Pure, secure and up-to-date is history?

Pure, secure, and up-to-date was a slogan that the folks from the Home of Nokia Devices were mouthful for the past four years that Nokia is back in the smartphone business. But, after they made 30+ models and variants, that slogan became a burden, and they changed it to Trust it, Love It, Keep It. Nokia Mobile switched focus from Android One and its unique simpleness that attracted many but has caused problems since the Finnish startup just can’t keep pace with all the updates. I just check the Nokia 7.2 and 7 Plus, which were once a spear of the company, and those devices are now being a bit mistreated and getting a red Security Update icon. This is something many new Nokia users thought they’ll never see.

I need to mention though that security updates are still rolling at a monthly pace to many newer and more popular devices, but the main problem isn’t in the availability of those updates. Huawei and Samsung devices are seeing fewer monthly security patches too.

The larger issue we are seeing now is the unreliability of the newer OS updates. Nokia 8.3 5G is a nice example of that. Ever since Android 11 landed on the device, the camera app started crashing once a week, usually when I needed it the most, and the battery consumption increased. I’ve been to a wedding of a good friend of mine and couldn’t take any photos until I restarted the device twice. Just the other day, Nokia 8.3 lost network signal in the middle of the trip leaving me without music, of course until I restarted the phone twice. I don’t know if you are experiencing the same or similar issues on your 8.3, but badly carried OS updates are showing on other models too. Nokia 3.4 was also a victim of it, and the recent Build update made it usable again. If new larger updates keep coming like this, many will start taking their latest slogan with suspicion.

I can’t say how the software is behaving on the latest models, but since new series are running Android One out of the box, there is a chance that the latest version was tuned up well. Android One might have been a good strategy for the beginning, but it is finally time to invest a bit more in the software development and start making it at least more reliable, if not unique. This might be a rant, but it was a needed one since the latest Nokia devices I’ve been using made me spill these words out. Nokia Mobile is trying to release software patches to sort out software issues, but they need to get things right, because this isn’t a Symbian era anymore, and smartphone users are not that tech savvy and willing to do a hard reset once or twice a month. Even though I liked those times very much, I kind of hoped those are long gone.

So, is Pure, secure and up to date history? I hope not, but someone needs to wake up.