In this special feature Steve looks more closely at specific criticisms of the S60 UI and application set. He argues that some of these are answered in S60 3rd Edition's Feature Packs, some are down to user education, but there is still work to be done
Read on in the full article.
...from the Series 5...
...it is disappointing to not have ALL the functionality and SPEED "plus imaging, video, navigation, web browsing, etc. all in glorious colour, with stereo sound."
I think Nokia have lost the plot!
From the user experience point of view. I would love to have a compendium of S60 shortcuts. Why doesn't this exist. It makes the phone frustrating for new users, who return to a Palm or Window$ unit because it feels more intuitive....and S60 success is all about user experience.
NB: My observations are strictly from an American point of view, where S60 share is nearly non-existent among "smart phones."
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity,
Series 60 is still FAR to complex, these OS's have to have GUI's that remind you of a childrens book, that is the only way forward.
I'm a gadget freak who's sick of seeing top notch smartphones in the hands of drunks in the pub who have no clue whatsoever how to operate anything past SMS.
'I' find the menu's confusing, yes they are simplified but still nowhere near enough, no-onw want's to know about GPRS settings or 'profiles' or 'themes' and stupid repeat 'yes, 'no', 'done' 'exit' crap.
Tomtom's front end is more like it, obvious. large clear instructions, unambigous and always leading to the next logoical step, not leaving you hanging thinking...er..what now?
And as for the different versions of the OS..DITCH THEM NOW SYMBIAN OR DIE!!!!
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/09/nokias-e90-communicator-first-pics/
It's been a long enough wait!
Reply 1: To be honest its no different to any other platform - you learn it over time. S60 is the single most sucessful platform by some way (I'm talking sales here - you dont get that sucess without doing something right). Yes existing Windows and Palm users may RETURN, but that's because they return to what they are use to. New users will generally be far more comfortable with S60.
The US market is different. They have a different definition of smartphone to the rest of the world. Its generally seen as an enterprise / email device. The rest of the world would say that just one small sub set of the smartphone market.
Reply 2: Its very difficult to create simplicity while maintaining rich functionality. TomTom can do it because it is a single use device. I think S60 is probably the best of the bunch at the moment, but a lot depends on the type of user you are, your prior experience etc etc.
There are different version of every OS (be it Editions or different platforms). In the smartphone world Symbian platforms are better than most. There are more of each version (i.e. the total number of devices of any one version) of Symbian than there are for its competitors (in some cases by a very substantial amount).
Rafe,
I think that the perspective of the U.S. Market being one where smartphone are positioned as enterprise devices is dated.
The latest wave of media rich, 3G devices like the Samsung Blackjack and Motorola Q, which run Window$ Mobile have certainly moved smartphone sales down to the "kids" who are mostly watching media and listening to music, not worrying about the corporate email stream.
I must say that, next to the two phones above and most of the rest over here, when you put an E62 next to them and show pictures (never mind the video issue) the E62 wins hands down - the screen is that much better, the piece feels that much higher quality in the way it is assembled. But the lack of familiarity, straighforwardness of UI and speed kills the deal and I am talking about the youth (growth) market, not the prior Palm and "Crackberry" users.
Nokia must provide something to make the S60 experience as comfortable and intuitive for the new user as it is for us old hacks.
An interesting little piece. I did think you perhaps dismissed some of his points a little easily. The "it's not supopsed to work that way, they mean for you to do it this way" argument is one I use myself quite often, but I'm not entirely sure it's justifiable. Should an operating system not work in the way the "common" user expects? It's a difficult question and made all the more difficult by the impossibility of defining what the common user does expect. I know one thing though, I'm not a common user and neither is Steve or Rafe, which makes it difficult for any of us to really empathise with new users.
One point I'd like to make which I think illustrates the impossible task modern OS designers face. Steve mantions the task switching problem mentioned by many users of S60. It's a multi-tasking OS and yet the UI defaults to Close an application. It's only by using the built-in task switcher that you can leave the current app running in the background. But then you run out of memory.
