Spoiler alert: This article is about how great the new Nokia Lumia 800 is, so if you are an iPhone or Android lover and have problems reading negative points then please stop reading now. I absolutely love this phone and when I held it in my hand for the first time I got that same feeling of excitement as when I bought my first iPhone. This phone just feels right in the hand and I love the design.

Yes at the moment I have an iPhone 3GS, and for some time I have wanted to upgrade to the next iPhone in line. But I didn’t want the iPhone 4 because of the antenna problem, dropped calls and the fact that I couldn’t see it bringing anything new to the table. So my plan was to wait it out until either the iPhone 5 or 4S arrived, but now I just can’t seem to get my head around buying it. First it was the battery issue which still isn’t fixed even after three software updates, everybody is still shouting about this just being a software issue, but why haven’t they fixed it then? I’m having my concerns… and while waiting for a solution it has made me open my eyes ever since I saw the new Nokia Lumia 800. Finally another beautiful phone next to the iPhone. Industrial design as it’s best, simple smooth and stylish and before my iPhone I had a Nokia which also made me think about durability.

Durability
Yes my screen on my iPhone is cracked and I can’t say that I’m happy about it. And yes… it has already had a visit to the iPhone repairshop. iPhone repairshops there is a new concept for you, a whole new business which has evolved. I have never in my lifetime seen so many destroyed phones as today, it’s like an epedemic of cracked glass everywhere. Some weeks ago an insiders tip on a good repairshop was delivered over the dinner table with an utmost satisfaction. That’s grand. Well back to the point at hand. Nokia makes durable phones. I once smashed my Nokia to the ground and it was still working afterwards, wow! You most definitely won’t want to do that with your iPhone. Here is something to bash…. but the point of the matter is that Nokia makes the best phones, they might have fucked up on the software side, but when it comes to the phones they have always been ahead.

Design
I like the design of the iPhone and I have the deepest respect for this phone, but I’m just not that excited about it as I previously was. And what does it matter when almost everybody is wrapping their iPhone in some ugly cover? This completely dissolves any idea of beautiful design. The latest trend is how you now can buy a battery cover because of the bad battery, which makes your phone look like a huge brick. How would you like to wrap your phone with this one?

I have actually been a quite nice since this battery cover is one of the nicer ones. Go have look see, there is a lot of bricks out there…

If you are wondering why I haven’t said anything about Android, don’t worry we’ll come to that later on.

But am I only thinking about durability, design and phone quality? No, I really like the new Windows Phone 7 OS. It’s refreshing to see a new approach which integrates features of the phone in a whole new way and which doesn’t just copy iOS, cough cough Android. Ohh and the best thing is that it works and it’s fast. The idea of having a live front updating me with various information is just great. The static icon based layout is just outdated and boring. Nothing has happened since the iPhone came out, unless you think grouping your icons is a great feature. This great article by CNET journalist Rich Trenholm describes exactly what I’m talking about, so I won’t get into the new and interesting UI of Windows Phone 7. You can read the whole article here: Why I don’t want an iPhone any more 

Features
So what more. Ohhh yeah the new Siri feature. That sounded kinda cool when I first heard about it, but then when will I ever use that? It’s the feature which has that wow effect you most likely will never use. I tried it and sorry it’s just to slow and faulty compared to just using your fingers. Maybe sometime in the future it will be of use. The fact is, that is that speech recognition has been around for many years now and it’s still beta. I almost forgot to talk about the iPhone 4 feature FaceTime! It’s like everywhere I look all the iPhone users doing FaceTime. Even though the feature was introduced ten years ago it took Apple to introduce it ;-) Today when Apple announces a new feature it is just to amazing to be true.

Well… I love my iPhone, it has served me well and at the time I bought it, it was, most definitely, the best phone on the market. But now it’s time to pass it on and bring on the Nokia Lumia 800. Which in my opinion is the best phone out there today. No more dropped calls and excellent voice and data communication, probably the best. I guess I’m one of the few who still thinks this is an important feature of a mobile phone. It’s very fast and easy to find apps on the phone too. Storing them in alphabetical order, hmm why didn’t some one think of that before? And then there is the Nokia Drive. Which is a great plus when you are a frequent traveler and need offline navigation. With the price of data roaming today, Google Maps is a no go. Ohh and did I forget to mention the design, well I guess I did. It seems like Nokia and Microsoft has learned from their previous mistakes and finally made a great phone.

Android
Ok lets talk a bit about Android. There is probably many good things which can be said about Android phones, but you won’t hear them here. Though I’m a big fan of Open Source this just isn’t one of them. Just have a look at some of the articles on this blog, yes I am a daily user of Linux Ubuntu, Eclipse, Netbeans, Drupal, WordPress, Apache and NGINX. Just a sidenote; if you’re into web and servers checkout NGINX and Drupal, amazing work! I guess I am the kind of guy who likes the best of all worlds and Android is not one of them.

