Analysing Nokia’s X series can make the head swell and burst. So many factors come into play and you wonder why some decisions were made in the first place. But there is something that hasn’t been mentioned yet when discussing the X series and one that would have avoided the craze. Many people may have forgotten about the discarded Nokia operating system called Meego but somehow it all goes back to it.
You see the reason why Nokia X phones exist, at least according to Nokia, is the ability to push prices down while having access to many apps. However much Nokia sugar coats it, I believe this has less to do with apps given there is no Playstore out of the box and you must rely on third party stores. It’s probably because Windows Phone is still incomplete and license fees may be a bit high. If apps are to go by, the current situation is more than adequate for the target audience. I mean how many apps do you install on a Galaxy pocket? In any case some apps cause slow downs on such phones hence you are limited to the basic apps. People who use more apps tend to go for more capable high/mid range phones and that is not the case with the Nokia X series. So where does Meego come in?
Ideally, Meego was supposed to be a high end OS. However these were the days Nokia smartphones ran on 128mb ram with 500MHz processors while high end was considered to be 1GHz. The incredible Nokia N9 ran on 1GHz although it was paired with 1GB ram. Every N9 user will tell you how the phone was fluid and there was never a hiccup. Fast forward to today and low end devices run on dual core processors including the best selling Lumia 520 and newly introduced Nokia X series. And if there is one thing Nokia is good at then that is optimising an operating system to support low end devices. I bet Meego would be flawless on the X series and I am not getting ahead of myself or anything but they would be worth midrange status.
Considering the small matter of apps Meego is linux based and so is Android. If apps were lacking in the hypothetical meego store then it wouldn’t have been that difficult to port Android apps on Meego just like developers ported apps from WebOS. In any case Nokia is currently doing the same process porting Android apps to their store for the Nokia X (removing Google services and replacing with Microsoft) and this is a process that takes a few hours to one full day.
Meego was considerably more stable and lighter than android. Meego was also an in house project meaning prices would be as low as Nokia X series prices. If the Meego idea seems too ambitious then there was also a cheaper OS called Meltemi which never saw the light of day. It was supposed to revamp the Asha series since meltemi is a mix of Nokia’s series 40 and Linux. But let’s give Nokia X phones a chance and see how it turns out. However, you can’t stop wondering about what could have been. Just maybe Nokia would still have their reputation and more importantly dignity.
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