Amongst WM5 users there is a constant argument about this. In the PPC edition, the small red cross in the top-right corner of every app looks like the close icon in desktop windows. It isn't. To make launching apps quicker, all this does it minimise the current app and leave it running in the background. This means, next time you want that app, it starts immeadiately and in exactly the same state as you last left it. Great! Windows Mobile devices also tend to have lots of memory. Superb you would think.
But no, I would say the majority are against this approach (not me by the way. I am, as usual, in the minority). A close button should be a close button, they say. Who wants apps running in the background using up valuable resources, they say. So off they trot and install one of the dozens of little applets that change the behaviour of the close icon and make it really close an app.
So, S60 users have what WM5 users think they want, but complain about it. WM5 users have what S60 users think they want, but complain about it. So, wouldn't the ideal be for each OS to let the users decide on the default behaviour of the "close" function? Or, even better, like many 3rd party apps do, allow the user to build a list of apps they want to leave open and those they would prefer to close?
Great! Except now everyone complains that it's too complex and the options they REALLY need are hidden too far down and....
Who'd want to be an OS designer?
I don't think it's very helpful to look at the American market when discussing smartphones, or phones in general, because they're almost totally different to the rest of the world and usually behind the rest of the world.
They have a heavily operator-dominated phone culture where phones are usually less advanced than in Europe or Asia, partly because the operators like it that way (look at the stripping of wi-fi from the E61 to make the US-only E62). Even the iPhone, which surely has the strongest own brand of any phone launch in the US, has bowed to an operator's demands and for a while won't be available sim-free or in areas without that operator's coverage.
The people who use smartphones in most of the world buy and use them mostly as phones, not as connected PDAs, and as such they have massive mainstream sales because everyone wants a phone. Something like the N70 is an example of this.
In America smartphones seem popular mostly with people who specifically want a pocket computer, and as such they have a non-mainstream tech-heavy reputation. The dominance of Windows Mobile and Palm in America isn't surprising because their hardware is mostly designed for PDA users, but this marketing makes them their own worst enemy because such devices are never going to be popular with the majority of the public. It's the equivalent of Nokia never allowing Symbian to be on anything other than the communicator range, it would have crippled the spread of Symbian around the world.
The real battlegrounds for the future of smartphones aren't in America or Europe but China and India, and as I keep saying the top two smartphone OSes worldwide aren't Windows or Palm, but Symbian and Linux. It's Linux that has the best chance of unseating Symbian as the number one OS, and this is possibly why Motorola recently joined an initiative to promote its use on smartphones.
But because Linux isn't popular in America the US-centric blogosphere completely ignores it, the same way they do with Symbian, which means they're ignoring the two top smartphone OSes in the world, and concentrating on the two bottom ones that have virtually no presence outside the United States. It's the equivalent of talking about the future of PC operating systems without mentioning Windows Desktop or Linux Desktop.
"And as for the different versions of the OS..DITCH THEM NOW SYMBIAN OR DIE!!!!"
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "ditch". The manufacturers normally just use the latest version, S60 3rd Edition for Nokia and UIQ3 for Sony Ericsson, but keep some level of support for people who've bought older phones because the switch to 3rd Edition and UIQ3 is still fairly recent.
Maybe Microsoft should ditch all support for Windows XP now that Windows Vista is out?
Bassey - BRILLIANT OBSERVATIONS!
krisse - "Even the iPhone, which surely has the strongest own brand of any phone launch in the US, has bowed to an operator's demands and for a while won't be available sim-free or in areas without that operator's coverage."
I don't agree with your perspective. What I have read indicates that Apple totally controls the user experience with this phone. Apple did not bow to demands: Cingular is hands off. I think that is a critical distinction. Apple understands fully that the value of the phone to its user derives predominantly from the user experience. Apple delivers excellent "UE." Better than anyone else. They know it and Cingular knows it. That is why there is such fervent praise for the thing even before it has been launched.
Relative to not being available SIM-free...that is the exclusivity deal they cut with Cingular - the largest carrier over here. Has nothing to do with bowing to demands.
IMHO, this Apple/ Cingular deal is revolutionary. If S60, UIQ or even Symbian were brands with the strength of "i-anything" I think they would be wise to keep control of the UE they deliver. Symbian should be as strong a brand. Symbian should be the strongest brand in the mobile space, but they never promoted that way...that I have been able to discern.
