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."
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I thought the mockups looked bland, uninspiring and derivative.
That might be fine if you want to take on Microsoft on the desktop, but it's unlikely to fly in the phone world where there's plenty of real competition.
My Question Is (Score:2)
Re:My Question Is (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple... (Score:4, Insightful)
...That is the real answer. For the longest time, Nokia had phones that everyone bought. They were expensive, but so were Mercedes and BMW.
Then came the iPhone. Like it or not, it changed the whole mobile market. Nokia was complacent and was caught off guard.
I recall Nokia was so full of themselves that they dismissed Android claiming writing a phone OS is no joke.
Having said all that, I have been for the last 10 years and still am a Nokia fanboy.
I love Nokia philosophy of phone first, everything else later. I hope that stays.
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I think you're looking at this solely from the point of view of western, possibly US, market...
Nokia had always vast spectrum of phones, from very cheap to expensive. Heck, their cheapest phone now costs 20 Euro, without contract (the stated goal of Nokia, supposedly not tongue-in-cheek, is to have 5 Euro phone in a few years). Also, they launched Maemo before iPhone announcement. And reality is that Android has yet to prove itself...
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Re:Apple... (Score:4, Insightful)
Define "crappy". Majority of their phones are used only for phonecalls and text messages. Sometimes quick photo. Given that people across the spectrum manage to do it just fine (and I can't imagine non-trivial portion of them using anything with a touchscreen, for example), I'd suspect S30 and S40 are better than you give them credit.
Plus...please, how exactly a low-end (TRUE low-end, not what American would call like that but what is in reality high middle segment) phone can be much different at this point? Noticeable dent? Are you kidding? Nokia is the only hugely profitable phone manufacturer (other either are out of the market, struggling for a long time, or phones aren't their primary product; with the possible exception of RIM, though they basically sell a corporate service, not phones). Nokia marketshare: ~40% of global market, over 50% of smartphones. You just don't see it because your carriers were blocking Nokia from entering for a long time, for Nokia refusal to castrate their devices.
Now that Symbian will improve when devices with it are becoming really affordable, nearing $100 mark without contract, you should probably get used to the thought of bright future for Nokia.
PS. "look up someone's name by their phone number"? You mean when you have a number, but don't know to who it belongs to? That's trivial even on the cheapest, 20 Euro Nokia phone... (also, realize that most of the market doesn't care and doesn't want to change the order of icons; plus it speeds up navigation, lets you use numpad to spatially associated to icons on a grid)
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Yeah, the Apple fanbois are out in force today. Nokia's interface design has warts, to be sure, but the general S60 interface is derived from the old non-smartphone interface that has been carried on phones ever since GSM became popular (one navigation key, one select key, one cancel key). Compared to Siemens or Sony-Ericsson, the Nokia interface isn't non-intuitive at all, and since the majority of European phone users are used to these interfaces, S60 isn't a big change.
So the Apple fanbois like your pare
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About lockdown with nokia phones. I just debranded (and thereby delocked and everything) a Nokia 5800 yesterday. Six times, just to see the differences. It’s so easy it’s a joke. there is a site with *all* product codes. Even for weird mods of weird operators in weird countries, one for every color (so the theme adapts). You use a tool called NSS, change the product code to whatever you like, and re-run Nokia’n own firmware update tool. Done. You don’t even lose and data. (You can an
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'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.'
Are you sure he was talking about
TRUE low-end
or
nearing $100 mark without contract
devices? My wife's N87, though being 3G-phone equipped with GPS, is practically unusable for anything but basic calls, and the UI is the primary reason. Trying to push Symbian into smartphone market, instead of keeping it right where it belongs - as an OS for low-end cheap phones, is just a weird way to waste money.
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He was replying to my earlier post mentioning all classes of devices, even specifically mentioning 20 Euro Nokia phones.
And it's no wonder your wife has difficulty using a phone that doesn't exist...I'd say it's almost a miracle she manages to make calls.
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He was replying to my earlier post mentioning all classes of devices, even specifically mentioning 20 Euro Nokia phones.
He also alluded to a, well, peculiarity of the UI which is typical for all kinds of Symbian phones regardless of their price. It doesn't really matter in case of a 100-dollar-phone, but for smartphones it ruins the functionality.
And it's no wonder your wife has difficulty using a phone that doesn't exist...I'd say it's almost a miracle she manages to make calls.
