The Good, The Bad and The Fugly: cell phone manufacturers

Nokia
The Finnish giant almost began cell phones, so I feel some sort of obligation to start off with Nokia. No, seriously though, in many parts of the world, Nokia is the standard by which many people judge newer brands. In India, for example, where people are extremely brand-conscious, they didn't warm up to other brands until quite recently. IMO, Nokia has massive presence (they still have the largest piece of the pie worldwide) and technical prowess, but their edge is slipping - and fast. In terms of construction quality, I believe we have witnessed the biggest drop. Nokia phones used to be solid, hefty devices and I think that in their attempt to lighten and miniaturize, or perhaps cut costs, they're slowly cutting their own wrists. Somehow, other manufacturers have been able to create superior quality products (in terms of build and fit/finish) while also maintaining the required size and weight. Have you picked up any Symbian Nokia? Notice all the creaks and crappy plastic? Notice how quickly and easily it scratches? I think part of this happened when Nokia started making Xpress-On covers for the 33xx models. Those models were of incredibly poor build quality, and this carried on all the way to their flagship N-series phones. They make their phones relatively easy to customize, as in change covers etc. and in doing so, create not-so-perfect fitting parts thereby creating those annoying squeaks. And as screen sizes increase along with display quality, its important to build a screen that can't be scratched or damaged easily. Other manufacturers are also clearly superior in this regard as well. Technically speaking, Nokia has led the market along with the significant other, Sony Ericsson. With their firm stake in Symbian, the big N sees a gigantic market for smartphones, and rightly so I believe. Eventually, everything will be a smartphone, or close to it. With the introduction of the 7650, Nokia showed the world that a phone can do all of what a PDA can, and sometimes more. There's quite a bit of 3rd party software out their for S60 (the new official name for Symbian Series 60). It seems though that by bringing about this revolution, Nokia decided to sit on its ass. The execution and user interface has improved steadily with each new S60 phone - NOT! Its exactly the same shit! The 7650, in terms of functionality, loses nothing to the flagship N90, and in certain cases, is more compatible! If Nokia doesn't start improving its OS soon, it'll see its market share for smartphones start dropping drastically, especially with the threat of new entrants (can you say "Windows Mobile for Smartphones" and then name a bunch of rising Korean stars?) . Even, Microsoft, the anti-example of all examples, has shown continuous and notable growth on most increments of the Windows operating system. Windows XP looks and functions much better than Windows 98, which was a revolution and a half over Windows 3.11 and so on. Symbian for S60 version 8.0 is all the same shit as the original, sadly. If you look at it, the whole smartphone overall hasn't improved all that much from its initial concept. If we take the 6600 as the first fully realized smartphone (ignoring the 3650 because it looks too weird), we find it has a 65k TFT LCD with a resolution of 206x176, a VGA camera and expandable memory in the form of MMC cards. Years and years later, we have the N70. Aside from the 3G functionality (itself limited to a data transfer rate of 384k when the spec calls for up to 2.4 megabit), the N70 has a 262k (differentiated from 65k screens by software only, supposedly you can't notice the difference in colour) 206x176 TFT LCD, similar weight and size, and a 2-megapixel camera. The camera, although able to capture larger images, lacks autofocus, a CCD, optical zoom and more. Its basically a similar camera that shoots in higher resolution. Its only with the USD$1000 Nokia N90 that Nokia feels users deserve a better screen than one with the same resolution as the original 7650, years back. Its also the only phone Nokia has that has an autofocus camera and a decent lens (still not the best on the market). And it doesn't vibrate!!! What the hell is that shit about? Isn't this a commonly accepted basic necessity in a phone? On top of it, the size of the device will make many men feel insecure.

The Good: Size, technical prowess, brand recognition and some innovation.
The Bad: Nokia is not afraid to release weird stuff, and sometimes shows incredible stupidity (lack of stereo sound output in many smartphones, crappy displays and no vibration in their top model)
The Fugly: Like a dying Microsoft.

