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Well, before Apple, most phones were appliances with fixed software; there was no openness to speak of. That said, I wish they hadn't continued this trend and instead took inspiration from Windows Mobile.

by reaperducer1 hours ago|

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Before them, phones used to be more or less open

Wow. Just… wow.

Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellular, Cincinnati Bell, PrimeCo, and the fifty different regional carriers calling themselves "Cellular One" to offer my app on their networks.

I'm not claiming that iPhones are open to the extent that HN griefers want it to be, but you must have been freshly hatched in the years before the iPhone to think the ecosystem was open.

I say this as someone who developed some of the first mobile phone weather apps. (Before "app" was even a word.)

by stavros36 minutes ago|

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Or, you know, there's more than one country in the world.

I could flash my Nokia 6210 with whatever firmware I wanted, but I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies.

by mapontosevenths5 minutes ago|

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I may be guilty of the same thing you're mentioning (I'm in the USA), but my Nokia 6210 came with a carrier lock and I wasn't even able to visit websites via the WAP browser unless my carrier approved of them because WAP acted like a sort of mandatory vendor operated proxy that allowed them to see and filter everything the phone did. They would, for example, filter out websites about ringtones to try and force you to buy theirs for $0.99/piece.

My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.