>>So, S60 users have what WM5 users think they want, but complain about it. WM5 users have what S60 users think they want, but complain about it.
Got it, very succinctly put. In an ideal S60 world, Nokia could put more RAM in their devices and make the right softkeys all read 'Hide' and app switching and 'launching' would be far faster and we'd all be much happier.....
Steve
"I don't agree with your perspective. What I have read indicates that Apple totally controls the user experience with this phone. Apple did not bow to demands: Cingular is hands off."
Cingular is NOT hands off.
If an American wants to buy the iPhone but doesn't want to sign up to cingular... they can't have one because Cingular forbids it.
If an American wants to buy the iPhone and is willing to sign up to cingular but doesn't live in the coverage area... they can't have one because Cingular forbids it.
How can you possibly say Cingular has no effect on the product when they're denying vast swathes of the US population the chance to actually buy the product?
If someone can't buy an iPhone, it's completely irrelevant how good the iPhone is. It could be the most glorious piece of technology ever to grace the surface of the earth and cause people to explode with spontaneous joy, but if a person can't buy one there's no way it touches their lives at all.
Those are two things that would NEVER happen to a flagship phone model launch in Europe, the manufacturers simply wouldn't allow it to happen. Every major model in Europe is available sim-free and across a range of networks.
I don't think there will be anything like those kinds of restrictions when the iPhone hits Europe, because the operators don't have such a stranglehold here.
"Apple understands fully that the value of the phone to its user derives predominantly from the user experience."
You don't think there's any connection between user satisfaction and all iPhone users being forced into expensive contracts that many of them don't want to sign?
Would you expect that from any other Apple product? What would you say if the new flagship Macintosh model was only available to people who subscribe to a particular broadband provider for two years?
"Apple delivers excellent "UE." Better than anyone else. They know it and Cingular knows it."
I seriously suggest you re-read how you're writing these responses, because they sound more like sales hype than critical thinking. I'm not making any kind of evaluation of the iPhone itself. I'm just observing that an outside third party company has more control over the sales and distribution of the iPhone than any other Apple product, and that's because it's a phone being sold in the US where operators call the shots.
"Relative to not being available SIM-free...that is the exclusivity deal they cut with Cingular - the largest carrier over here. Has nothing to do with bowing to demands."
...Europe has carriers too, many of them global multinationals. Why don't they ever get deals like this on flagship products? The answer is that they don't hold sway the way they do in America.
And why doesn't Apple sell any of its other products this way? Why aren't the iPods or Macs ever bundled with contracts from some service provider? The Macintosh needs an ISP to function fully, so why isn't it exclusively bundled with a 2 year DSL contract?
"IMHO, this Apple/ Cingular deal is revolutionary."
I don't see how this deal is in any sense different from any other previous exclusive manufacturer/operator deal. Apple make a popular phone model, Cingular have exclusive rights to it. Where's there anything new about this?
"If S60, UIQ or even Symbian were brands with the strength of "i-anything" I think they would be wise to keep control of the UE they deliver."
That's answered by my original point though: the vast majority people DO NOT buy smartphones because of the brand of user interface. The vast majority of smartphone purchasers buy them because of the brand of the manufacturer.
A smartphone will go mainstream if it's a phone above all else, because it's phones that sell well above all other electronic gadgets. Phones sell a billion units a year, MP3 players and PDAs do not.
"Symbian should be as strong a brand."
The very fact that Symbian are the worldwide number 1 without being a major consumer brand proves you wrong.
Most people don't buy brands of phone OS, they buy brands of phone and the OS is a secondary consideration.
Smartphones are like cars, and OSes are like engines: almost everyone buys a car based on the brand on the bonnet, not the brand on the engine.
krisse
WHOA! Son. This is a conversation stemming from an article on the S60 UI. My comments here are within THAT context: the UI. Ergo, my comment that Cingular is hands off was relative to the UI. They have no input on it beyond the Cingular (now AT&T) logo on the screen - per what I have read. The manufacturer calls the shots. NOT the carrier! THAT IS REVOLUTIONARY! Obviously Cingular aren't hands off regarding distribution.