Sony Ericsson

When Sony and Ericsson teamed up, most people were confused at where this Japanese-Swedish union would go, but Sony Ericsson has demonstrated that they have truly merged the best of their individual strengths to create stellar products. Ericsson was big in Europe for making solid business phones with good functionality, and Sony has always been huge in excellent consumer products. Both had the nose-to-the-grindstone attitude before they teamed up, but after doing so this has led to Sony Ericsson becoming the runner-up in most areas. SE began its climb upward with the T68i - the first phone with a camera (well, an attachable one). After they made waves with it, they logically progressed to the T610, a phone classified on the internet as the most attractive phone, ever. Attractive it was, but it showed a good display (for the time), crazy battery life and an integrated QVGA camera in a very lightweight and small candybar device. The good looks came with immaculate construction, including plastic that no one would believe isn't metal. SE is still the only manufacturer in the world who can make plastic look EXACTLY like metal. Overall, SE has the best build quality and fit/finish in the industry. They have their own pseudo-operating system, which has seen continuous improvement. In fact, it would set an example for how to improve with every new release, except that this operating system is not an open one like Symbian for S60. That aside, the polish just gets better and better, just as the screens do with every new wave. With the animated backgrounds and animated themes, the way the phone works makes the user really feel like s/he is holding a polished product. Functionality out-of-the-box ain't bad either, with a built-in e-mail client and excellent MMS application. Everything is so smooth, so slick. The only bad thing is even when you spend a lot and buy a top-end non-P-series phone, you'll use the same interface with the same features as the lower-end models. But I have to give SE props for reviving the Walkman brand and turning it into cult-status so quickly. How does Sony manage to create these must-have items? The way the PS2, PSP and PS3 make waves .... it seems nothing else on the market does, save for some Apple products. Beautiful marketing. SE also has phones that cater directly to the business market, the P-series. They have also seen continuous improvement, and the upcoming P990i is IMO one of the best phones ever to grace the market. And if you know me, you know I'm the most discerning critic of phones, ever! Where I think SE needs drastic improvement is the smartphone category. Between the youth-oriented W-series and for-everybody K-series, there isn't much difference, but comparing them to the P-series we see a huge difference in functionality. For many young tech geeks, the P-series is overkill, in features, and price as well. SE needs to cut it on the market that Nokia has cornered with its 6630/6680/N70/N90. SE also has the bad, bad habit of overpricing new (and very desirable) models to the point of putting them out of the reach of many prospective buyers. Almost everyone I know wants a Walkman phone, and everybody both in Asia and North America love the rotating-slider design found in the now-available W900i. It comes in PSP-sexy white and black, and combined with the crisp QVGA screen, great camera and secondary 3G video calling, this is one of the most desirable products for the youth market, but its estimated USD$750 price tag will make short work of demand.

The Good: Must-have products, sexy looks, build quality, features, Walkman brand.
The Bad: Too-early product announcements, insufficient supply to meet demand, no entrants in the mid-range smartphone class.
The Fugly: The Ego! SE launches some great products with prices that totally say "THIS IS TOO GOOD FOR YOUR GHETTO ASS!"

Samsung

Big props to this company for putting itself where it is today. A brand that everyone looked at the way Hyundais are looked at (even today) is now amongst some seriously good competitors. It seems that David is doing well against the goliaths, and has completely transformed its image in the marketplace. Samsung stuff is now kinda cool to have, whereas it was embarrassing before. Especially in mobile phones, they've made a lot of headway. In Canada, they had the first available WAP phones, and when I was visiting India, I saw an incredible product launch of the Samsung blue-i phone. They had these sexy models walking up and down a runway "wearing" these sexy new phones. The whole thing was awesome. And they've made continuous progress, offering up fresh and new phones on a regular basis with much-improved features. At times, they've been arrogant/stubborn about things like the inclusion of bluetooth or PC-syncing at price ranges that necessitate those features, and the exclusion of removable storage. THAT was totally unacceptable for the world's largest memory maker. Thats all in the past now, and Samsung is showing strong improvement. Since they're one of the 4 LCD panel manufacturers, they should and actually are utilizing this "unfair advantage." The new D600 has a brilliant QVGA screen, great camera, excellent build quality and slider design. It fails in price, though. A phone executed so well shouldn't fall on something so .... ummm ... changeable. What Samsung's doing wrong is not having enough variety, or presence. The build quality is on par with Sony Ericsson, with patented slider designs that work oh-so-smoothly, and the displays are great, so they have nothing to be shy about. What they're not doing is targeting their markets properly. Aiming certain products at the youth market, some at business professionals is textbook, but Samsung marketing and design isn't making this happen very well. They have some innovative products coming out, like a phone running Windows Mobile 5.0 with a 3 GB hard drive, but thats just one phone and awareness for it doesn't exist unless we're talking about tech geeks. Just like Sony Ericsson, Samsung needs to jump into the mid-range smartphone class that Nokia totally dominates (and laughs about), as well as the Sony-dominated Walkman-brand of music phones. Sony Ericsson also has the edge on camera quality, but Samsung has shown that it can deliver this too (in the D600). Samsung needs to overall its user interface though. No themes, only different colours as well as a somewhat unpolished feel really makes Samsung users jealous when they see their friends' Sony Ericssons. The young people market loves this stuff ... themes, music, photos, videos.

The Good: Lovely build quality and fit/finish, great screens, and now with all the functionality of competing models (bluetooth, expandable memory etc.)
The Bad: Marketing is stuck in a rut; they haven't identified and targeted users properly. No entries in the mid-range smartphone class, the music phone class, the imaging phone class or the high-end business class (yet).
The Fugly: Stubborn to stick to their ideology of good-looking products that fall more than little short in other areas.