In this editorial, Steve responds to criticisms of S60's speed, noting that expectations must be realistic and that in many ways smartphones are more efficient than PCs. We would be interested in hearing your thoughts though, so leave a note about your experience in the comment thread.
Read on in the full article.
As someone trying to choose between an e61 and Treo680, one of the things I've read several times is that Symbian is sluggish next to the Palm OS. I've always thought that was more the point when people commented on it's speed.
Jonathan
After using the E61 for nearabout a year, I can safely say that the speed is not ideal. I run the latest firmware, have cleaned out my memory card a number of times and in general use it prudently (closing unused apps, etc.)
Symbian (or the Nokia S60 phones that run it) are simply not ideal in terms of response time. Opening folders can take several seconds, as do apps, sometimes. Whether it is a function of the OS or the hardware that runs it I do not know, but if there was a competitive device in terms of features, price and reasonable software support, but with speed, I would switch in a heartbeat. There are few things about Symbian/S60 that will keep me loyal.
Perhaps in the future, better packages of hardware/batteries will afford improved performance and longevity, in which case Symbian/S60 will be more than acceptable. Not perfect, but more than acceptable.
S60 is slow and to say it's because they choke the processor doesn't stand up, the chip in S60 smartphones is much faster than other phones who's GUI is almost instant, my girlfriend has a Sagem MXY-4 and it flies through the menus, she hates using my N70 cos it's like wait-wait-wait.
It's slow because the software is poorly written...end of argument
Although I'm a 100% Symbian Fanboy, somebody who would make comments like, "I'm waiting for the day Symbian makes a PC OS, I'll ditch windows the very same day." But even I would agree that Symbian should do something to increase the response speed.
True, Symbian, being a proper OS, needs users with enough brains to understand how to use an Operating System, so sometimes, can be very difficult for Moto Users/Reviewers to understand, this causes them to start writing bad about it. But that doesn't mean the Problem isn't there. Symbian development team should treat 'Response Speed' as an area that needs improvement. From NgageQD to N80 whatever Symbian you may pickup, the issue has always been there. Its time they did something about it.
Personally I think that the S60 2nd Edition phones did suffer from slowdown especially when heavily loaded (N70 in particular the operator variant I had). S60 3rd Edition is better, but some people have problems (but I think that true of any platform).
That said there is a noticeable improvement in devices like the N93 / N95 that use the newer and faster processors. This certainly points towards hardware though I imagine its not that simple. Its dangerous comparing devices too as they all have a different cost.
The equation between cost / speed and battery life is going to be different for each user. As one commenter mentioned there are other things that are more important in a user decision - e.g. overall real world use time and stability. For some devices I trade off a little speed for more battery life.
At the same time it may also be that I'm less impacted because I use my device multi tasking - i.e. messaging is nearly always open and therefore I always get an instant response.
Interestingly one of the main points about FP2 and Symbian 9.3. was about decreasing start up time and increasing responsiveness.
it's funny you picked an E70 to demonstrate speed especially with a the keyboard opened up - exactly because E70 is short on RAM to start with which is even less in landscape mode plus has serious memory leaks - so the last thing you would want to do is multitasking 😊
my pet hate on my E70 is the time it takes to open a folder when I'm looking for icons for apps placed in strategic places. I can understand why it would take 76 seconds to open a folder with 60-70 icons in it, but it takes the same time to open (for the first time after start-up) folders with 3-4 icons inside. that's far more annoying than windows catching up with anything...
Comments such as;
> journalists are often unsure of how multitasking works
make me wince a little. Largely because it's the sort of comment I've used myself many times before. I see the point, and make it myself, but to just play devils advocate for a bit, why should someone who buys a mobile phone need to understand the principles of multi-tasking in order for their phone to not run like a dog?
I don't need to understand the principle of the internal combustion engine in order to make my car go faster. I just press the pedal on the right.
The same goes for (and here I paraphrase) "the device is doing a lot and is portable therefore why shouldn't it be slow". I'm sorry Steve, but that's a daft argument. If I've just forked out top dollar for a premium device such as a smartphone, I expect it to perform better than a $50 sagem.
To take the car analogy again, if I bought a Bentley Continetal to replace my Renault Clio, I wouldn't just expect it to be more comfortable and have more features. I would also expect it to be a damn sight faster.
These arguments are designer arguments or, dare I say it, even marketing arguments. Sorry boys, we can't put in a fast enough processor because that would reduce the battery life. Oh no, we can't put in a better battery because that would cost money.