Relative to denying vast swaths of Americans access to the phone and two-year contracts, well, what price exclusivity? I am denied a P990 by dint of manufacturer chosen specifications. Verizon customers will be denied an iPhone because theirs is a CDMA network, not GSM.
A Mac laptop distributed on exclusive arrangement is nonsensical as a parallel arguement: a laptop doesn't require a carrier, a phone does.
Regarding your distaste for my prose - well, I AM a marketing guy. That perspective informs my thoughts - and evidently - prose. Sorry, dude!
I disagree with your perspective on the importance of brand of OS for phones. I think Win Mobile has been successful because of the brand equity in "Windows." "It syncs with your PC," makes sense to the average phone buyer. Same for Palm....especially when you look at the products. The HTC phones sell well over here. All branded to their carrier (ex. Cingular 8285) AND carrying Windows Mobile logos. Further the clamor over the as yet untested iPhone (yes, not a smartphone) proves the case for the power of brand here.
Symbian are #1 worldwide because Nokia sells the most phones worldwide. That's all. People will buy the experience. Actually they buy the perceived experience, ergo the iPhone popularity before it is even launched. If a branded phone UI delivers what the market perceives to be a superior experience, loyalty to Nokia will wither. It is about the experience - not the hardware.
Krisse wrote;
> If an American wants to buy the iPhone but doesn't want to sign up to
> cingular... they can't have one because Cingular forbids it.
>
> If an American wants to buy the iPhone and is willing to sign up to
> cingular but doesn't live in the coverage area... they can't have
> one because Cingular forbids it.
Where did you hear that? As I understood it, Apple decided they wanted to keep a strong control over several aspects of the device, it's distribution and the services. Apple decided to go with one network and Cingular were actually second choice. That doesn't sound like Cingular making the demands.
Apple wanted to control the customer support.
Apple wanted to make sure all of the features of the phone were supported by the network, including visual voice-mail.
Apple wanted to make sure every device sold was already pre-configured with all of the settings and services so that users were not required to fiddle with such things.
None of this suggests Cingular calling the shots at all. Everything I have read so far suggests Cingular were all too happy to bend over backwards to get the exclusive deal as it guarantees 10s of millions of new contracts.
So where are you getting your information that Cingular is controlling the whole thing Krisse? It's genuinly not something I've heard anyone else suggest and all the evidence seems to point to the opposite although your information generally proves to be pretty reliable.
Here are some thoughts based on Steven Wittens blog entry, and whats happened when I give my S60 phone to family and friends.
The 'hangup button = close app' behaviour that came in with 3rd Ed is clearly the cause of the 'leaving the player stops all playback' observation by Steven. I know why it was done - if you are in a call and you press this button, the call ends, you dont put the call on hold, so thats how it should behave in every app. The 2nd Ed way expected the user to be 'modal' when using an interface (in this mode it does this, in that mode it does that), which is terrible UI design, and assumes (normally incorrectly) that the users are even aware of changing modes! Returning to the 2nd Ed behaviour is not the answer, no matter how annoying the 3rd Ed behaviour is for us 'old timers'!
No, the root cause of the problem here is that once you have navigated 'deep' into S60, there is now no 'one touch' way to get back to the Home screen.
The closest you can do is press the "App" Key twice. This is not intuitive even for new users that are computer literate for 2 reasons:
- Most people's experience of a button that you press, and then press again (not a 'double click', but 2 distinct presses) is for buttons that act as a 'toggle'. If you have that expectation, pressing the App Key once will toggle the App listing 'on', and then pressing again will toggle it 'off' and take you back to what you were doing before. Except it doesn't! Whenever I give my N73 to friends, this ALWAYS catches them out. They always ask 'wheres the music player gone'? Hopefully the 'Active Apps' Menu item in FP2 will help here, but its a bit of a elastoplast for a gaping wound.
- Its not even called the App or Program Key, its called the Menu Key, and likewise the App Launcher is called the Menu. But if you click the Menu key, you do not get a 'Menu' in the tradition of Mac or Windows... you get something not a million miles away from Program Manager in Windows 3.1. If you #then# press the left softkey, this is when you get to see something most people would know as a Menu!
