Windows Mobile still up to two years behind Symbian OS?

I did not have this impression at all. There certainly are areas where Windows Mobile is lagging behind symbian but this presentation is mostly about application development development for Windows Mobile and in this area MS has an enourmous advantage over Symbian with their .NET Compact Framework.

The .NET Compact Framework makes it really easy for anybody with some knowledge of OOP and a little experience with an OOP language (such as Java, C++ or C#) to rapidly develop full featured complex applications. Meanwhile, in the symbian world, even experienced C++ developpers have to spend weeks or even months and truck-loads of coffee to fully grasp the basics of Symbian C++. Hobbyist programmers with experience in developing some PC utilities in Java or C# in their free time can forget about developping even simple applications for their Symbian phone. Even professional developers must spend an awfull lot of time learning before being able to develop simple applications under Symbian.

Of course there is Python which makes it a lot easier to develop for Symbian, but it is still in the early stage, is a lot less polished and has a lot less support so far than the .NET Compact Framework. (Plus, although this is not such a major problem, the fact that it's an interpreted language makes it less suitable for developing any serious complex application).

I really hope that Symbian is going to push hard to address this problem and provide a proper alternative development environment complete with a good IDE and support for those who do not wish to spend months learning Symbian C++.

Good point. From your viewpoint, the relative ease of development for Windows Mobile probably more than counteracts the technical advantages of Symbian OS elsewhere.

I was coming at this from the user's angle. The security, capability and performance levels being introduced now with Symbian OS 9 will only be seen in Windows Mobile in around 2 years time in real devices.

Mind you, this is only an overview, there are certainly areas where Windows Mobile communicators are just as useable as Symbian-based devices. I've done several one-to-one comparisons.

Steve Litchfield

I think as with all things where there are two or more players each side has its own advantages. I think Symbian, technically, has a superior operating system. However that doesn't of course mean it will do well.

Development is one issue, but also other factors such as ease of integration for manufacturers and operators are as important if not more so.

It does seem like the Photon release of Windows Mobile will add many of things Symbian 9/9 added security and chip technology wise. However I think there's much broader parity now at the UI level. I do think S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3 give the advantage back to Symbian OS based phones. Windows Mobile 5 was a big step forward, but there are still rough edges in places.

However a lot of this back and forth argument depends on your point of view, your role in the value chain (i.e. user / developer / manufacturer etc)... Everyone has a vested interest.

For a lot of people its not going to matter as both OS's cna play games / record video / play mp3 etc etc... Tangible things like power management and their impact of battery life are probably just as important now.

Well, you wouldn't expect me to pass a comment on this one, eh?

On a totally user level basis I find Symbian has two (general) advantages. One is battery life - you can normally rely on a Nokia smartphone to give you a couple of days use, the same cannot always be said about WM phones. But the other huge point for me is technology. With the N80 (hopefully) due any day you have a phone with 3G and WLAN. Currently there are no major WM PHONES that provide 3G and Orange even saw fit to remove the WLAN from their C600, although the SP5 available on other networks has this functionality. There isn't even a WM5 phone on radar that will combine 3G and WLAN - the HTC Breeze to be released late this year (maybe) will have 3G and be the first Windows smartphone to have it - how ridiculous is that. For this very reason I am going to dump Windows for Symbian, even though I prefer the UI, design and feel of the Windows device.

Comes back to Steves post about being on the bleeding edge though - as Rafe points out both currently do most things most users would consider using a phone for, so it might even come down to, "which one looks pretty" - Nokia might want to take their syling team in hand in the very near future.

Not sure I agree with difficulty of devloping Symbain OS apps compared to other mobile OS's.

E.g. surely whole point of Java is that its Java. In terms of basic language constructs its identical regardless of MIDP or J2EE variants. Yes the MIDP environment is pretty basic... but a Java loop works whereever... except Windows Mobile + Palm of course as they probably still dont have a JVM built in as standard on all devices there but you go....

With C++, I have to say its trivial to write simple Symbian apps. Its certainly no harder than writing simple Palm or Wince apps. Take the helloworld app + off you go.

