Before letting rip, I should note that there's a rumoured 'PR 1.1' firmware update due out for the Symbian^3 phones very shortly, plus a big update ('PR 2.0') in a month or two's time. We'll obviously report on these as and when they appear, but do note that, if you're reading this article after the event, some of the to-do's below may have been well and truly ticked off.
In the meantime, here are the things that tick me off. In my case on the Nokia N8, but they all apply to the other Symbian^3-powered phones as well. And, in many cases to the older S60 5th Edition phones, most of whose firmware is still being actively updated to this day.
In order of priority (at least, in my humble opinion):
- Fix the memory and processor leaks. I'm quite sure there aren't fundamental problems under the hood, but there is something fishy going on. My N8 will be chugging along happily for a few days, maybe even a week, and then all of a sudden it will be like wading through treacle, with the multitasking not snapping up instantly or an application frozen in place. Cue a long press on the power button to turn the phone off and on again. Yes, it's impossible to make a modern smartphone 100% bug free, but a little attention to real world reliability would be appreciated, Nokia.
- This one needs no introduction really - and Nokia are well aware of it. The current Symbian web browser needs work. It needs a faster javascript engine, it needs better awareness of (and optimisation for) bloated multi-megabyte web pages (cough... Engadget) so that nothing can trip it up, it needs to crash with bogus memory errors less, and perhaps most of all, it needs more intelligence in terms of content, so that if you zoom into see a text column, the text should get reflowed to fit within the browser window - scrolling left and right every two seconds to read the ends of long lines should be a thing of the past in 2011. Nokia, if you're having trouble achieving all the above, give the folks at Opera a ring and ask to license Opera Mobile...
- Nokia Messaging ('Email') needs fixing. Well, I've been saying it needs fixing ever since it first appeared. At first, a buggy monstrosity and now something which is almost usable. I say 'almost' because I can flag an email for 'followup' (supposedly equating to 'starring' a Gmail) or mark an email as unread and I'm only 50% sure that when I check my email over on my desktop an hour later that the appropriate syncing will have been done. And missing an important email because the status wasn't synced properly could be very serious when (as for me) email is your business lifeline.
- Nokia Social also needs a big fix-up. To be honest, given that this is built on Web runtime and not something complicated, I simply fail to understand why it's taking Nokia so long to fix its shortcomings. Try to compose text in the landscape keyboard in Nokia Social and it usually comes out double spaced like this. It's purely a cosmetic thing but really winds me up. More than cosmetic is its performance, posting a status update or tweet often takes over ten seconds - if WRT wasn't up to the job then Nokia Social should have been implemented in C++ or Qt. Optimisation or rewriting needed. And, while the programmer is back on the job, stick in support for other social networks. With only two supported so far, it's almost not worth having an 'integrated' social client. Having three or four social networks all being checked and integrated might actually start seeing Nokia Social deliver some productivity benefits, despite Web runtime's lack of raw speed.
- S60, sorry Symbian's, homescreens have been gradually improving for years. The current arrangement, with three homescreens of six widgets/panels each, is pretty flexible, even if not everyone uses all three. But each slot is quite small, in terms of pixels, around 90 pixels high, which really limits what can 'show through' from the underlying application. So, for example, Gravity's widget just shows three truncated tweets with no graphics, Nokia Social has to resort to showing items one at a time - and truncating them where needed. And so on. What's needed are resizeable widget slots, or at the very least, the flexibility of having double-height slots. Something similar has worked extremely well on Android, which is currently the standout winner in the homescreen stakes. And it's no secret that Nokia is revamping the way homescreen swipe gestures are interpreted, to be more iPhone/Android like, which will help newbies to the platform, at least.
- Updates. A word that no doubt instills fear into the hearts of the Ovi Store development team. They've spent two years putting off implementing code for the Ovi Store client to monitor what's on your phone and check for version updates. There's an unwritten rule for decent apps that they simply do the checking and upgrading themselves (TweetS60 and Gravity are both excellent at this, for example) - but the store client should really handle all this as well. Think how many users out there have buggy, old versions of apps and are sitting there cursing Nokia (or the developers) when a new version could be only a click away. Ovi - I know this has been on your to-do list for an eternity, but isn't it about time you got the code out the door?
- Completely replace the klunky ABCDEFG quick matching code when picking a Contact (shown above, right). Yes, it's all very clever how the lists of letters get whittled down, but it's a usability nightmare. I dread names which start with a letter after "O" and hate the way all the letter picks move around, forcing you to completely stop after every screen tap to see where the next letter you want has moved to. It's the contact selection scheme that Microsoft would have designed. And that's not a compliment. Replace it with a standard portrait qwerty keyboard.
Oh wait. Symbian doesn't have such a UI element at present. In the more text-heavy applications, portrait input is handled by a virtual 'T9' keypad - which works well enough but developers of apps like Opera and Gravity have even gone to the extreme lengths of writing their own portrait qwerty input, just for their own use. Reports about the upcoming updates to Symbian have included mention of a portrait qwerty keyboard, so let's hope this is also tied into the Contacts quick matching system - if only for my sanity.
- Completely replace the Camera interface. It was just about acceptable in the initial Nokia 5800 - after all, this was the S60 team's first stab at a touch interface, so who knew what it should look like? But, incredulously, this code has scarcely been touched for two years. Say you're framing up a photo, with flash off, to use natural light, and you can't get a focus lock because the object's too close:- you have to tap on the spanner icon, then on 'Scene mode', then double-tap on 'Close-up', then tap on the spanner again. And then try taking the photograph, only to realise that the 'flash off' setting wasn't remembered and have to stop, delete the flash-drenched version and manually turn the flash off - again. It's enough to make even a hardened Symbian geek cry.
- For once and for all, sort out the handling of album art. Yes, there are at least three different systems for embedding/attaching artwork to music tracks and folders, but don't just stop at one - put in a few lines of extra code to support all three. It's downright embarrassing when I scroll through my music collection in front of a friend and 90% of my music has just a big grey 'music note' icon. This isn't rocket science, you know, they're only JPGs, you just have to put the code in to find and read the images.
- Finally, and those who know me well will have been waiting for mention of these, but bring back Podcasting (or build in and help fix up Podcatcher) and Nokia Internet Radio - the S60 5th Edition version is a travesty under Symbian^3 and needs some serious optimisation so that it doesn't cut out when you leave it in the background.
It's somewhat telling that I started to write this piece as '5 things' and it quickly became '10'. And I'm writing this as a huge and longstanding Symbian fan and generally a happy user of the Nokia N8. Nokia, you know a lot of the above already, but hopefully I've given a little extra impetus to a few improvements still being considered.
Comments welcome. What else do you think Nokia simply has to fix in its Symbian software?
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 6 Jan 2011