Nokia And HTC End Patent Dispute

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It's always nice to see companies kiss and make up like this.

Nokia and HTC have officially put all this patent litigation nonsense behind them. The two have settled their disputes, signed an agreement to license each others technology, and even decided to explore further opportunities to collaborate.
 
Good. I think they realized they have bigger fish to fry. Everyone loves Samsung but their phones, specifically the S3/S4, are cheap pieces of plastic shit. They are able to sell millions of the devices due to their marketing arm and the branding/association they built attacking Apple head-on when they first started to make moves with Android.

I have always thought that HTC and Nokia were among the best companies when it comes to industrial design and quality of the handset and this goes back to the pre-android and WP days. The HTC Windows Mobile devices were awesome and Nokia has a long tenure of great handsets one of my personal favorites is the N8.

In my opinion even the One X/+ and the One are better handsets than the Galaxy S3/S4 respectively and say what you will about WP but the Lumia 800-1520 are all exceptional when it comes to features and quality. I've currently got the 920 and the in-hand feel is bar-none (maybe the moto-x) it just feels like a quality gadget.

I hope both of them are able to turn things around, HTC is hurting and we've yet to see what is coming out of Nokia post Microsoft's acquisition.
 
I wish more companies would agree to cross license patents, we consumers would come out ahead if they did.
 
so basically HTC decided to cave in and make a new windows phone.
 
Good. I think they realized they have bigger fish to fry. Everyone loves Samsung but their phones, specifically the S3/S4, are cheap pieces of plastic shit. They are able to sell millions of the devices due to their marketing arm and the branding/association they built attacking Apple head-on when they first started to make moves with Android.

I have always thought that HTC and Nokia were among the best companies when it comes to industrial design and quality of the handset and this goes back to the pre-android and WP days. The HTC Windows Mobile devices were awesome and Nokia has a long tenure of great handsets one of my personal favorites is the N8.

In my opinion even the One X/+ and the One are better handsets than the Galaxy S3/S4 respectively and say what you will about WP but the Lumia 800-1520 are all exceptional when it comes to features and quality. I've currently got the 920 and the in-hand feel is bar-none (maybe the moto-x) it just feels like a quality gadget.

I hope both of them are able to turn things around, HTC is hurting and we've yet to see what is coming out of Nokia post Microsoft's acquisition.

While I LOVE Nokia and HTC for that industrial design that you mention, I've got to disagree with quite a bit of your post.

HTC and Nokia both suffered from a lack of innovation. HTC was one of the leaders in the early days of Android, but soon their handsets all seemed to feel cheap and outdated. The One series of handsets was a breath of fresh air, but I fear it was too little too late as Samsung had already won over the market. Also, one of the main issues with HTC (even up to the One series) is the awful battery life. They've improved it a bit recently, but with such big and beautiful screens HTC handsets just suck the juice right out of their batteries.

Nokia failed when they put so much futile effort into Symbian and then Meego as Android took over; And are now failing because of their agreement and subsequent sellout to Microsoft.

You can disagree if you want, but the smartphone OS war is about as dead as the desktop OS war at this point. If people want an Apple product, they'll get Apple; Otherwise the majority end up on an Android device. Then you have a small majority that for one reason or another end up with a WinPhone. Personally I'd love to have one of the new Nokia's; But I'm attached to Android and I won't jump to WinPhone just for a Nokia handset when I have other options.

Also, Samsung took over by storm because the Galaxy series was the premier phone worldwide through the first three revisions. The first Galaxy may not have been as successful as the S2, but it had one of the most beautiful screens of it's generation and Samsung intelligently manufactured the handset for pretty much every major carrier in the world. The S2 was a complete lightning rod. It was a powerhouse on the spec sheet. It had a beautiful and large screen (the S2 probably can be contributed as one of the main causes of the massive growth in smartphone screen sizes in the past two years), a powerful processor and ram to go with one of the best cameras on a phone for that generation. It was again delivered to most major carriers (you can't believe how pissed I was with Verizon for passing on this handset); And Samsung wowed everyone with all the extra TouchWiz features that other manufacturer's weren't offering. The S3 was more of the same.. Delivered to every carrier and was the crown jewel of phones on the spec sheet. Sure there is a phone here and there that has a feature better than the S3, but as an entire package the S3 is pretty much the crown jewel of the last generation.

