Who has the best smartphone?

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

"Aesthetically pleasing" is very subjective.

I was deep into the fifth page of the reader comments of the first installment of Ars Technica's excellent "The State of Smartphones in 2012," when I encountered this observation, which is simultaneously the most illuminating and worthless Internet comment of all time. It was a response to the declaration by Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham that the "Live Tiles" user interface in the brand-spanking-new Windows Phone 8 operating system was more "aesthetically striking" than the icons of Apple's iOS or the widgets of Google's Android.

(With Live Tiles, the restless smartphone user can expand or shrink the on-screen real estate devoted to a particular app or function, providing a level of configurability alien to the straitlaced universe that iPhone lovers, in particular, are accustomed to. Remember this, for future reference: Windows: freedom! Apple: tyranny!)

A new low for Nokia

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:50:00 +0000

I can still remember the Nokia coat hangers. Twelve years ago, during a visit to the company's Helsinki headquarters, I marveled at their sleek and stylish design. Angled bars of steel, hanging in serried rows in the vast coat racks on the building's first floor, they were modernist, functional, beautiful. To see them was to crave them, a feeling very much in keeping with how Nokia's phones were lusted after by the whole world in the year 2000. The pride of Finland paid attention to every detail. In a country where winters were long and hard, every building I visited in Helsinki had a prominent coat rack. Nokia's was, without question, the best.

Those coat hangers of yore were brought to mind by the news this week that Nokia is trying to sell its headquarters. The plan is to save cash by leasing the building back as a tenant. It's not the kind of news that bumps up the stock price. Ozymandias has got nothing on Nokia. Twelve years ago, the company utterly dominated the global market for cellphones. It was hiring employees at a rate of 1,000 a month. In an article I wrote about Finland and open-source software that spring, I described Nokia as "an aggressive, fast-growing, fully global company that makes Microsoft look like an old fuddy-duddy."

Salon.com > Nokia

Who has the best smartphone?

A new low for Nokia