Windows has a massive number of undocumented + incomprehensible 'windows message type's', requires pointers to functions all over the place, has huge problems e.g. adding + removing simple 'timer' services - why oh why has a timer got anything to do with a window...
Yes if you are brought up on such things then they are easy to handle. If not some are very strange indeed.

Agreed, writing complex apps is a complex task. Palm, Windows and Symbian all have advantages + disadvantages. E.g. wrting an app that does not present a wait cursor (as required by any Windows program -😊 ) is more difficult than writing one that does - its irrelevant which OS is running. The only difference is that Symbian provides an infrastructure to do lots of things, Windows + Palm dont. Whether you can figure out how to actually use the infrastructure is a totally different issue... and where I belive the perception of Symbian being harder to write apps for really kicks in..

I would agree with elp that concerning ease of use of development currently Microsoft has a lead with the .NET Compact Framework. But I ask myself how much that really matters.

My impression is this: Most professional developers bite into the sour apple and learn Symbian C++ although it takes a little longer. I don't think there are many capable developers that are "lost" for Symbian as a platform just because learning .NET is easier.

What about the "semi-professionals" and hobbyists? Well, they might be neglected somewhat on Symbian, but how much does that matter for the platform as a whole? I don't have the impression that they really have "weight".

And furthermore I have a nagging suspicion: The crowd of such casual programmers can't be that large anyway at the moment, because OPL for the Communicators is available for quite some time, easy yet powerful, and even free. Yet I do not see it get that much attention...

bbj wrote:
Windows has a massive number of undocumented + incomprehensible 'windows message type's', requires pointers to functions all over the place, has huge problems e.g. adding + removing simple 'timer' services - why oh why has a timer got anything to do with a window...
Yes if you are brought up on such things then they are easy to handle. If not some are very strange indeed.

Yes, writing an application in umanaged C++ for windows mobile is surely no easier than writing the same app for symbian.

But my point was that with Windows Mobile, you at least have the choice to develop your application in managed code with C# or VB .NET using the .NET compact framework which allows you to forget about all these nasty Win32 API and memory managment issues (up to some point) and focus on the actual features of the application. As opposed to J2ME applications, .NET application are not second grade applications, you can do pretty much everything you want with them and take full advantage of the phone features. What i would love is to see something similar coming from Symbian although, seeing by how that abandonned the promising OPL and by the apparent lack of motivation from Nokia to back up Python, i don't think that this will ever happen.

I've written code for Windows in the past and I've been doing Symbian coding for quite a few years now. I much prefer writing for Symbian, probably because I like the fact that it's fundamentally a 32bit object-orientated and event driven C++ operating system. Sure you can write old style C code if you really, really want to, but funnily enough I never want to. The biggest issue for me is the build tools. In the old days it was good, we just used Microsoft VC6 as our IDE and ran "abld makefile vc6". These days we can't use VC6 anymore and none of the replacements work particularly well. Of the options available I reckon the best one is Carbide.vs, but there are plenty of things that don't work properly with it. And of course, I still find myself repeatedly asking the eternal question: "Has anyone out there got on target debugging to work properly yet?!?!"

What is it with your need to take every opportunity, no matter how obtuse, to criticise Windows Mobile? I spend a considerable amount of time on various windows mobile forums and Symbian rarely gets a mention. Certainly it doesn't make front page news every week "Symbian Can't do this" or "Windows has X and Symbian doesn't".

Why?

Symbian is a great OS, it has massive annual sales and is backed (virtually owned) by the worlds largest manufacturer of mobile phones. Where does this insecurity/paranoia come from?

Addressing a couple of the issues;

Battery life.

Just got back from a long weekend in the Lake District. Set off Friday morning (7am!) with a fully charged O2 Mini S. Got back 10pm last night with 70% power. Okay, I only made about six calls, a dozen texts, received four or five calls and checked my e-mail once but I think that stacks up pretty well. Especially as I was on a boat in the Irish Sea for six hours of that with the phone constantly trying to lock on to a non-existent signal.

Programming

It's easier to write programs for Windows Mobile than Symbian. End of story. Anyone who even attempts to suggest otherwise is deluding themselves. The question is whether it is easier to write GOOD programs. My own point of view is that it is equally difficult to write good programs for both OS's but that it is far easier to write bad programs for Compact Framework .NET.

