Steve ponders the very existence of utilities like FExplorer and SMan and asks (rhetorically) why smartphone manufacturers don't include more utility functionality in the interface and operating system.
Read on in the full article.
The rise and rise of the �ber-utility
Whilst I couldn't even begin to imagine life without a full file explorer and some kind of memory cleaner, my wife has had my old P900 for over eighteen months now and I guarantee she won't have been anywhere near SMan. She uses it all day every day in running her business and despite this, the P900 runs happily for months on end without causing a problem.
Maybe it's us that have the problem (bunch of control freaks) and not the lack of functionality in the OS 😉
I was amazed to find that my P910 did not come with any way of swapping between running apps. I find this an extraordinary omission on the part of SE (or UIQ), and am intrigued to see whether the P990/M600 are any better in this department.
I eventually bought Magic Launcher, which integrates nicely into many applications, providing both an application switcher and a means to close the standard apps, which by default don't have any close/exit option (which is also pretty stupid in my opinion!).
The reason they don't have close buttons is because they don't need to. We only feel it's stupid because we're all so used to the "Windows" way of doing things. Symbian is a true multi-tasking OS with dynamic memory management. So, once you've launched using an App the OS is designed such that the App can stay running quite happily in the background until such time that either you switch to it again, in which case it takes next to no time to launch because it's already in memory, or the device runs low on memory, in which case the OS will close it down for you to free some memory up.
So, in theory at least, an App close button is unecessary on a Symbian device.
In practice, of course, it doesn't always work perfectly and, besides, some of us prefer a bit more control over our devices.
Funny thing is that with the new Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0/S60 3rd Edition we probably won't see a single file manager capable of showing system files due to the new platform security crap. Simon Judge is currently going through the painful process of trying to get his freeware SExplorer for S60 v.3 Symbian Signed in order to access system files, but it is doubtful if it'll ever get signed. Probably not. As it is now, it is pretty much useless for us power-users because there are too many folders that can't be reached.
In my opinion Symbian is taking a huge step backwards with all this signing and 'security' BS. Many third party developers won't be porting their apps to the new system because it requires too much time and cost to be worth it. Might as well use a proprietary OS, because having a Symbian powered phone just doesn't mean what it used to.