside of the fanboys really care when they launch something new anymore as the last several releases have been somewhat disappointing to say the least ... of course "they can always get right back in the game and be top again" just like microsoft can ... but it hasn't happened yet and the longer they take to release something that actually wows the market the harder it will be for them

"oh that stupid android and iOS stuff is soooooooooo america ... what about the rest of the world?" you say ... well how much of the internet as we see it is based in america? created by american companies? and the whole world follows and uses it no?

facebook twitter myspace youtube google etc etc you get my point

the tech industry in america drives the world more and more and ignoring it (orworse, saying it is irrelevant) is quite silly to say the least

having been a nokia user for years (i still have my N86) i got an android phone 4 months ago and it has been a revelation ... the apps available make it the most flexible mobile device i have ever owned and i am loving the integration of those apps into the whole device experience ... nothing like it exists on nokia phones currently

of course my N86 has a camera that is so far ahead of anything on any android device to date that it is quite painful and i do still use it as a camera ... both video and pics ... but apart from that i have moved my htc desire to being my main device and it is working for me

just my 2c worth

Yeah, sure it's a smart phone (barely), but it's not in the same market segment as Super Phones, like the Evo or iPhone 4,

Could you lend me your time traveling DeLorean, so that I also can let people know how a device that isn't even shipping until October at the earliest is better than stuff that's on the market *right now*?

K? Thanks.

Naturally, Nokia will sell a ton of these to the feature phone market, which will bolster their market share numbers. Market share has never been Nokia's problem.

I think we are clearly seeing that Symbian is Nokia's replacement for S40. MeeGo will be what does battle with Android and iOS. Symbian is basically a glorified feature phone OS that will compete in markets where Android and iOS don't. Sure, there will be a few higher end Symbian phones (N8), but they seem to be stopgaps while MeeGo is in development.

KPOM

I kinda disagree, looks alot more like Nokia is going for a standard OS and feel on it's range of smart phones. They have already stated there could be a Symbian^4 N series device.

like mentioned in the last podcast, it will allow them to roll out firmware updates quicker and provide an easier upgrade route for it's clients in terms of familiarity with the OS. Anyone who has used Symbian^1 will be equally at home with Symbian^3 and 4.

I suspect there will be one or two more Symbian^1 devices, then a few more Symbian^3, like C7 and E7 etc.

I think a good definition of a smartphone is one that runs open os - i.e. native APIs open for developers to make aaps for a user to install. Native apps, not just MIDP Java. But generally the world is shifting so that it does not make that much sense any more to use the word smartphone. Especially since the non-smartphones are getting better also - e.g. X3 touch&type.

Why? Specifically.

Because all indication is that is where they are headed.

They have hinted that the N8 isn't their new flagship, and that MeeGo devices will be announced by the end of the year. They have also started using the term "superphone," apparently recognizing that the "smartphone/featurephone" distinction is being blurred as technology advances.

As Android is starting to move to the midmarket, Nokia is looking to move further downmarket with Symbian (mostly with the aging Symbian^1).

While there will be some commonality between Symbian^4 and MeeGo because of the commong QT platform, note that it will be a stretch to think that Nokia's Symbian^1 positioning at the low end really plays into that strategy. Symbian^4 is yet another compatibility break (with Symbian^3 being the temporary bridge), as it relies on QT. However, Symbian^4 (and Symbian^3 for that matter) will not run on devices like the 5250, at least for the foreseeable future.

With the common development platform, plus MeeGo's Linux underpinnings (better suited to the "superphones" and tablet devices to compete with the likely iOS devices) it becomes difficult to see what Symbian^4's role is long term.

Rafe suggests as much with his earlier comments about how the Symbian/MeeGo split is appearing "shrewd" (if, IMO, somewhat accidental). Clearly, Symbian is optimized for lower-end hardware, while MeeGo is better suited to the newer devices down the pipeline with dual core processors and lots of RAM. Symbian was never intended for such powerful devices, so it makes more sense for Nokia to go in a different direction. Given how long it has taken for Symbian to evolve into the touch device market (recall the early announcements were made shortly after the original iPhone debuted), it's clear that it has proven more difficult to adapt than anticipated.

Surely Nokia would rather have had an OS like Symbian^3 a year or even two years ago, with Symbian^4 coming out now. But they didn't. They are now finally entering Q4-10 with an OS that addresses consumer perception that Symbian was behind Android and iOS.

Nokia's semi-retraction of its earlier intimation that future N-series devices would be MeeGo-only seems more like a temporary reaction to avoid scaring developers away. They need developers to embrace Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 since that will be their bread and butter until MeeGo hits the mainstream. Long term, it seems pretty clear that Nokia sees MeeGo as their ticket back to preeminence at the high end.

Sounds like many comments coming from the AAS team who are unregistered. The only thing the N8 will kick is their own arse. They will realise it takes more than N8 and N9 to recapture the high end market. I haven't even looked at the N8 as an option and I'm only into high end phones.