As for learning for one or the other, most people start out learning VB so .NET seems easier. If you are of a slightly more experienced generation (😊) and were raised on C/C++ then Symbian's C++ seems easier to learn. Different starting points produce different results.

But to argue that it's as easy to write a simple app in Symbian as it is to throw something together using Visual Studio and VB .NET is just ludicrous.

Comparisons

I've been using pen based windows mobile devices for eighteen months with built in WiFi. For another eighteen months before that it was an optional extra via an SDIO WiFi card. Symbian/UIQ still can't do this and won't be able to until this summer. I'm sure if we all sat here for the next few hours we could all pick things which certain versions of certain devices based on certain flavours of certain OS's can and can't do better than others. So what? Get a life. If you are really so insecure that you can't make yourself feel better without spending time trying to come up with ways to criticise an Operating System you've taken a disslike to then I feel sorry for you.

This website has always been a great source of information both on Symbian and on the Mobile Industry in general but, Steve, your obsession with inventing reasons to slag off windows is just becoming tiresome. Can you please focus on what Symbian can or can't do and where the mobile industry is headed because this one-sided war of words is just dull and way below the otherwise high standards set by the other contributors to this site.

Fair enough point Bassey. I try and keep an open mind and be objective, but it easier said than done. I honestly do believe Symbian is technically superior (as much as two years in some areas), but as I said above it is not in all areas. This does have an impact on devices.

I think Steve (and more generally) frustration comes from a lot of people dismissing S60 phone as just phones and nott equating them with Windows Mobile (not you but generally). Put it this way the dominance of the Symbian platform is equivalent to the iPod in DAP. There are more (I think) Symbian phones that there are iPods (excluding the shuffle). Does Symbian / S60 get coverage / recognition that reflects this? No...

Programming - the debate can go round and round on that one! Windows Mobile needs to grow up as OS technically - that what Photon will do I imagine. Symbian / S60 needs some way of create basic easy applications. I think Java may fulfill this need (e.g. the recent UIQ SUN JME /NetBeans stuff is very impressive), but more than anything else work is needed on the developer tools.

I also think you have to draw a different comparison between the devices like the O2 Mini S as smartphones. To my mind such devices are fairly different categories. I can't see the pda type phone going genuinely mass market. I actually think Windows Mobile offers a wider scope of product in the PDAPhone market and this reflects its data centric roots. Looking at the phone form factor (a more important and far bigger market to my mind) then there's no competition (mainly because of Nokia huge product line up!)

and finally - Bassy - thanks for commenting - I appreciate hearing other opinions.

{What is it with your need to take every opportunity, no matter how obtuse, to criticise Windows Mobile?}

Eh? I've been quite impressed by several Win Mob 5 devices and have said so in print. This news item was simply commenting on the fact that the core OS is up to 2 years behind where Symbian OS is now. I'm a bit of an OS geek.

{I spend a considerable amount of time on various windows mobile forums and Symbian rarely gets a mention.}

And in mainstream media. Which is why I think it rather unbalanced that the mainstream press thinks of Windows Mobile as cutting edge when in fact it's doing pretty well but trailing Symbian by quite a margin. *Someone*'s got to stand up for Symbian, they've chosen not to stand up for themselves but to pass the marketing baton over to their licensees. I'm just a journalist trying to create awareness of the fact that there's more to life than Windows Mobile.

For example, I was instrumental in getting PDA Essentials magazine (in the UK) to start a Symbian column (growing out of the dying Psion one) and I've compiled it for the last 3 years, championing smartphones generally and Symbian-based smartphones in particular.

{Get a life. If you are really so insecure that you can't make yourself feel better without spending time trying to come up with ways to criticise an Operating System you've taken a disslike to then I feel sorry for you.}

I have a very full life. And I don't think you're taking a balanced view of all the things I've produced in print and on video, many of which have praised Windows Mobile devices. Don't judge me on one news posting.

{inventing reasons to slag off windows}

I was simply reporting on a link of interest, a leaked Powerpoint presentation of the Windows Mobile roadmap for the years ahead. I thought it was interesting to compare it with Symbian's current state-of play.

Steve Litchfield