I'm not sure if this is the proper forum for this question, but why isn't there more 3rd party software for these devices? I own an e61, and while showing it to my father as a possible device for him to buy he asked whether there was any financial software that would allow him to sync seamlessly with Quicken. While searching for a program that would help, I've been taken aback by how scant the 3rd-party application catalog is. I found only one program that would even export its files in a compatible format, let alone one that syncs directly with Quicken. Granted, this may be due to the geographical limitations on Quicken and therefore the limited demand for such an application, but there seems to be a dearth of competition for the relatively common financial software sector for Symbian v3. Looking further, I don't think it is a secret that the e61 ships with relatively poor organizer software (contacts, calender, general PIM functions) but the aftermarket is in a sorry state there as well--only Aquacalendar is released (and a poorly functioning version at that) and SBSH is yet to release a public version of Papyrus. Its my impression that while S60V3 is a newer OS, it is not so new that 3rd party applications in these two critical areas are so lacking.
Why, if the stats are correct and Symbian is generally the worldwide leader in smartphone OS's, is there so little 3rd party content for s60v3 as compared with Palm or WinMO? I love my phone and I like getting outside of MSFT stuff, but the lack of outside development makes me wonder about the long term. I'd love to hear from anyone that can explain why this is the case.
Thanks
Saleem
I agree with the Financial program. I used to used Ultrasoft Money on a Palm device and it synced perfectly with MS money on my laprtop/PC.
However, I did know than no similar application existed prior to getting my E61 - just hope someone brings one out.
I also agree with Aquacalendar - not impressed. The two main things missing for me in the built in PIM applications are searching by company name (overcome by installing Mobile search).
Secondly no option to enter a repeating calendar event; maybe in future updates?
I still love the E61 - it is by far the closest thing to a 'one thing does all'.
Clive
S_mamdani,
There are loads of third party apps for Symbian and more specifically Symbian S60, but the problem is that at the moment they're mostly for the S60 1st and 2nd Editions, which was used until the beginning of 2006.
The very latest S60 models have a brand new version called Symbian S60 3rd Edition, which is unfortunately not backwards compatible with the 1st or 2nd Editions, so we basically have to wait for developers to convert their old version apps for the new version. This is happening now, and it'll happen more and more as 3rd Edition models (such as the E61) begin dominating the market place, but at the moment the standard is only a few months old and many of the first wave of 3rd Edition models have only just launched, hence the current lack of apps.
The process of recompiling old apps to 3rd Edition isn't that difficult though, and most developers should get round to it as they notice the most popular smartphones of the moment are no longer 2nd Edition.
I think this break with the past was because they wanted to increase the security on applications and also make them compatible with lots of different screen sizes, as S60 3rd Ed supports many different sizes and shapes of models (there's even touchscreen support in the standard, although no model has used this yet). 3rd Edition apps can usually be used on any screensize as the standard supports scaling, whereas 1st and 2nd Edition S60 was locked into a particular resolution and shape.