Ok here we go. I think they are ugly. I guess if you are one of those who have blue led lights in your comp you might think otherwise, but I haven’t seen one Android phone where I liked the design. As said, this is a matter of taste, but for me they just seem so plasticlike and cheap. Even the Samsung Galaxy or Epic just looks like cheap imitations of iPhone. I really understand the ongoing lawsuit between Apple and Samsung. These phones are just nothing compared to the iPhone and Nokia Lumia 800 when it comes to design.

Then there is the UI which differs from each vendor. Samsung just copying iPhone, HTC which looks dreadful(somebody please remove that clock) and the vanilla… well Google has never won an award on design. They are really working hard on it in all their areas of businesses, but that’s what they are. I guess the cool thing is how you can customize it in any way possible, but even then I haven’t seen a nice looking Android UI yet. And why do they almost all stutter? I really don’t get it when you read the specifications on these phones. When it comes to Android phones it seems to be more about the specs and not the user experience. And what does that matter?

The launch of Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Security
Great news! BitDefender, AVG, McAfee, and all mayor virus companies are launching antivirus and security programs for Android. What does this tell you?

Android is a burning platform when it comes to security. Just checkout Google Trends when searching for Android virus. Here is the link: http://www.google.com/trends?q=android+virus&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Checking Google News for Android there is not one day when I don’t see a new article about Androids security problems. Let’s have a look what’s stored for today:
Android’s popularity makes it open target for malware, says study  This was the first out of three articles and I really don’t understand the title compared to the other main reason cited in the article:

“FortiGuard Labs has found approximately five times the amount of malicious families on the Android OS versus what we’ve found on iOS,” Axelle Apvrille, senior mobile anti-virus researcher at Fortinet, said in a statement. “We believe that this disparity can be attributed to the way Apple handles iOS application development and distribution. Unlike Android, which makes it fairly easy to place applications for people to download, iOS requires developers to undergo some strict screening from Apple before the application can make it to the Apple Store.”

Just think about the waste of time, effort and money being used on writing viruses and antivirus programs. Not to say how many people this is going to harm being the largest mobile platform in the world. iPhone and Microsoft don’t have this problem since they check the quality of the apps being published. This is not the Open Source I so much love and NOT a great way of contributing to economic crises where in at the moment.

Here is an example of just how severe this problem is recently discovered by North Carolina State University researchers. This Youtube video demonstrates how apps can bypass permissions to let it do all kinds of terrible things users won’t want it to.  What does this mean? Well for one sending texts to premium numbers in the background without the user knowing anything about it.  This has been confirmed by Google and Motorola, but that HTC and Samsung have been really slow in responding to, if not ignoring, our reports/inquiries.

Pushy ads everywhere
Then there is the ads. One can’t say that this platform supports the pay for good honest work. Here is the intro from an article brought by PC World three days ago:

Are you wondering how that mysterious icon ended up on your Android phone’s start screen? Annoyed at the ads clogging your notification bar? You aren’t alone. Thousands of Android apps now include software that shoves marketing icons onto your phone’s start screen or pushes advertising into your notification bar-and many of the apps give you no warning about the ad invasion.

Read the whole article here: Sneaky Mobile Ads Invade Android Phones

Developers not making money on Android Apps
The problem is that the Android market is getting flooded with low quality apps which aren’t attractive to anybody. So we are back again at size and specifications, which is just waste of time if you can’t get a hard on. And believe me, Google doesn’t give a damn, they just push more ads everywhere I look. Learning people not to get paid for the work they do as long as their wealth is increasing. Which it is. So please don’t be so ignorant or naive to think that Google is concerned about you. It is a company like every other which main goals are to maximize profits.  Remember that you are the judge and in the end has the responsibility that comes with choice. And I for one welcomes the competition. It should be known by now that to much power to the few doesn’t have a good ending.

Here is a link to the article about how Android developers aren’t earning any money: App developers look to Android

So yes I’m back with Nokia and evil evil Microsoft. At least they have a reputation of sharing their revenue with the developers.

Well I know this article is not going to be one of the most popular ones, and when having seen some of the comments when either iPhone or Android is criticized, well that says it it all, but at least you won’t call me an iFag. My guess is that it’s more going to be on how I’m getting paid by Nokia and Microsoft, that has been the most common I have seen so far, but maybe some new and interesting terms are going reveal themselves. You never know.

Here is some nice pics of the Nokia Lumia 800.