If the slowness of S60 devices is really a hardware limitation, why has the top of the range S60 device historically not been any faster than the others? Surely, as you move up the scale, the manufacturing costs become less of a constraint as the profit margins increase so Nokia could throw plenty of hardware at the problem. But we don't see this.
Apologies if this was already covered in comments before now, but I thought that I'd chime in after reading the article.
There were two aspects of device speed that you addressed in your article, and both are not only different, but highlight two respective aspects of application performance that we do not normally equate with the catch all term of "speed."
The first is that you spoke about the speed in going from one application to another. If the reviewer is knowledgable in the various means that you can switch from one applicaiton to another (as you noted) then switching applications is indeed faster. However, the person you quoted did not know this instincively, and therefore the increased amount of time "getting to the applciation before launching it" gives the perspective of slower speed, when its just that the UI is not well enough designed for someone to go quickly from one minimized app to another as you speak. This is completly on the part of the UI designers for Symbian S60, and is something that should be improved if there is to be improvement in perceived speed.
The second aspect of speed you talk about is in launching application. This is the aspect of speed that is most misunderstood by those not accustomed with mobiles doing what desktops do. Just as you say. "...the desktop with unlimited RAM, a smartphone has to manage its RAM quite carefully and this means a degree of creating and then destroying RAM-grabbing windows, and this takes a little time." This is not lost on the user, however their expectation is that of what they have on their desktop (whether right or not). Sure, system optimization can help, but your words again hold true here as the measure of speed that should be expected should not lie in the sme lane as that for a desktop.
That all being said, great article and a nice piece to think on. If I am the gurus programming for Symbian, I am looking at this article as one part affirmation and another part slap in the face to get my apps better. If I am the power user, I am smiling and wondering what extensions can help me eek a little more speed out of simple and complex processes. But the most important is that of the person who doesn't know much about SYmbian, but has expectations that are not yet clear as to what their new device can do. For that person, this article will not only set realistic expectations, but also make them much more the mobile student, than just the mobile use.
Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.
To answer a few of these points:
re: E70. Well, I multitask quite a lot with the E70, although I'll admit that striking up Web in landscape mode will cause everything else to shut down. This one's down to Nokia, I'm still waiting for the v3 firmware!
>>"devils advocate for a bit, why should someone who buys a mobile phone need to understand the principles of multi-tasking in order for their phone to not run like a dog? I don't need to understand the principle of the internal combustion engine in order to make my car go faster. I just press the pedal on the right."
You misunderstand. I'm not talking about knowing how multitasking works under the surface, I'm talking about knowing how to use the obvious multitasking tools (i.e. the app key), akin to learning to drive if you want to go motoring.
>>argument. If I've just forked out top dollar for a premium device such as a smartphone, I expect it to perform better than a $50 sagem.
Non sequitur. The smartphone can do 10 times as much, which was partly the point of my editorial. There's a lot more going on inside to allow you to do more on the outside.
>>These arguments are designer arguments or, dare I say it, even marketing arguments. Sorry boys, we can't put in a fast enough processor because that would reduce the battery life. Oh no, we can't put in a better battery because that would cost money.
Nope. They can't put in a bigger battery because they're already pushing the laws of physics. The size/processor/battery trade-off is the key issue.
>>If the slowness of S60 devices is really a hardware limitation, why has the top of the range S60 device historically not been any faster than the others?
Err... it is. The N93 is much faster than, say, a Nokia 6630.
Steve
Just to explain, I largely agree with your point of view Steve. However, I am also trying very hard to see it from a users point of view. After all, us techies just sitting here saying "Well we're right because it works for us" doesn't help in the face of such overwhelming criticism from the general users.
Anyway;
> You misunderstand. I'm not talking about knowing how multitasking works
> under the surface, I'm talking about knowing how to use the obvious
> multitasking tools (i.e. the app key), akin to learning to drive
I don't see that. Most users already know how to use a mobile phone. Why should they have to re-learn for S60? Why should the OS not just multi-task by default if that's how it is meant to be used? I would also argue that the user DOES need to know why closing an app is different to switching away from it in order for it to make sense. If it doesn't make sense to them, they won't be inclined to do it.
> The smartphone can do 10 times as much, which was partly
> the point of my editorial. There's a lot more going on inside to allow you to
> do more on the outside.
I know what the point of your editorial was but MY point was that this doesn't make sense to a user. They have just paid many times more for an N95 than for a SE K750. They've already paid the extra money for the extra features. The phone then responding more slowly is like having to pay twice.