Why is 'get home quick' so important? Look at the one front panel hardware button on an iPhone... For new users, its the 'escape hatch' they need to feel at ease.
So the number of buttons on an S60 phone have become 'functionally overloaded' to the point where 'get home quick' has fallen off the end, squeezed out by other stuff. They could have used 'Long press hangup'... but now the 6290 is using that as power on/off !!!
Now, slightly off topic....
Since the iPhone came out, I have been thinking about how you could possibly retrofit the 'App Launcher as Home screen' design onto a device with one hand interface and a 'normal phone' form factor. The desire to have 'nothing more than 2 clicks away' is only possible with that design, which I think will contribute greatly to the iPhones perceived ease of use. S60 does get accused of 'burying' a lot of its functions and options (again, putting everything into 'Settings' in FP1 will help a bit here. Everything will still be buried, just buried in one place :tongue: )
I'm not sure this is possible with S60... With my N73, I can unlock the keys, and tap in a number and it will start 'dialing', purely because of its form factor, it has a hardware number pad because its trying to be 'just a phone' at first appearances... I think so that new users are not scared off!
Despite the word being in its name, the iPhone relegates 'phone dialing' to just another app. But having the keypad there on my phone sets an expectation with a new user that they could just 'dial and go'. The only way I can see having the App Launcher as Home in S60 is to allow dialing in the launcher, which then overrides using the keypad as a shortcut to apps in the grid/list.
But even worse, if you didn't allow dialing from Home... new users could start to dial and would probably start with 0, and get the app that is in the middle of the bottom row pop up :tongue:
Andy
"I think Win Mobile has been successful because of the brand equity in "Windows.""
Windows Mobile hasn't been successful though, it barely has any market share. I think the last figures I saw put it at 3% of the worldwide phone OS market.
US bloggers and technology journalists love it because it has a huge overlap with their target audience of American tech fans, but it has very few sales outside this audience.
It's got a large chunk of the American smartphone market, but that's quite a small market overall because it's seen there as more of a luxury technophile product than an everyday tool. Ordinary Americans don't buy that many smartphones, they prefer their RAZRs. 😉
"Ergo, my comment that Cingular is hands off was relative to the UI. They have no input on it beyond the Cingular (now AT&T) logo on the screen - per what I have read. The manufacturer calls the shots. NOT the carrier! THAT IS REVOLUTIONARY! Obviously Cingular aren't hands off regarding distribution."
It might sound novel if you're used to the idea of carriers controlling everything, but it's not actually anything new because carriers don't have to control everything.
Sim-free phones have been on sale worldwide since the invention of the GSM mobile phone and they have no input from any network. There are even GSM-compatible devices which have never been approved by any operator, but because they conform to the GSM technical standard the operators can't stop them being used.
Sim-free devices work just as well on phone networks as carrier-locked ones, and they have the added benefit of allowing the user to switch carriers or even sign up to several carriers at once (they can switch sim-cards when they want to use different networks).
There are even sim-free phones on sale in America, even if most people don't really know about them.
If someone really wanted a phone without carrier interference, they could buy a sim-free one, and if Apple wanted to deliver a truly carrier-free device that everyone can appreciate, they could have sold the iPhone sim-free too. If Apple had launched the iPhone just as a sim-free option, which is what I was expecting considering the strength and pricing of their iPod brand, then that would have been something new because it would have made millions of Americans aware of the sim-free option for the first time.
Here in Finland ALL phones were sold sim-free until last year because phone locking was illegal, and carriers have had ZERO input on ANY phone model.
No phone here has ever been restricted because of pressure from carriers, because the carriers have no leverage at all in a market where people buy their handsets sim-free.
It's the same way that broadband providers have no leverage over PC makers, because people would simply switch broadband provider if their PC didn't work with a particular company.
"A Mac laptop distributed on exclusive arrangement is nonsensical as a parallel arguement: a laptop doesn't require a carrier, a phone does."
Honestly, a laptop does require a carrier. You need someone to supply your internet connection. It's no different to someone supplying your cellular connection. Most people nowadays use a PC with an online connection, and it's usually a connection that they've paid for.
