Nokia Android Phones Coming Soon?(Video)

Nokia N8 with Android

Hell could indeed freeze over. In an inter­view at All Things D, Google VP of Mobile Plat­forms, Andy Rubin, didn’t rule out the pos­si­bil­ity of hav­ing met with Nokia to dis­cuss Android. In my pre­vi­ous post, I talked about how bleak the future of Sym­bian seems. One way for Nokia to get out of this mess is to jump to a plat­form that’s doing well — that plat­form is Android. Rubin gave that exam­ple when talk­ing about Motorola. A few years back, the RAZR was the hottest phone around. All that glory even­tu­ally faded and the future of Motorola phones was look­ing dull. Along came Android, now look at the Motorola Android line (Droid, Droid X etc).

One argu­ment that peo­ple keep rais­ing is the issue of legacy, bits of code car­ried over the years cre­at­ing a richer, more con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence. That’s one way to see it. This code car­ried over the years also holds back inno­va­tion. New devel­op­ments can be left out in favour of old ones because the older mod­els still “work”. Legacy is exactly what is hold­ing Sym­bian back — it is the source of the problem.

The video from All Things D is after the break.

Android on Nokia hard­ware? That’s a dream come true.

Today I played around with the Nokia N8 in a Voda­fone store. It was right next to a Galaxy S and an iPhone 4. The N8 UI was so clunky I could barely use it — this is com­ing from a per­son who’s been using Sym­bian phones for over 5 years! — AND not for­get­ting that I had my Sym­bian pow­ered Omnia HD in my pocket!  The Galaxy S was alright  going through the menus but the browser was choppy. The iPhone 4 had the best expe­ri­ence although I still think it goes over­board with simplicity.

Nokia has the option to go the Android way, an option that I think they should seri­ously con­sider, and Google is more than happy to have them on board. That will seal the deal for Android, mak­ing it the most pop­u­lar phone OS sooner than anticipated.