Or was it N82? I've tried to memorize Nokia nomenclature, but stuck on 6120.
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But the point was that Nokia has vast spectrum of devices which largely have quite good UI for what they do and for their hardware (and hence price). Yes, S60 has some...peculiarities, but that's also related to low cost of phones (they aren't that far now from this "100-dollar-phone", for which "it doesn't really matter"); and how long time ago Nokia launched it. In a place dominated by their classic UIs; it doesn't ruin the functionality much in this case.
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Hell from my US experience Nokia was the maker of many of the dirt cheap candy-bar phones that had no os to speak of. Everything ran on the base-band processor, with no opertunaty for new software. The only filesystem was that required by the CDMA base-band, which was used to hold the background images, ringtones, contacts, and SMS's.
I've never seen anybody with one of the better Nokia phones, since the other brands phones were better anyway. I've honestly never even seen a real phone that uses SymbianOS. S
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So if Nokia's are at all popular it is a very regional thing.
You really can't see the reality that it's the other way around? Lack of popularity is a very regional thing in case of Nokia. They're number 1 in almost whole world.
This, BTW...
The only filesystem was that required by the CDMA base-band
...is a clear indication of your regional bias. CDMA phones are a small side business for Nokia.
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Sure, I admit up front that I have a strong bias in the direction of the US, where CDMA very common, so common in fact that even users of the GSM networks have no understanding of a carrier independent phone. In Europe, South Ameria, Africa, and Asia Nokias may be way mor common, but in the US, most commonly seen phones seem to be in no particular order: Apple, LG, Samsung, Motorola, and for older style smartphones HTC.
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Oh yeah?
How do you explain this [windowsphone.com] then?
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The problem with Nokia, atleast here in the states, is that they are slowly outsourcing their "idea" people. New designs and development are being put everywhere now. Hell, the buildings here in Irving went from 4 full buildings full of employees to just one building with enough people to only fill 4 (of 7) floors. I get a kick off seeing their EMF room, but they hardly use it because everything is developed out of states.
That might, just might, be because of Nokia is not from the states. You did know that, didn't you? The buildings here in Helsinki are still full :)
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It doesn't matter what it's built on. It sucks right now, and obviously they know it. The only question is: when did they find out?
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Sometime before they bought Trolltech specifically for the purpose of having a bunch of UI experts in-house to improve their cell phone UI's. These things don't happen overnight.
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It appears a lot of cell phone manufacturers found out their UI's sucked on January 9, 2007...
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...and my question is, where are the "graspingatstraws", "lipstickonapig" or "toolate" tags?
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Because they didn't have an example interface from Apple to crib off of at that point.
No, really.
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You are so right. I hope the anti-Apple trolls don't mod you down. When Apple released the iPhone, it was a game changer, and now everyone is playing catch-up.
Whether you like the iPhone or hate the iPhone, any objective thought on the matter leads to the conclusion that the iPhone was good for the whole mobile phone industry and its consumers.
Before, software and usability were afterthoughts at best. Now, it's job #2 or 3 at most mobile phone companies. That's a major improvement.
Not necessarily... (Score:2)
Nokia had Maemo before Apple had iPhone OS.
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Though Maemo/Hildom were improved since then, have shown there is some work being done at Nokia, and so on... Besides iPhone was even hardly a smarpthone until a year after its launch. ;p
Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yes, Apple pushed the market, and they should be applauded for that. But I think that the story will repeat itself and something else will prove dominant... (heck, Nokia is dominant, with ~40% of all cellphones and over 50% of smartphones; that might be why they find it hard/slow to signific
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However Apple is standing on the shoulders of giants with iPhone. If you look at GSM standards for example, Nokia owns 67 of the 158 patents considered "essential" for GSM [engadget.com]. Apple owns 0. And that is just a tiny part of the tech that goes into a modern phone.
People give Apple way too much credit for the shiny package. When it comes to actual tech, Apple is simply us
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Why didn't they do this years ago?
Because they launched years ago.
In time when hardware was much slower, screens were much smaller, users were used to "classic" (S30, just launched S40) phone UIs (and because of screen & cpu you didn't have much choice anyway). When smartphone was a very niche product only because of its price, mostly an experiment with the underlying OS, initially. They they built on it for a long time.