In theory you could use most of a laptop's features offline, but in theory you could also use most of an iPhone's features offline.
In theory you could use a laptop online entirely through free public wifi hotspots, but the same is true of the iPhone.
In practice most people would want to use the laptop online and at home, so they would almost certainly need a third party company to supply a connection, just like they do with their phone.
"Regarding your distaste for my prose - well, I AM a marketing guy. That perspective informs my thoughts - and evidently - prose. Sorry, dude!"
It's not the perspective I have any problems with at all, it's just the way it sounds like a commercial. It makes you sound like you're repeating a company line rather than coming up with your own objective view on things. It makes it sound like you don't really want to talk about things.
Marketing is a great and noble artform that demands talent and intelligence, but this is a discussion forum rather than a billboard. 😊
Marketing people don't talk like that when they're not on the job, they get real when it's time to get real.
Now THAT is a good and radical idea and one that I've pondered off and on over the years. i.e. scrap the standby screen altogether and just have the one 'Home' app launcher screen. Scrap the number shortcuts (or make that an option for advanced users) and allow dialling from the launcher etc.
Why could this not be done? It would simplify a lot of things for everybody in one fell stroke?
Steve
Just a couple of comments about the good discussion that's been going on here.
1) As regards S60, one of the things that has always bothered me is that I can't configure simple things like buttons. For example, I had the E70 for awhile, and it bugged the hell out of me that the side buttons was permanently assigned to voice notes (which I don't use at all). Why can't I reassign it to something useful like music player.
2) As regards the iPhone/Cingular deal, I think the comments are obviously skewed a little by people's perspectives. I think that the iPhone deal with Cingular was revolutionary because of the amount of power that Cingular was willing to surrender, but this needs to be qualified by the fact that its revolutionary for the U.S. market, not so much for the rest of the world where operators have far less power.
3) As regards Windows Mobile, I think Krisse you're a little too complacent in dismissing it. Market share is still insignificant, especially globally, but it is growing rapidly, the number of devices sold is expected to double each year for the next few years. The platform has also matured by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, something I don't think is true for S60. Finally, I think that the enterprise market is definitely where Windows Mobile is targeted in the long term, and I do believe that you cannot dismiss the ability of Microsoft to sell the integration with Windows, Exchange, etc.
4) As regards the iPhone user experience as compared to S60, Windows Mobile or anything else out there right now, I think its important to note that all we have to go on right now is a carefully controlled message from Apple. Whether the iPhone is truly easier to use than an S60 device waits to be seen. However, my gut feeling, given Apple's history, is that the iPhone will most likely raise the bar significantly for user experience on a cellular device. I think S60 in particular has gotten complacent over the past few years, making incremental updates to a platform that they seem to think is fairly mature. I think this is silly to think that any mobile platform is anywhere near maturity, to draw a comparison S60, Windows Mobile, etc are at the Windows 3.1 stage, there is a huge opportunity to make a huge leap, as Windows 95 did, or if you prefer Macs, as OS X did.
You know, at the end of the day S60 is for phones. UIQ is what the Psion would have been had it a radio set. Faster than S60 too!
Perhaps the upcoming E90 announcement will have me eat those words. I doubt that, but we'll see.
Ten years on and still hoping for a Series 5 I can take a call on.
:evil:
Hi all,
Sorry but I just can not agree with a lot the statements made so far I am a self confessed Mobile Data addict and have been since I first discovered the possibility for Mobile Data which was pre GSM. I was also a full member of the Mobile Data Association whilst running Wirefree Data Ltd my company.
