In terms of hardware, the Nokia 6 offers a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 2.5D curved glass, Snapdragon 430 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot, dual-SIM connectivity, 16MP camera at the back with PDAF, Dolby Atmos sound with stereo speakers, Bluetooth 4.1, LTE, 3000mAh battery, and a fingerprint sensor. The phone runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.
Not exactly the most exciting phone.
It’s not NOKIA. As it says in the beginning of the article, one company acquired rights to NOKIA brand and is now putting it on this thing. It’s even less related to NOKIA than Marshall phone is related to Marshall Amplifiers.
Very few companies actually make their own phones.
And yet putting such iconic PHONE brand as NOKIA on just another generic Android phone from random never before heard company is still not right. People will definitely get confused, thinking this is some kind of old NOKIA renaissance, a phone made by former legend, etc. It’s a “NOKIA branded” phone.
The people working in that unknown company are NOKIA personnel from the past who were working on the phones that made NOKIA such an iconic phone brand.
If they should ever make it back in the game. The networking giant called NOKIA, will buy it up immediately.
Many brands are no longer their original owners but do fairly well, lets take cars because we ALL love a care analogy.
Rolls Royce / British –> BMW / German
Jaguar / British –> Tata / Indian
Ferrari / Italian –> Fiat / Still Italian
Skoda / Czech –> Volkswagen / German
Volkswagen took the Skoda brand (one that was horribly tarnished) and with some clever marketing, its now one of the most popular car brands in the UK.
Brands are just that, the brand, the image. They are bought and sold like any other commodity. Based on the quality of the product, that brand can go up or down.
In the mobile market we now have;
Motorola / USA –> Lenovo / China
Blackberry / Canada –> TCL / China
Nokia / Finland –> HMD /China
The trend is clearly that western brands are sought after in China. If you saw a HMD on the shelf would you pick it up or think “no name Chinese brand”. See a Nokia sitting there, “I remember Nokia, they were really good” *picks up phone*
Exactly my point. To me, this is deception, cheating and misleading of customers.
Is Disney a misleading brand because Walt is dead and no one from the family is still around?
I appreciate I am being a bit devils advocate, but the logic follows. If you allow one company to buy another, by definition the brands will move. You can’t only expect the originator to use it.
But HMD is staffed almost completely by the very same people who used to make phones at Nokia.
Ah, that I did not know. This makes it a little better, then.
Engineers who actually designed the phones or management who ran the company to the ground?
HMD is a Finnish company which Nokia has given access to their patents and name.
Well, Those are all examples where the new company bought the old. That’s different than Nokia’s situation. Its more like
Bell & Howell
Sharper Image
RCA
Westinghouse
The original companies behind these have nothing to do with the products that now bear their names. Anyone can make a Sharper Image product for the right price.
AFAIK HMD Global was the Nokia phone manufcturing business, which then was sold to Microsoft and has now been sold/spun off into its own company.
It is now manufacturing Nokia phones, like it did a few yers ago when it was Nokia.
But they managed to capture the spirit of Nokia, that’s using thoroughly mediocre hardware specs in flagships.
The pre-launch rumors were about 2 devices, this might be the weaker one. eg: http://www.knowyourmobile.com/mobile-phones/nokia-c1/23369/nokia-c1…
Which flagship? We are talking here about a midrange device priced at 250$.
Not a lot different to Apple. I’m sure that Foxconn and the various suppliers are very heavily involved in the deign and engineering of the the iPhone.
Edited 2017-01-10 03:11 UTC
I bought my home theater system something like a month before Atmos came out, and I occasionally feel a tinge of missed opportunity.
Then I see that name used to describe something like this, and I am assured there was literally nothing to miss.
Reading the comments I have remembered my commodore computer. It was already a brand which had been sold by another computermanufacturer (I thought Tulip).
Still a computer which worked…
There is a discussion now in NL about cheap products from chinese vendors:
http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/prijsvechter/gidsartikel.html (dutch, google translate is your friend).
Also this article about shanzai products is interesting:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/shanzai
I think that this nokia is a shanzai product as well. Looking like an iPhone, dual sim, cheap, and reasonly packed with specs.
And who cares how long it sells. You just buy a new brand and start all over again.
But. Personally I have doubts. In case of phones and computers there is little difference between a cheap chinese phone and an expensive American phone, made in China. The biggest difference is where the money goes. It would be interesting to see what happens cheap chinese human employees are replaced by cheap robots. Is it worth making phones in Europe or America instead of China? Will environment and economics benefit?
Funny, I was going to post this;
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/
Yay for bringing back old brands? I miss my Nokia N9 and N900. Well, I still have them, but necessity of needing some newer software required me to get an Android phone, and (as Golum would say) I hates it.
From a very exciting brand name, NOKIA. There, fixed it for you.
I would love to replace Asus Zen 3 Max for this Nokia.
Welcome back Nokia, hoping some people in China will give me one.
WTF? The USD245 Nokia 6 has specs better than many phones costing 3x the price.
I have to agree with you, for that price I would say it is a very good phone. Adreno 430? Usually you find that on premium phones.
Why do companies think it’s a good thing that their manufacturing processes are slow?
It takes 55 minutes to machine a single Nokia 6 from a solid block of 6000 series aluminium. It then receives two separate anodising processes, taking over ten hours to complete
That’s like when I see “made in small batches” on a massive bag of popcorn at Costco. I don’t want that, I want efficiency!