Think consumer. Slower is less. I've paid more so I want more. Surely you can understand that attitude from someone who has just foked out �400 only to discover their mates �50 phone is much quicker?
> Nope. They can't put in a bigger battery because they're already pushing
> the laws of physics. The size/processor/battery trade-off is the key issue.
Now that's just nonsense. The battery in my MiniS is a 1250mAh battery and is tiny. Many S60 devices come with batteries of roughly equivalant size but less than 1000mAh. And that's before we get into more efficient processors etc. There are plenty of ways Nokia could have used hardware to get more performance out of the S60 range over the last few years but it chose not to.
They are now begining to do so but you'll note I very carefully used the word "historically" because I'm well aware the very latest have started to throw more hardware at the problem This has certainly not been the case for several years where the top and bottom S60 devices in any particular "generation" were differentiated much more by form-factor and features than by hardware and, as such, were all fairly equal in terms of speed.
I agree with planetjag - Symbian is slow if you've seen the speed of Palm OS. Nokia keeps making excuses for a design tradeoff they decided on a long time ago. And yes, I understand that Palm OS doesn't have the same level of multitasking that Symbian has, but from a users perspective I rather have speed and limited multitasking than multitasking and a slow UI.
Sorry Steve one of those rare occasions where you're defending the undefendable😊
>>argument. If I've just forked out top dollar for a premium device such as a smartphone, I expect it to perform better than a $50 sagem.
>Non sequitur. The smartphone can do 10 times as much, which was partly the point of my editorial. There's a lot more going on inside to allow you to do more on the outside.
90% of the time we use 10% of the applications. Close everything else in the s60 and do a telephone number search, have a feeling the $50 sagem will still be faster. 😊 And this is worrying as 90% of the time we use the phone for talking or texting. If any other task is done significantly more IMHO you should be getting Windows Mobile or Windows Smartphone which is snappier in its response of the PDA or email functions.
Case in point. Testing with the old Nokia 9210. Sending a short sms using the numeric keypad is 3 - 5 times faster than going through messaging suite - and this includes multitapping! So I don't think it's all the multitasking complicated stuff happening in the "back" - it's plain poor programming.
I just think it is the case of Nokia resting on its laurels due to dominance - a bit like Msoft with Internet Explorer.
If the iPhone is snappier (albeit at poorer battery life), I think Nokia will buck up!
Here's hoping that the iPhone is great for a wakeup call.😊
The slow speed I can put up with - just about. What I find an incredible PITA are the dumb design decisions which (i) makes operation slower (ii) increases memory usage - the most annoying being most apps go searching through all the memory and storage card looking for the files it knows how to handle, this allows it to present an unwieldyly (new word) long list which makes selecting one item from it extremely tedious. Sometimes building up this unwieldyly long list uses so much memory the app conks out (this has happened to me a number of times when trying to add a thumbnail to a contact and I happen to have hundreds of images on my SD card). This particular example of dumb design is not limited to S60, it's also evident in wince and qtopia.
One thing I noticed about S60 (and I've commented on before) is that it's actually not slow, but there are stuff like those cute animations that seem to slow it down, e.g. the animated check mark, or the animated keypad unlocking when the slide is opened. I actually have to press a key to cancel the animation so I can go on with what I want to do.
Symbian phones have something like 95% market occupation where I live, and it's frustrating to see other users wait and wait on the UI, or scroll down endless programs since they don't know how to group programs into folders. (Not to mention all the virus infections...)
The Symbian OS is multithreaded and uses threads everywhere. The result, as any computer scientist will tell you, is going to have a high probability of lockups, race conditions, and more lockups artificially added to fight race conditions. I will not be surprised if sooner or later we find out that most of the user wait time is caused by different system threads waiting for each other.
Now, psychologically, I can understand the person who has created such a monstrosity. The guy obviously saw the challenge and did what he considered "the right thing" to solve every possible problem. But why NOBODY in the management has noticed that running such a complex OS on such a measly computing device is impractical?
Not having to boot a pc to look up something in my mailbox or on the web is great. However, the phones also tend to get all the problems we know from pcs: e.g. my E61 got really really slow the last days. And there are no tools to examine this or to do something about it. Also as a pc-user i am used to be able to update the software in order to get new features. For example i would love to have the stereo bluetooth a2dp-profile on my e61. Seems that with the browser nokia has listened to this request - i read it will be available as an upgrade.
Especially Mail for Exchange now get very slow and stops working. Any idea how to cure this?
Just a quick comment about the speed of Symbian OS: I've recently switched from a Nokia N70 to a Sony Ericsson W950i, and the difference in speed is dramatic. On my previous phone, simple tasks like opening Contacts, composing SMS messages, and even navigating the menus felt annoyingly sluggish.
