If you've ever looked at an aspect of the Symbian or smartphone world and asked 'Why?', then you know exactly how I sometimes feel. This being Friday, here are some of my puzzlers for weekend pontification....
Read on in the full article.
ad 1: What would you have said if they made it more difficult, e.g. by requiring the time to be set from an external source, like NITZ or GPS (as done for DRM)? My personal theory is that this is a transition phase, while the handset still cannot be sure of the "real" time - but once external time sync is made compulsory in future version, presto, all the old certificates are gone for good. Think of it as a "grace period"...
ad 5: Amen to that - perhaps the single biggest impact of the iPhone on the wider market is that people are starting to ask themselves such obvious questions.
ad 9: Again, a personal theory: perhaps to avoid giving the impression that Symbian is really owned and run by Nokia, which has probably already made adoption by some of the tier-2 manufacturers more difficult to argue for.
And here is my #10(b):
10b: Why on earth are Symbian and/or Nokia not supporting at least one CDMA handset with Symbian OS which is reasonably attractive and available in the shops - even if it means subsidizing it? For me as a Symbian app developer, the fact that there is not a single device that would allow customers of US (and other) CDMA carriers run my application, no matter how compelling it is, leaves a gaping hole in the coverage of important global markets. Of course, this may not rival the market share of Windows Mobile or Palm right away, but at least it is a foot in the door...
10. Why can they manage to put more in the same size device every year, but not get more energy in the same size battery for years?
All in favorite for voting Mr. Litchfield for the next CEO of SE..
(1) Like you Steve, I dont know why they have to issue those kinds of certificates that would expire within a year. I'm using the cursed(but now stable) P990i and I've got many applications installed on the phone but I had to set the year back on the phone like 6 times !!!!! to be able to install some of the applications. beats me ??? why it had to be this hard to install an app on ones phone.
(2)RAM: I dont think that Sony-Ericsson and Nokia know the meaning of RAM, so I am going to spell it out for them dumbs it is aka "Random Acess Memory". Why bring out a RAM-starved phone like the P990 when you know that in bout' 6months time , you were going to bring out another phone with twice the RAM(P1i)
(3)I Dont know how sony-ericsson spend their cash �$ but if they spend as much money on advertising the (P1i) as they did on paying the fools who designed the P990i, maybe they would have got some more positive feedback on their new phone.
..........
jumping to no (9)This one really beats me, its like saying that the "USA doesn't sponsor terrorism" 😊 . WTF ?????😮 !!!!!!
and by the way, I do support the nomination of Mr. Litchfield for the next CEO of SE...
Well this is a funny article. It seems that you were angry when you wrote this. You started in a calm way, but by the end you were almost shouting! 😊
You raised god points here, like the certificates and SE's marketing (even if i don't care about SE) but others are hilarious like remembering the 3650's round keypad!
Have a nice weekend.
You think the 3650 was hilarious. Remember the 7600? No? Check this link:
http://www.nokia-asia.com/A4416838
This was an even crazier phone. I wonder how many people bought it?
11. Why are the good ideas from UIQ2.1, S80 & S90 not developed further in subsequent platforms? Why are good design ideas lost?
(the answer is staff turnove, I think. Too many 'new' people at Symbian/Nokia/SE with little experience of the older models)
They are Scandinavian! It's something to do with the low winter sun. Go and live over there for a week and you might get a sense of the madness. Go to Oulu and visit the English Pub - if you tell the barman you were in The Beatles he will give you a free drink.
You're English, and thinking like an Englishman. This also explains why the Sendo was so popular in Britain. It's to do with all of the intangible wibbly bits.
"11. Why are the good ideas from UIQ2.1, S80 & S90 not developed further in subsequent platforms? Why are good design ideas lost?"
The S90 interface was actually developed further by Nokia. They swapped Symbian for Linux, and it became the Nokia 770, the first Internet Tablet.
"Why on earth are Symbian and/or Nokia not supporting at least one CDMA handset with Symbian OS which is reasonably attractive and available in the shops - even if it means subsidizing it?"
Probably the same reason Apple aren't bothering to make a CDMA iPhone, even though America is their biggest (and so far only) market. CDMA isn't a global standard like GSM or WCDMA, and each day reduces CDMA's overall share.
To be fair, there was at least one Symbian CDMA phone, the Nokia 6638, but presumably it didn't sell well.