Once something takes off it is a bit hard to introduce major UI paradigm changes, I imagine.
And BTW, Maemo is quite ol
Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know if I care for the fonts. A little too tall and skinny. I'm an American. I like things to be a little more...squat.
I Like It!! (Score:1)
I love the iPhone (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only because of what it does, but because of the competition it's created in an industry that hadn't really moved in a decade. Free markets do work, sometimes!
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I love my nokia, it comes with all the basic features that the iphone lacks.
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Blutooth, Copy/Paste, MMS and probably more that i missed.
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Nokia shipped its billionth phone in 2005. It contributed greatly to the fact that, while a year ago 3 billion people had cellphones, it is 4.6 billion people now, more than half of the planet. And Nokia's most affordable phone isn't even very cheap, at 20 Euro without contract... (supposedly they wish to be able to launch 5 Euro one in a few years)
Nokia has really took to heart its corporate motto, "Connecting people". It has the potential to greatly benefit our world; make it a bit better place. It's perf
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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:
Nokia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nokia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not every Nokia phone is going to have a 600MHz ARM and half a gig of RAM behind the screen. Not every phone user is going to shell out the prices higher-end components are going to require. Nokia has the market share they have because of the diversity of their products. They need to cover the high-end as well as the low-end. I could easily see Nokia moving from S40 on the low end and S60 on the high end to S40 for low-end and pre-paid phones (If they don't drop it altogether), S60 in the low-to-medium phones (I think their E63 is a step in that direction), and Maemo 5 on their high-end phones that compete with Androids and iPhones.
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RAM chips used in phones are quite a bit more expensive. Low power usage is of paramount importance.
And if it's an issue with stubbornness of Nokia, wanting to milk their customers...why hasn't any other player released even sub $200 smartphone? Symbian ones are nearing $100 mark.
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Not right now. By this time next year we will all be bitching when prepaid disposable calling card phones don't have the same balls as our notebooks. Well, perhaps a couple of years.
We are going to come out of this economic downturn with a but load of cheap computer components flooding the market from China trying to play catchup for the lack of demand these last couple of years.
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What you are saying is what should be in full swing right now. The way it's going by the time all that is done, Android will be on phones that are selling for $19.99 with most manufacturers on board, and Nokia's share will dwindle to next to nothing. Their phones will look like bricks from last century. It's a chess game, Google and Apple will not stop. Nokia will be 3 moves behind a year from now if they continue this route.
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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 innovat
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Android will be on phones that are selling for $19.99
BS. Android will be on phones that sell for that much with contract. Nokia has phones selling for 20 Euro without any.
You don't realize how non-representative is cellphone market in the US. Nokia is hardly visible to you because US carriers didn't let it in, after Nokia refused to castrate its phones too much. But throughout the world they dominate. ~40% of whole cellphone market. Over 50% of world smartphone market. And people seem to emphasize basic functionality of cellphones more...
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The cell phone market is changing worldwide and in the U.S.. What US carriers didn't allow before, they are allowing now because they can't give up that much additional revenue.
Within next year, Android phones will be free with contract. Within 2 years, a low end Android phone could go for $20-$30 with no contract, even for pay-as-you-go plans.
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I hear that for some time, but don't quite see it... (and TBH I would love really affordable, "standard" (OS modifications-wise, open to official updates) and durable Android device)
First, "free" phones with contract still depend on the total price of contract, so that's beside the point. Secondly, there is a lot of talk about Android phones that will be "cheap". So far I only see "on the cheap", at most. And even those are expensive touchscreen-only devices.
Do you seriously think they will cost, in 2 years
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I hear what you are saying, but cheaper means less profitable too. The phones similar to what that seem high end now will be a lot "cheaper" (from multiple manufacturers competing) 2 years from now. So, is Nokia going to sell its "feature-oriented" phones for - $5 w/no contract? That's a niche market and won't make them a great deal of money. They can't compete unless they change with the rest of the industry.
Apple beat everybody to the punch, but they don't show interest in mid to lower end products (yet);
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Some Android phones are already "free" with contract over on this side of the Atlantic. The HTC Tattoo is "free" with a 299 SEK/month (42 USD/month) contract.
(I've got an HTC Magic, but I'm very interested in the Nokia N900, won't be buying a new phone for a year or two, but maybe the equivalent phone with Maemo then)
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You forget about S30 ;p
I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Nokia ships more S30 devices (1100, 1200, 1208, 1661, 1202, 1280, 1616, 5030; that sort of stuff) than all other classes combined.