The W950i feels fast and responsive, and you never feel like you're waiting for the phone to think about something. Running lots of applications simultaneously makes no noticeable difference. USB transfers are also extremely quick.
This therefore suggests that it isn't the underlying OS, or anything to do with multitasking, that's to blame for the speed issues people have experienced; more likely it's Nokia underspeccing the hardware in their phones.
Erm, just because Symbian OS is multi-threaded does not mean "it uses threads all over the place". If you read any materials on Symbian OS you will constantly see references to Active objects. They perform similar tasks to threads without all the issues 'any computer scientist' will tell you about - thats one of the reasons they were invented. Most apps use active objects most of the time.
Symbian OS uses very few threads, especially when compared to any other environment, e.g. windows mobile. Sure if you are using Java then it goes thread mad, but thats Java not Symbian OS.
Windows mobile devices run quite fast these days, on the other hand my one needs recharging practically every day, for me thats highly unsatisfactory. My N73 might not be as quick but it lasts best part of a week on a single charge, average usage. For me thats quite important as I require my mobile to be mobile, not thethered to a power supply.
As per last comment most issues seem to be down to slightly under specing the h/w (processor speed in particular) but there is a significant cost/battery life tradeoffs. WM phones seem to need about 400mhz processors to operate satisfactorily. Palm OS is typically around 300Mhz, Nokia are running higher speced S60 devices around 220mhz, many below that, so its not entirely surprising that devices are sluggish compared to say WM/Palm.
i'd like to give also my opinion as a "power user" of symbian, i've to agree that doing simple tasks on my N80IE (or any symbian that i ever owned) is a little bit disappointing, e.g : when i'm walking on the street or i'm in a hurry and want to write an sms, i found the messaging application very very slow and simply it's not able to respond to my "demand" at this time, in other phone (a simple phone like 3310) i'm not suffering from that, yes i know it's not a smartphone etc but it's like we said : windows take 1min to lunch outlook express?
also when i'm sending e-mails with attachements, it's even worse...(time to launch the default email client and join even an 300Kb attachement...)
but i've to agree that leaving all those applications in background, make things a little bit faster, but knowing the amount of free RAM available after the boot, and some applications runing in the background and the fact that i use the hangry "web" browser and e-mail client, it's almost impossible...
bbj wrote:Erm, just because Symbian OS is multi-threaded does not mean "it uses threads all over the place". If you read any materials on Symbian OS you will constantly see references to Active objects. They perform similar tasks to threads without all the issues 'any computer scientist' will tell you about - thats one of the reasons they were invented. Most apps use active objects most of the time.
Now, you can have as many threads as you want, it is not such a big deal. What becomes problematic is synchronization between these threads. As they access common data and resources and work toward a common goal, they have to be precisely synchronized to avoid deadlocks and race conditions. By adding new threads, you add exponentially more possibilities for problems.
Most operating systems avoid this problem by using threads sparingly and restricting their use to, let us say, communication with device drivers and other easily controllable things not used by a casual developer. Unfortunately, Symbian has asynchronous execution all over the place - the file system, peripheral devices, the UI, even getting phone's IMEI is asynchronous. The result is a slow and inherently unstable OS.
I agree with you on the hardware though. Unfortunately, it is always the speed vs. battery life tradeoff and OMAP does not do too bad on that. But whoever wrote the OS and the S60 UI framework had to take into account what they are going to run on and scale down their complexity accordingly. As a developer, I do not need the underlying OS to be completely asynchronous. I just need it to WORK.
I think luarvique's theory of thread/active object synchronization problems could be true, technically. I just don't think it is: For me already *one* fast Symbian phone invalidates the theory, because pretty much every Symbian phone is infested with threads and AO's from top to bottom and should race and synchronize badly, and therefore not be fast.
AshleyM reports of the SE W950i being fast. Ok, for me the probability of the "Symbian slow because threads/AOs" theory just dropped through the floor.
rbrunner wrote:I think luarvique's theory of thread/active object synchronization problems could be true, technically. I just don't think it is: For me already *one* fast Symbian phone invalidates the theory, because pretty much every Symbian phone is infested with threads and AO's from top to bottom and should race and synchronize badly, and therefore not be fast.