I have no brand or OS loyalty I buy and use what suits me best at the time of purchase, for most of my mobile data needs my OS of choice was UIQ2 and the P series of devices. I have also used Palm and Sony PDA's with mobile phones as well as an Ipaq 3970. I have only been using Nokia's and S60 since June of 2006 at first with a N70 and then an N73 and now an N93. Last week I bought a TyTN as wanted to check out WM5 and HSPDA one week later this is now for sale. No OS is ever going to be perfect for every user straight out of the box but I got to grips with S60 3rd Edition pretty fast and easily and with the addition of a few apps have it doing everything I want and need . S60 is fast and stable and whilst some complain that Symbian 9.1 is now far more Ram hungry and therefore restricted in Multitasking this has caused me very little problems. The web browser in S60 3rd Edition IMO is easily the best and fastest available and now with the release of FRING beta for S60 3rd Edition I even have free Skype over WiFi on my device. Pocket IE on the TyTN was horrible and i won't even bother on commenting on UIQ3 further than to say that i doubt i will ever purchase another SE product ever again. For me and for now S60 3rd Edition is my OS of choice and serves me the best and as Nokia are continuing to develop and improve it it will only get better. Although unlike most i really don't want GPS built into my device as this will never be better than a stand alone GPS receiver IMO and Tom Tom is my preferred Sat Nav solution. At the end of the day we live in a free world (well nearly) and have the freedom of choice to choose what suits our needs best. What suits some may not suit all but for now S60 3rd Edition and my N93 is as near to perfect as i can get.
@dgduris you have got to be kiding no way is UIQ3 faster than S60 3rd Edition not even close my N93 from coldstart takes 24 seconds a P990 takes over 1minute and all my apps open instantly.
Marc
PS I do not work for Nokia or own any Nokia shares.
Marc,
No. I was referring to UIQ 2.1, which is all SE have made available supporting GSM850. My P910a is so much faster and more customizable than the E62 I had that I think S60 is an embarrassment to the Symbian ecosystem and I understand why the statistics are that UIQ owners purchase more software than S60 owners - because UIQ can be customized more (UIQ2.x).
I have been hoping that the recent UIQ 3 firmware updates have significantly improved its performance issues and wonder if you can comment. Rafe reviewed the W950 a couple of weeks ago and didn't mention any problems. Nor did he mention what firmware version he tested.
Thanks also for the info on WM5 and the TyTn. Cingular sells that phone here as the 8525 and I have been tempted to get one to get to 3G speeds. Based on your comments I'll wait, continue on with my P910a and hope for some US-market favorable announcements from SE next week @ 3GSM.
Cheers!
Richard
I'll further add that yes, even my P910a takes over a minute to start-up. It is particularly slower with the indispensable Magic Launcher. But, it is so stable, I rarely have to shut it down and, when I fly now, I put it into offline mode and leave it on.
Richard
Hi don't get me wrong the TyTN is actually a great device and if a touchscreen and full qwerty keyboard is what some one wants or needs it fits the bill nicely. It is just that i find my N93 is much faster and easier to use, as far as UIQ2.1 goes this towards the end of its development was both fast and stable and did have lots of 3rd party apps available but this is now an old OS at the end of it's life cycle. The same can not be said for UIQ3 IMO although this is now starting to improve is my understanding, I still hear many complain about the lack of customisation available in setting up shortcuts or configuring the shortcut keys to launch the apps they want. Also that the home screen is a waste of the large screen as so little can be done with it, but i would say as an out and out business machine the soon to be released new Nokia Communicator E90 is going to take some beating as this will have a full qwerty and large screen with the best resolution screen seen so far and there are already plenty of 3rd party apps available as it will be running S60 3rd Edition FP1 IMO a true business device. Where as my N93 is a multimedia device with office capabilities as always personal preference will always decide what is good for one person but may not be for the next person. It would be really boring if we all liked and wanted the same and no OS or manufacturer will ever give us a perfect device as we then wouldn't buy any new kit which would be great for the consumer but bad news for them.
Marc
Thanks for an entertaining read so far guys. I must admit that I have never owned anything but a Nokia so I am the last person to make a comment about the other OS'es. A few biased observations though: I think the iPhone is a great idea as it will probably fragment the US market even more what with Windows, RIM and PALM, while the rest of the world focuses on Symbian and Linux. Windows are leveraging the similarity with the PC OS, Apple are banking on their UE (and, may I add - they know they have to jump ship because the iPod market is crashing)
On the topic of Apple jumping ship, it might be a little too late in the bigger scheme of things; I hear rumours of cellular (as we know it) being on the way out - and wireless/WiFi/WiMax being the incumbent. This would explain Nokia's N800 and the deal between Nokia and Skype.