It's also worth pointing out that although it's the world's largest economy and is number one in other areas, America isn't actually that influential in the phone world. It has relatively low market penetration at home, relatively poor coverage for such a rich country, and platforms that are popular there such as Palm and Windows Mobile aren't very popular elsewhere. Despite them being significantly poorer than the US, China and India are now larger markets for phones, not just in units sold but in dollar terms as well.
America would probably be far more influential in the phone world if it stopped allowing its phone network operators to strangle the American phone market. Some US phone operators have threatened to cut off people who use sim-free devices, for example, which has no basis in technology and is pure anti-competitiveness.
Maybe Steve got out of bed the wrong side this morning 😊 I think the 3650 has some retro charm going for it these days.
It's to do with all of the intangible wibbly bits.
That explains much of life really 😊
@krisse
But S90 design ideas were not taken forward on the Symbian devices. And what about S80 (EIKON) and UIQ2.1? And as Steve kind of mentioned, the RAM lessons from the P900 that were rectified in the P910 were 'lost' when the P990 was developed.
2. and 3. really hit the nail regarding SE...
#6 i loved my Siemens SX1 with the numberpads on the side. one of my favorite phones ever 😊 tristan
I think that the answer to #3 (marketing) would be to make Symbian or S60 a well known brand. I don't like hearing someone saying "My phone is like a computer. It runs Windows mobile." I would prefer people knowing they are running Symbian an be proud of that!
I am probably alone in LIKING the 3650 round keypad (then again it was my first phone).
Oh well.
#2) AFAIK the problem is that some hardware specifications are made 2-3 years out (not all of them but RAM and processor are pretty much the first things). And Symbian 9.1 is a much bigger memory hog than 7 and 8 were. They simply mis-estimated the memory usage. That's why its only phones over the last six months have been correctly sizing the RAM. Its also why the iPhone is using a 2004/5 hardware spec.
#8) Well lets look at this logically from a CFO perspective. Allocate spending 100,000� on something that a small percentage of people who are going to buy the hand-set anyway will appreciate OR spend 5 million� on getting an extra 0.5% of market share which will be a return on investment of what, 4000%? No brainer.
"But S90 design ideas were not taken forward on the Symbian devices."
But S90 wasn't designed by Symbian, it was designed by Nokia. The designers did take it forward, but chose to do it with a different OS.
Symbian themselves don't do any user interfaces, they just provide the OS that S60 and UIQ run on. S60 is designed by Nokia, UIQ is designed by Sony Ericsson.
As many people have noted, there's nothing legally to stop Nokia and SE moving S60 and UIQ to other OSes if they want to.
1. Why do companies like Symbian (they're not alone in this, you know) bother issuing time-limited DRM-like certificates for software when they're so trivial to get around?
2. Why did it take Nokia and Sony Ericsson SO long to realise that computers like RAM and that they were shipping device after device in generation after generation with far too little of the stuff.
When was the last time you saw an advert for the pretty decent P1i?
Yes, I and a few other bloggers complained about the motor noise, but we meant for this to be filtered out in software or reduced mechanically, not FOR THE ONLY REAL UNIQUE FEATURE TO BE REMOVED!
5. Ah yes, interfaces. Why on earth are there four (and arguably five) totally different ways to launch some applications in the Nokia N95?
6. And talking of interfaces, which illegal substance WAS the designer of the Nokia 3650's CIRCULAR keypad smoking? "Woo, round and round we go, I can see it now..."
7. Why does it take so long for an Nseries camera to start up?
8. Why was it that, despite OPL being one of THE crown jewels in Psion's treasure store, an onboard language that enabled the creation of THOUSANDS of user-written applications...
How come it's OK to spend 10 million dollars on an ad campaign but too risky to spend 10 thousand dollars on an intiative which could potentially do the same for a modern manufacturer as it did for Psion, only on a larger scale?
krisse wrote:As many people have noted, there's nothing legally to stop Nokia and SE moving S60 and UIQ to other OSes if they want to.
...PalmOS UI, on the other hand, can be easily moved around. It is a miracle of corporate stupidity for Palm not to realize that by now...
"Not exactly. There is a plenty of technical obstacles to that, as both S60 (Avkon) and UIQ (Uikon) are pretty deeply rooted in Symbian and its UI frameworks (i.e. Eikon)."
True, but I did say "nothing legally", rather than just "nothing". The point I was trying to make is that the developers of S60 and UIQ are totally independent from Symbian, there's no legal agreement that binds them together.