And...E63, are you kidding?! More like 6730 Classic, eventually E51 if you want to include E-series.
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E52 to the rescue at some later point in time?
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Oh, puh-leaze, can someone please take S30 into a dark alley and shoot it in the face? It's an abomination; I'm pretty sure every time someone uses S30 god kills a kitten. Or something.
OK, that might be overstating things a little, but if you compare S30 to S40 -- which doesn't exactly need a cluster of supercomputers to run on, itself -- the former kinda pales. In fact, for a lot of people, I'd say S40 is Smart Enough, really. It might not do multitasking (apart from the music player, kinda like the iPhone
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It's not like they're pushing S30 into markets that can easily afford, for the most part, S40 devices. From the looks & prices of S30 devices, it really does seem Nokia can lower the price a bit that way, for where it matters.
I have the impression you're talking about the number of features. They are not the only factor for large parts of market, when low price, lack of GPRS in the cell network anyway or, yes, easy to use UI are also important. Plus durability, reception and ridiculously long battery ti
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I have the impression you're talking about the number of features. They are not the only factor for large parts of market, when low price, lack of GPRS in the cell network anyway or, yes, easy to use UI are also important.
No, not just the number of feateres, more how those features are implemented. Take something basic like SMS: it's a joy to use on S40, I hate it on S30. That's the "easy to use" part for me.
Plus durability, reception and ridiculously long battery time, that's why I like to keep recent S30 device around as backup or for hiking.
Those, as well as the GPRS and the low price you mentioned earlier, are hardware features. My (S40) 6300 is built like a tank (METAL shell!) and runs for about a week if I keep away from GPRS and Bluetooth. I've had it for about two and a half years, and it still works flawlessly. So yeah, grabbing a cheap S30 for absolu
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But you do need them to do fancy graphics and eye-candy, which is what 99% of people think usability means.
I'd include whoever designed the E71 among them.
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Symbian is a pain to program in C++ (But the same as any other phone OS in Java). But it uses far less memory and battery power than any *nix. So it isn't the easy call you imagine. OS X is far superior for top end smartphones. But for lower cost phones, Symbian has a lot of positives.
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Yes, people don't care about memory. Amount of RAM typically isn't even mentioned as a feature. But if a phone needs less memory to function, then it costs less to manufacture.
Likewise, if battery life is not really a concern (very debatable) then it can be traded for less weight, smaller size and less cost.
You can't just dismiss the memory and battery live advantages of Symbian OS. Designing a phone is always a matter of finding compromises between different ideals. For some phones, Symbian OS will be the
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They mention 'OVI maps pre-installed'. Is this the demo trial version? in other words will it include turn-by-turn talking directions? or live traffic updates for the US market??? (The last I checked, live traffic information was only available for Europe.)
I guess we can already get these things for free with Google Latitude running in the foreground -- with amAzeGPS running the background, but it would be nice if Nokia could give us all these things consolidated into one. Also, since Nokia owns the maps no
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Also, there is talk of better User Interface design, but as far as I'm aware, (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong here) Nokia third party developers haven't been notified about any kind of recommended style sheet guides that they should be following (even if just voluntarily).
Very valid point. I was, however, able to find this UI Style Guide for S60 [nokia.com] (there's one for S40 and other platforms too) with just one Google Search.
I haven't really read it, so I don't know how "thorough" it is, but it does satisfy your "any kind of recommended style sheet guides", I think.
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Good... (Score:2, Troll)
I have an N97 and an N900 (Score:5, Insightful)
Symbian is a pig. QT on Symbian is lipstick on a pig. There is no other good way to say this. I had an N95 8GB, and Symbian 3 was actually fine on that, buttons and all. Symbian 5, ala N97 is just pushing Symbians limits to far. The best technical terms I can use to describe Symbian 5 (N97) is it's a "steaming pile of shit".
The N900 on the other hand is just phuquing unbelievable. Once they put QT on top of Maemo Linux, it will be so far away from any othe the other phone OS's, that there just will be no contest. (I say phone, but the N900 is really more of a mobile computer with cell capabilities than a phone).
The N900 rox!
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Does buying it get the user root? Or is this another closed device pretending to be open.