Smartphones are absorbing all other handheld devices; cameras, PDAs, GPS, handheld gaming units etc, but the endgame is going to be the absorbtion of the PC. Windows are trying to leverage DOWN into the smartphone market. Symbian should be leveraging UP into the PC market: Give me a capable docking station on my desk at the office and at home, that affords me a proper keyboard and screen size, and I'll drop my heavy, hot and unwieldly laptop in the trash in a flash. The power of the smartphones is fast approaching all my every day needs (serious gaming probably being the only major exception but for that we have the xbox and PS3) and I can't wait for the day that I don't need to worry about synchronisation and format convertions to port my data and media between office, home and the road. Who knows, with the portable micro projectors appearing and virtual laser keyboards, the 'ONE ULTIMATELY CONVERGED' device can't be too far in the future? Although a normal qwerty keyboard and 15" flatscreen is probably more desirable.
The last ingredient to this mix is of course, the web. With Web 2.0 and and Ajax type environment and the best mobile browser around, who cares about the OS in any case? Once again Symbian leads the pack with the best browser around.
Whatevert the future holds - I can't wait.
Comments on S60 are interesting, because I've always found it a rather clunky UI. It inherits much of its clunkiness from S40, and it seems like things are just getting worse rather than better in many ways.
UIQ 3 softkey style (try a P990i with flip closed) shows how a sophisticated one-handed UI can be implemented. The key (no pun intended) is the Back button, which is lacking on S60.
Back allows you to leave an app without exiting it (of course, UIQ specifies that you can't exit an app, anyway -- it's up to the system to do that). Not only that, but a long press of Back rather intuitively takes you all the way back to the standby screen (which, on the P990i's flip-closed screen, is quite a useful screen, with just a single press away to five of your most useful apps, and a keypad entry going straight into the phone app, or a long keypad press doing a lookup into contacts).
Nokia could learn a lot from this UI (and they are already doing so, with the confirm key or joypad centre press now being labeled). I have a little trepidation about UIQ 3.1's ability to work without a Back key. Let's hope it's not a backward step...
-Malcolm.
lithgow wrote:The key (no pun intended) is the Back button, which is lacking on S60.Back allows you to leave an app without exiting it (of course, UIQ specifies that you can't exit an app, anyway -- it's up to the system to do that).
And the red/hangup key exits/terminates the app on S60 (unless the application has specifically been written to ignore it).
On S60 the "menu" key allows you to leave an app without exiting. One press takes you to the standby screen. The next one takes you to the application menu. A long press will bring up the list of running apps you can switch to.And the red/hangup key exits/terminates the app on S60 (unless the application has specifically been written to ignore it).
Yes, I know. But how is a user supposed to know that? The Menu key doesn't have anything to do with a menu, and doesn't even "go back". (If you're in the apps selector it goes to the phone, and then from there back to the apps -- at least in older versions of S60.) So how is the user supposed to know this? Certainly not from the character printed on the key, which is just plain weird. (Yes, I know it represents the ability to cycle between apps, but if that's the case, why isn't it called the "switch" key or the "cycle" key, which is actually a MUCH better description of its usage than the "menu" key. In fact, if it was called the Switch key or the like, it's usage would make perfect sense.)
As for the hangup key, why should that close apps? Unless it's used consistently to close stuff, which I don't think it is. (Does it close a dialog? No, it just returns to the main screen as far as I'm aware, maybe closing the app on the way.) And if it's used to close stuff, why shouldn't the off-hook key (or call key -- the hangup key's opposite) be used to open stuff. These keys are just too weird on multi-functional phones, anyway, and always have been since softkeys arrived on Nokias. SE's long-standing lack of off and on hook keys has always been a MUCH better UI, and for smartphones the gulf simply widens.
Basically, the Nokia UI is just too arbitrary. Things aren't obvious or consistent (on a higher, ignorant-user level). The fact that Nokia are constantly tweaking these things is pretty good evidence for my point.
I've now had a chance to play VERY briefly with the Motorola-style UIQ 3.1 UI, and, to be frank, Motorola's Nokia-like keys seem to reduce the utility of the UIQ UI substantially. Sigh...
-Malcolm.