The Big Fight 2007: S60 vs Series 40!

In case anyone's wondering about the names, "Series 40" and "S60" are the official titles of the two interfaces. Nokia no longer talks about "Series 60" any more.

All a bit Starbust/Opal Fruits-ish, but there you go...

I though the new Series 40 OS had multitasking capabilities...SE "dumb" OS used on k800, w880, etc, alows running several java apps on background (even the k750 can run one java app on the background), besides the internal media player, etc...it also can use java apps as walpapers, etc

Well done krisse, you really hit the nail on the head with that comparison.
At the end of the day, it depends on what the end user intents doing with his/her phone. But for me its only one option, S60 all the way. So much more expandability of the phone, it ultimately becomes so much more than a phone.

"I though the new Series 40 OS had multitasking capabilities...SE "dumb" OS used on k800, w880, etc, alows running several java apps on background (even the k750 can run one java app on the background), besides the internal media player, etc...it also can use java apps as walpapers, etc"

As I said in the article, the latest Series 40 can run certain apps in the background, for example the built-in music player, so there must be some rudimentary multi-tasking going on there.

But I think most people would define multi-tasking as being able to use several third party applications at once, and freely switch between them, as you would on a PC.

If you start up a third party app in the Series 40 there's still no way to switch from that app to another application. The only way to use another application is to shut down the app you're currently using, so multi-tasking with third party apps is impossible even on the latest Series 40.

In S60, as long as you have enough RAM you can start up many different third party apps and always switch between them by holding down the menu key.

I can't comment on the Sony Ericsson phones as they don't run Series 40, which is what this article was about.

"Well done krisse, you really hit the nail on the head with that comparison.
At the end of the day, it depends on what the end user intents doing with his/her phone. But for me its only one option, S60 all the way. So much more expandability of the phone, it ultimately becomes so much more than a phone."

Thanks! I deliberately didn't announce a winner at the end because like you say it's a question of having the right phone for you. There is no uber-phone because whatever a phone is good at will be balanced out by problems in other areas.

Great article. Though i'd like to see more phones compared.

Really great Krisse, I like the conclusion resting on battery life as it is the greatest concern we face today (well, in the mobile world 😛). Good phone choices as to the average consumer, they would assume these phones were virtually identical which is not the case at all.

It's good to see S40 doing well and catching up to S60. It can only mean good things for Nokia as more people get a taster with a high-end S40 and move on over to S60 at which point I don't thenk they would ever go back. I also think it is valuable to keep both versions going as the simplicity of S40 can be a major attraction as not everyone wants to do everythig with their phone or have certain functions become too complex by having extra features that they deem unneccesary.

This is why there will never be one perfect phone - not just because each model has a few compromises these days, but that there is no one phone that suits every one of us.

I have had some S40 phones before, most recently I had a 6270 for a while. It was quite bulky though I found that satisfying as I knew I had it with me, unlike the N95 which I feel is too light in my hands. I found the active standby quite good and I liked being able to write a note on the main screen as a reminder etc or a short shopping list and found it was quite intuitive in other respects that S60 was not.

As you say krisse, the gap is closing anyway and S40 is getting very close to S60. I just hope a few things S40 does well cross over too.

krisse, still, if you talk about gap between the so called "dumb-phones" and symbian smartphones, be it s60 or uiq, from what i read on your article, and knowing thow SE�s dumb OS works, i�d say the gap is way closer with those, because multitasking is a key feature

"Great article. Though i'd like to see more phones compared."

There is a lot of variation in the smart and ordinary phone world, but it would be quite a big task to compare it all. We picked the 5300 and 5700 because they're both pretty similar in other respects and they both use the very latest versions of S60 and Series 40.

"I just hope a few things S40 does well cross over too."

When I first used the 5300 I was actually quite shocked by how good the interface is on Series 40 now, and the fact that many features were the same or even better than on S60. I especially love the "recent recipients" feature on Series 40 text messaging.

"krisse, still, if you talk about gap between the so called "dumb-phones" and symbian smartphones, be it s60 or uiq, from what i read on your article, and knowing thow SE�s dumb OS works, i�d say the gap is way closer with those, because multitasking is a key feature"

I just can't comment on SE's dumb and smartphones as I haven't used them! 😊 Maybe you're right, and we'll see SE dumb and smart phones unify before Nokia's, which would be very interesting.

The article is really just about Series 40 and S60, partly because those are the two most popular platforms (Series 40 for dumb phones, S60 for smartphones), and partly because Nokia seems to be actively making them look and feel very similar to each other.

Actually in the case of SonyEricsson the gap is small because SE's "smartphones" are dumb like ****. No profiles, no call recorder etc.