S90 moved from Symbian to Linux, and (though it would take a lot of technical work) the same thing could happen with S60 and UIQ.
krisse wrote:True, but I did say "nothing legally", rather than just "nothing". The point I was trying to make is that the developers of S60 and UIQ are totally independent from Symbian, there's no legal agreement that binds them together.
S90 moved from Symbian to Linux, and (though it would take a lot of technical work) the same thing could happen with S60 and UIQ.
@krisse
now now.."Symbian devices' means devices that run Symbian not Symbian the company should develop the UI s/w. How can you mis-interpret my comments. As an owner of the P800, P900, P910, Nok 7710, Nok 9500, Nok 9300, Nok 95, Moto A920, Moto A1000 and Nok E90 I think know a little bit about OSs and UIs.
I had one 🙄
I sold it to my sister after I got a new one, and she still happily uses it. It was a cool phone at that time.
"now now.."Symbian devices' means devices that run Symbian not Symbian the company should develop the UI s/w. How can you mis-interpret my comments. As an owner of the P800, P900, P910, Nok 7710, Nok 9500, Nok 9300, Nok 95, Moto A920, Moto A1000 and Nok E90 I think know a little bit about OSs and UIs."
You said "why were these design ideas lost?", and I replied the S90 design idea wasn't lost. Nokia developed it, and they're still developing it but in a radically different form.
I see Nokia are advertising for monkey's with a least half a brain. 😊
I never got on with Nokia phones a few years ago; they never seemed to sync. properly.
But I do now, I'm a 6120 classic fan..........thanks to your review. After I read it I went out and got one. Best phone I've had, better than the Windows Mobile phones i had previously. :icon14:
@#2 I would be willing to bet at least a $1 that Nokia did figure it out. But as someone above said, specs are probably locked in way before production starts. Which makes me wonder if the N95 US and N95 8GB really "took into account consumer feedback" - can a product really be redesigned that quickly, or was it already in the pipeline when the original came out? Was it in the pipeline already at the time of N95 launch because focus group tests, real life field testing etc. showed these shortcomings? Wow, my first conspiracy theory of sorts... 😊
Continuing at #2, there could/must have been other reasons too, such as power consumption, and, yes, cost. Put in RAM that costs you $10 more. That's $10 out of your profit, multiply that by say 20 million units sold... remember, probably for a big number of S60 buyers RAM was never really an issue as they never ran several apps at a time anyway.
@#1 whatever the logic, again, probably 95% of people would never know that they can just change the date on their phone to install the app. I.e. the DRM DOES work in most cases. Whether its smart is another question.
To the misguided chap who wanted CDMA, two thoughts.
1. Why? In market share terms CDMA is close to invisible outside a few small rural markets, even so in my view it's not worth developing a product for.
2. Nokia 6638 - the CDMA version of the Nokia 6630.
(7) "Why does it take so long for an Nseries camera to start up? Lesser smartphone cameras start in a (fraction of a) second, as do dedicated digital cameras that share (or surpass) the same quality of lens. So why on earth does it take the Nokia N95 five seconds to get ready to snap a picture?"
An interesting read, Steve! The only plausible reason I can come up with for the lethargic camera start-up has to do with starting the camera in Landscape mode.
On earlier models, like the Nokia 6630, the camera start-up lag wasn't as pronounced, since it utilized the default 'Portrait' mode. Besides that, the camera hardware lacked any moving parts and start-up was almost instantaneous. Sure, different screen resolution, processor etc are other reasons.
Step a few years forward and you have the N73 and N95 etc, with their top-of-the-line autofocus lens and mechanical shutters. The N73, even with the latest firmware, takes a good 10 seconds to start its camera from 'sleep mode'.
Fortunately, I've discovered (and proposed) a handy solution that addresses this issue on my blog. Do let me know your thoughts on this!
series-sixty.blogspot.com/2007/09/speed-up-your-phone-camera.html
WHY THE HELL HAVE THEY MADE SO MANY 2 MP phones?????
they couldve made 2.5mpx, 2.8 mpx...but around 20 models...all 2 mpx and NO AUTOFOCUS...come on even SE understands that AF is necessary
What to advert about the obsolete p.o.s. SE P1i?
Hi Steve,
coming from the Palm OS world, please allow me to offer my personal view of the things. Some of the answers are a bit longish - please feel free to visit them at
tamss60.tamoggemon.com/2007/10/02/answers-for-steve-litchfield/
Best regards from Vienna
Tam Hanna