If the owner lacks root, he does not own the device.
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.
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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.
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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 wi
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Said with complete disregard for issues of user interface. Mobile applications are not tweaked desktop apps. They need designing from scratch. Portability of libraries is certainly useful. But not applications.
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Like I said with some tweaking. As in not needing to rewrite everything from complete scratch. Resizing user interface components is a fairly small trick, when you have 800x400 to work with.
As for Mobile applications not being tweaked desktop apps, that is THE POINT. We are getting closer to mobile and desktop application that are interchangeable.
At the very least we do not need to get our knees to a bunch of application stores and hope they give us what we need, and approve what people produce for distribu
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Apple QuickTime.
On the other hand, if you mean Qt. It's a GUI (and much else) toolkit developed by Trolltech, which was acquired by Nokia some time ago. :-P
Also, now Qt is LGPL.
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Too bad I have no idea wth QT means.
It refers to someone attractive.
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I can completely agree about both the N95 and the N97.
For me the N95 broke new ground and really was an impressive device when it was released. The fixes did a lot to help usability and stability.
The N97 is the Nokia device which has pissed me off so much - that I've become stuborn and vowed to never, ever again own another Nokia Symbian device. It's a complete disaster, even with the much anticipated v20 firmware.
I get a free company phone of my choosing, and I could've taken the iPhone at various times bu
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My N95 8GB was the best "phone" I ever had. About 2 weeks after I bought my N97, I got the N95 back out of the drawer and switched back to it while I waited, and Waited for the N900. The evil malodorous N97 when into the phone drawer, never to emerge, except perhaps to burn it on the sidewalk in fron of the Nokia flagship store in Chicago.
Now that cell phones and mobile computers are merging, the old "phone" OS's like Symbian reall can not be stretched to fill the bill. I don't remember if anyone ever tried
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Complete nonsense. The original name for Symbian OS was EPOC 32, and it was developed for the Psion 5 - a touch screen PDA. So in actual fact, the OS and APIs were designed from the outset for touchscreen as well as keyboard.
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When I'm using my E71 and I think back to the clean and simple UI on the Psion 5, it makes me weep.
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So is their future technology commitment going to be maemo linux or symbian?
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Yes. :P
I bet on a smooth migration: Symbian will live on in lower-end phones (where buyers don’t want to pay for new development.) and get a bit straightened out.
And it parallel, Maemo Linux will grow out of infancy.
But ultimately Maemo will be the main system of the future, yes.
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The N900 on the other hand is just phuquing unbelievable. Once they put QT on top of Maemo Linux, it will be so far away from any othe the other phone OS's, that there just will be no contest.
They should have done that years ago, then they would have been ahead by a mile right now. But no, they had no balls. Trolltech was always there, they were always doing their thing - remember Qtopia and the Greenphone? They always had the software and the technology that can and should be taken to the next step.
Now they may go the way of Windows Mobile, with the promises of things that are year(s) away to be introduced to the market, and still beating the near dead horse that is Symbian. Maybe in the next 2
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Nice, how you backed that “argument” up with facts... oh wait, you didn’t.
I could say “that’s your opinion” if you had any backing up. I could even agree if you had good argument.
But since you came to the table with *nothing*, I’ll stay with my 10 years of experience with Symbian devices.
And I must say from a user perspective, they are freakin’ great! Symbian did always beat any other phone OS I knew.
Now finally, there are others who catch up. But this does no
uuuh pinch and zoom on a phone (Score:2, Funny)
Lets all welcome Nokia to 2007.
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.
Als
I gave up after the N95 (Score:1)
No thank you Nokia (Score:1)
Owners of expensive Nokia Symbian S60 phones should be happy that they can upgrade their existing hardware to a shiny new version of the OS. But what is really going to happen is they are forced to throw away their old phone and pay all over again for a new hardware/OS bundle.
Nokia has no incentive to produce a truly great phone - whenever they came close to this in the past it depressed new sales because people did not want to give up their old one.
Never buying another Nokia! (Score:1)
I've owned a dozen or so phones nearly all of which have been from Nokia. Never again - the 6220c I currently own is ludicrously locked down and restricted. It works, kind of, but not the way I want it to work. I do mean locked down by Nokia not by a GSM operator. Do Nokia think I am stupid I paid 200 quid for this phone and expect to have root on it.