With that said, the S4 is just a slightly larger S3 with a new feature or two. It's nothing impressive and hopefully some other manufacturer's can take advantage of Samsung's choice to not offer something groundbreaking this time around. For the eyes of many, the S4 just looks like a rebadged S3.. like Samsung mailed it in, and I'm sure that will spur people to at least take a glance elsewhere. I'm all for competition and would love to see Motorola and HTC put out some good handsets that compete with Samsung in this generation. I think Moto put out a decent lineup; And I absolutely love the One series of phones. Unfortunately right now though I would still land on an S4 over an HTC One series phone, simply because I refuse to buy a phone without expandable storage. If there are two fads that need to die in the current smartphone arena, it's the ever growing size of screens (I can live with my S3, but the continual growth is turning these "phones" into tablets with cell service), and the removal of expandable memory (I'll be damned if I get locked into a device with only 32GB or even 64GB of memory; I'd by an iPhone if I wanted told how much memory I can have).

Regardless of my opinions.. I, like you, have hopes that the competition in the market will grow and reward the hard work that these manufacturer's are putting in.
 
My new Nokia 1520 has expandable storage and while some do not like the larger screens that are out there i love it, the its to big to hold argument really dose not stand up either, it fits most adult male hands just fine. i have had a S2 and while it was nice i liked the build quality of the Nokia's enough to drop android and go with WP, i have had a 800 with expandable storage, a 920 without and now a 1520 with expandable storage, as far as build quality, Nokia is without competition. as for the whole app situation, i have not really found any that dont have a counterpart on WP, and the WP app store is growing every day. Also, most of the stuff you need apps for on an android are built into the WP operating system . android is just a shell that allows apps to function while not really offering anything built in.
 
My new Nokia 1520 has expandable storage and while some do not like the larger screens that are out there i love it, the its to big to hold argument really dose not stand up either, it fits most adult male hands just fine. i have had a S2 and while it was nice i liked the build quality of the Nokia's enough to drop android and go with WP, i have had a 800 with expandable storage, a 920 without and now a 1520 with expandable storage, as far as build quality, Nokia is without competition. as for the whole app situation, i have not really found any that dont have a counterpart on WP, and the WP app store is growing every day. Also, most of the stuff you need apps for on an android are built into the WP operating system . android is just a shell that allows apps to function while not really offering anything built in.

The larger screens are getting out of hand (literally). You say the too big argument doesn't stand up because it fits most adult male hands just fine; You do realize that not only alienates SOME adult males, but practically all females? Furthermore, I really doubt the AVERAGE adult male can make use of the Galaxy Note series, Xperia Z Ultra, HTC One Max or even your Nokia Lumia 1520 COMFORTABLY with one hand. The LG G2, HTC One and Moto X are already on the borderline of being uncomfortable for single handed use. When screens were 4.3 inches, it was fine.. when the grew to 4.5 inches, it was acceptable.. at 4.7 inches they may be tolerable.. going beyond that and it's just getting to be too much for comfortable one handed use.

I'm glad you've enjoyed your WinPhones. I personally would love to have one of the newer Nokias. I will not argue that they don't have terrific build quality. However, I prefer Android to WP.

The expansive amount of options available on my Android device, just doesn't exist on WP. You don't have devs cooking up new ROMs left and right for WP as my S3 does. If I like TouchWiz I've got 7-8 ROMs located on my SDcard. If I prefer a more AOSP feel, I've got no less than 20 ROMs on my SDcard that range from 4.1 (Jellybean) to 4.4 (KitKat), and plenty in between. I've got Paranoid if I want a tablet or phablet look and feel; Cyanogenmod if I want a stable, stock AOSP feel; AOKP if I want to tweak pretty much any setting; or PACman if I want the best of all three of those worlds. Now not all devices are going to be as popular with devs, but that's why you do research before you purchase.

I understand that my reasoning for choosing Android isn't going to be shared by everyone, or even most (I'd hazard to guess that 70+% of users never leave the stock manufacturer's ROM). However, not everyone is going to want to switch to WP just for a Nokia. If Nokia made an Android phone, I would be all over it.
 
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