Of course, the optimal way would be to simplify the process, avoid using .SVGs, cache all installed application metadata in a couple megabytes of the SDRAM, simplify theme rendering mechanism and/or make it optional (I can live without themes), etc. Unfortunately, it does not look like Nokia has a goal of making its basic S60 UI responsive. They would like to turn their phones into fashion items, video cameras, GPS units, MP3 players, but the end user experience is definitely off their goal list.
rbrunner wrote:AshleyM reports of the SE W950i being fast. Ok, for me the probability of the "Symbian slow because threads/AOs" theory just dropped through the floor.
Hi all,
As a fairly recent convert to S60 my first device was a N70 and this wasn't fast but my first S60 3rd Edition an N73 was much faster and my current device an N93 after the update to V20.0.058 it is very fast IMO for a smart phone /Multimedia computer. From a cold start 22seconds to being usable all apps open virtually instantaneously and am more than happy with response times. Unlike the SE M600 that was so slow if i hadn't sold it is was in danger of being smashed to pieces.
How some here can comment on devices that are approaching 2 years old and therefore do not reflect the current crop of devices is beyond me. I also can't understand how you can expect a smart phone to be as fast as a desktop PC as this IMO just makes no sense.
I really think peoples expectations need to be more realistic in what they expect from their devices my early Laptops had less Ram and slower processors than my current Smart Phone and ran much slower also. How any one can expect a complex Smart phone with it's OS to run simple apps as fast as a dumb phone is beyond me as the dumb phone only does 2 or 3 things and has no complex OS running logic says of course this will be faster. I just feel lucky my life doesn't require everything to happen instantaneously and i can afford to waste 2-3 seconds if my device needs it to then perform the function i desire. But as for S60 being slow maybe it was but it is my experience it has got faster and I'm sure it will continue to improve as technology improves.
Marc
"Just a quick comment about the speed of Symbian OS: I've recently switched from a Nokia N70 to a Sony Ericsson W950i, and the difference in speed is dramatic. On my previous phone, simple tasks like opening Contacts, composing SMS messages, and even navigating the menus felt annoyingly sluggish."
I think it is not fair to make a comparison between Symbian 8.1a (N70) and 9.1 (W950i) as 9.1 has hard realtime support
Did I get the only non-slugish E70-2 around?
Mine is pretty snappy even with M4E running constantly in the background pinging my company's e-mail server. The biggest slowdown I see is when I'm opening up a folder with a large number of apps, but I can usually solve this by breaking up my most commonly used apps into smaller folders. The switch to landscape mode is the other big bottleneck I've seen, which does take a good 5 seconds or so to execute. I don't reboot it all that often, either.
luarvique, I think you are talking complete rubbish about Active Objects (AOs). The whole point of AOs is that they perform CO-OPERATIVE multitasking (within one thread). Therefore an AO never has to worry about synchronising with another AO (within the same thread), because the AO is able to release a resource (etc) before it hands-over execution to another AO.
Compare this to threads, which are executed using PRE-EMPTIVE multitasking, and thus can never know when their execution will be interrupted by another thread. This means that each resource must be locked, to avoid two threads trying to use the same resource. The result of this is the conflicts & deadlocks you mentioned, when one thread has to wait (perhaps indefinitely) for a resource to be freed.
Hi luarvique
Sounds like you have mis-understood how active objects work in most cases. Unlike threads, they cannot be interrupted/context switched as such practially all synchronization problems simply go away, two active objects cannot access the same data in the way threads can.
Race/synch problems dont normally manifest themselves as slow performance that gets things right in the end. They normally exhibit as bugs, crashes, lockups etc. There are undoubtly some of these in any OS as complex as Symbian OS or Windows etc however...
Its pretty unclear that a statement such as "having asynchronous operations all over the place results in a slow and unstable OS".
Maybe I am the only person in the world that never has to re-boot their Symbian phone every day - I cant remember the last time I had to reboot my everyday use N73, its been switched on for months and operates at more than an acceptable speed for me. If working for months on end is "slow and unstable" give me slow and unstable every day of the week !
Agreed I am not a power user, however I strongly suspect I am like the vast majority of owners, using contacts, msgs a bit, calendar, the phone, camera occasionally, plus 10 or so apps we produce.
If "running such a complex OS on such a measly computing device is impractical" could you explain how Symbian have managed to sell 100 million devices, surely word would have got out by now that you shouldnt touch a Symbian phone ? or perhaps thats what is being said in this thread ?
Having been a Win Mobile user for several years now I have to say my one experience of S60 was horrendous. Granted it was the Orange N70 but I lasted a week with that phone beofre swapping it for a replacement. The N95 could tempt me to try S60 again but I would have to reassure myself that I wouldn't be throwing it against a wall in frustration first.