I think that's a little unfair, Guess Who. 😞

Nice write-up Krisse. I was at a T-Mobile store here in Philadelphia yesterday checking out the 5300 and was very suprised to see how S60-ish it's home screen was. It seemed very easy to get PIM info into and out of the device. Impressive device. Your points on its shortcomings when compared to the S60 5700 are right on. There is no comparison. But in terms of price and functionality, Nokia's Series 40 phones are way ahead of Motorola and Samsung, both of which seem bogged down in too much hardware development to really get into their OS and GUI improvements. Don't get me started on how long it takes to send a photo to a laptop from my wife's PEBL via bluetooth!

@Guess Who, you are right..right now UIQ3 phones don�t have profiles/call recording, something that SE dumbphones have...it might change soon though 😉

"and was very suprised to see how S60-ish it's home screen was"

So was I! I think a lot of people are unaware just how advanced Series 40 has become, because only a handful of the latest models have Series 40 3rd FP2 along with a QVGA screen. A lot of people currently on S60 switched from Series 40 many years ago when Series 40 was much more primitive.

Apparently the just-announced 6500 Classic and 6500 Slider will have Series 40 5th Edition (don't know what happened to 4th Edition though...).

The 6500 Slider looks like a Series 40 equivalent of the N93: it has a 3mp Carl Zeiss camera, it can record video at VGA resolution and it even has a TV Out socket:

http://forum.nokia.com/devices/6500_slide

If the specs are to be believed, it even has a HTML (rather than XHTML) browser, which would be yet another gap between S40 and S60 chipped away.

thanks krisse! this was exactly the comparison i've been looking for! having owned a 5300 (until it was recently stolen >😞 ), i found that tho i liked a lot of the features, it still lacked in its execution compared to an s60 phone (the 6630 i owned previously seemed to handle music playback better in someways than the 5300, more user friendly & versatile in creating playlists, too).
i've been considering whether to get another 5300 or try out the 5700 instead, & i think i'll give the latter a whirl this time (although the 5300 was also a great phone!). thanks for comparing the two!

Apparently the just-announced 6500 Classic and 6500 Slider will have Series 40 5th Edition (don't know what happened to 4th Edition though...).

I think that might be to do with tetraphobia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

Nokia tend to be on top of the whole "avoid the number 4 and the number 13" thing, probably because until recently, their entire range was made up of 3 and 4 digit numbers.

Tom

I suppose even if you think numerology is a load of rubbish, if many of your customers DO have a fear of the number 4 (especially customers in large, fast-growing markets like China) then it makes sense to avoid that number in your product names.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure series 40 can run opera mini about as well as s60. Seeing this is my prime internet browser I'd say series 40 actually don't do badly on the internet surfing issue.

"Also correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure series 40 can run opera mini about as well as s60. Seeing this is my prime internet browser I'd say series 40 actually don't do badly on the internet surfing issue."

Whether you prefer the S60 browser or something like Opera Mini is a matter of taste rather than quality, some want pages reformatted for optimised viewing on their phone, while others want pages rendered in their original PC style.

If you want pages to appear pretty much like they do on your computer, S60 browser is the best option, it can even handle flash sites (including actual flash elements running within pages, not just separately displayed). Series 40 just can't do this (although it can run Flash Lite applications in a separate viewer).

If you want pages processed so they fit better on a small screen, then a mobile-oriented browser is better, but this can be done on both S60 and Series 40.

As phone displays become higher resolution and physically larger I suspect more people will go for PC-style browsing than mobile-style browsing. This would be particularly important if TV Out sockets become standard, as you would be able to browse the internet on a full-size screen.

More powerful S60 hardware? Does S60 really require much more from the hardware, or is it just that Series 40 software is less capable? Could the 5300's hardware run S60?

Forum Nokia doesn't help much, the only obvious differences are a lower display depth for the 5300 and less user storage.

I'm curious as to whether Nokia use the same basic hardware platforms for S60 and Series 40 phones. It would be a sensible approach from Nokia's perspective.

My guess is that Series 40 asks less of the hardware, but conversely isn't as extensible.

"Does S60 really require much more from the hardware, or is it just that Series 40 software is less capable?"

If the hardware was identical on Series 40 and S60 phones, surely they'd just use S60 on all their phones instead of bothering with the inferior Series 40?

"I'm curious as to whether Nokia use the same basic hardware platforms for S60 and Series 40 phones. It would be a sensible approach from Nokia's perspective."

It would be a bit odd to fit an expensive 300 mhz multi-tasking processor in a dumb phone when a much slower and cheaper one would do the same job just as well.

Mobile electronics manufacturers tend to use the slowest processors and the least amount of RAM that they can get away with, both for their own sake and for the sake of their customer. If manufacturers made processors faster than they needed and RAM amounts larger than they needed, they would be throwing money away on unnecessary production costs and draining the device's battery more quickly.

@krisse - yeah, I'm sure Nokia won't spend any more than they need to on hardware, there's little point for them to do so.

It's just that with the external specs being so similar, and the functionality no longer being miles apart, I'm starting to wonder how different a Series 40 and S60 phone need to be in terms of hardware. Series 40 is getting bigger and more capable, whilst S60 is moving to single processor hardware and effectively becoming more lightweight.