Nokia Offers Glimpse of Symbian Facelift 114
Barence writes to mention that Nokia is giving users a first glimpse at what promises to be a completely overhauled Symbian user experience this coming year. Nokia's chief exec blamed the user interface — as opposed to the OS itself — as the root problem. "The company will roll out a completely re-engineered user interface in 2010, aimed at addressing many of the criticisms associated with the OS. 'We will reduce the clutter and improve the input methods including multi-touch and single tap,' Kallasvuo told delegates. 'It should be just two taps to get to your favorite music or videos, rather than eight. We'll improve browser experience so that it's a quicker, flash improved, media experience with pinch-to-zoom and so on.' And, Kallasvuo wasn't stopping there. Aside from completely redesigning the interface, he also suggested that future Symbian OSes would be much faster."
Re:I have an N97 and an N900 (Score:5, Informative)
All you need to get FULL root privileges on the N900 is to download this -> http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/rootsh/ [maemo.org]
That's it, you PWN the device.
Symbian vs Maemo (Score:1, Informative)
I believe they will make developing for Symbian easier with a) Qt b) PIPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.I.P.S._Is_POSIX_on_Symbian .deb)
They will also do the same for Maemo 6. UI will be written in Qt and the main things separating Maemo 6 from Symbian^4 are:
- Kernel (Linux vs EPAv2)
- Package management (.sis vs
I wouldn't be surprised if the two platform would converge some time in future, since Symbian's upcoming Qt-based Direct UI should be possible to run on Maemo 6 with minor changes and vice versa.
Also both platforms are pushing Python as a choice for rapid development (S60 Python and PyQt/PySide and PyMaemo)
Qt software blog posts might give some insight:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/
Also Symbian foundation has public roadmaps:
http://www.symbian.org/
Re:I have an N97 and an N900 (Score:3, Informative)
C++ libraries for producing programs that will run on both windows, linux, whatever OS (not sure of the full range). Likely most famously found on the KDE desktop.
The important thing for the n900 is we now have a set of libraries that in theory should provide an ability to write software that will run on your home computer, and on your cell phone (without java or some other silliness). Basically all the Linux applications that exist already should (perhaps with some tweaking) be usable on your cell phone without needing to reinvent the wheel to use the massive base of mature software that is already available for Linux and similar.
In theory, it means I should be able to deploy most of the desktop software we use in my office on n900's without needing to retrain people in my office to use it when they are out of the office.
We will see. So far the hype seems to be warranted, but I am sure we all have been burned before by some arbitrary corporate decision or more commonly some arbitrary marketing decision.
Re:Nokia... (Score:2, Informative)
Who cares about Android anyway? It still can't install/run applications to/from its own memory card, the most severe limitation. Its own google map support is a joke compared to Nokia's support or Apple's support (don't ask me why, I don't know). And Nokia still makes tons of money for every iPhone that Apple sells because of the licensed Nokia technology it has in it.
Wrong on all counts:
1. You can most certainly install apps from the SD card on all Android phones. Future phones will have more local storage, so you won't need to rely on a memory card - and you could say the same about iPhone - hey, it doesn't even have a slot for a card - who cares about iPhone anyway?
2. Google maps support is excellent with Android 2.0, better than with any other phone currently.
3. So, does Nokia want to become a licensing business? Or keep dominating their market with their own innovative devices?
Re:I love the iPhone (Score:3, Informative)
The iphone is a fine device. But your statement wildly overstates impact and improvements of the iphone over other phones.
In 1997 a reasonable phone looked like the 1997 Nokia 3110 [wikipedia.org]. By 2007 Nokia had the N95 [wikipedia.org]
In the 10 years till 2007 mobile phones, before the iphone had the following improvements:
But yeah, other than that, there hadn't been that much improvement....
Re:I have an N97 and an N900 (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, it's actually even simpler than that. Enable the extras repo in the package manager, then install rootsh.
Does the exact same thing, of course, but it's so nice to have a real package manager.