My Top 10 Reasons for Staying with Symbian

Unregistered wrote:ARTICLE FAIL!
REASONS FAIL!

SYMBIAN FAIL!

Such rubbish comments.

I can't quite work out whether you're trying to be ironic or just talking shit...

Yet another unregistered dickhead with nothing useful to say!!

""
Super Chimp
The better question would be with all the choice out there as far as OS types are concerned, with OS types that are often better than Symbian why would you keep inflicting Symbian on yourself. Now a Nexus One user I have no desire to return to Symbian at this time.

I am especially bemused about the comment about hardware in the article, to me a lot of Nokia's these days can best be classed as poorly made & cheap & nasty. Yes there are exceptions, but speaking in general if I wanted a well built phone I certainly wouldn't look to get a Nokia unlike in the old days.

Same goes for security, to try & pretend that Symbian is somehow better than OS X or Android in this area beggars belief"""

WHY YOU ARE ENFORCING OTHERS THAT NEXUS ONE IS BETTER, FOR YOU NEXUS IS BETTER FOR ME AND STEVE AND OTHERS SYMBIAN IS BETTER, YOU CAN TELL TEN GOOD THINGS ABOUT YOUR CHOICE, I CAN TELL 20 ABOUT MY CHOICE, SO DONT BEG HERE FOR PPL TO BELIEVE YOU OR THINK LIKE YOU, TAKE EVERY THING EASILY AND BE POLITE AND CALM DOWN 😊 PLUS DONT TELL IF ANDRIOD OR OS X WILL BE HUGE, TALK ABOUT JUST TODAY, NOBODY SEEN TOMORO, BE PRACTICAL, JUST ENJOY WHAT YOU LIKE, LET OTHER ENJOY WHAT THEY LIKE. CHEERS

Why do you have to convince you to use Symbian??? Yo will win some kind of price if you do so?. I have a Nokia 5530 and i am hoping to evolve to android / iPhone soon. No apps, very unstable and ugly UI. I have an iPod Touch and the apps it has are amazing and the UI is SO MUCH BETTER than the symbian devices.

which ipod apps are amazing lol share with me, u go for iphone, cuz multitasking needs brain, but do share some apps which are amazing, i will tell u not less than 8 apps of each of your amazing app in symbian world lol

Unregistered wrote:Why do you have to convince you to use Symbian??? Yo will win some kind of price if you do so?. I have a Nokia 5530 and i am hoping to evolve to android / iPhone soon. No apps, very unstable and ugly UI. I have an iPod Touch and the apps it has are amazing and the UI is SO MUCH BETTER than the symbian devices.

So what you're saying is, you like the UI therefore the OS must be better. If you really believe that, then good luck to you...

You are right man the only good things in 5800 xm you can right sms when u driving the rest forget about it OVI it's carpy store when u compre it to app store. but in other hand maemo it's better than symbin but still new os to nokia still need lot of work but i heard nokia they are going to upgarde the symbin os and make it like iphone with upgarding the UI for the new symbin 3^ almost out with the new n8 and still there is a new symbin 4^ this one will out in 2011 it will reach 80 or 90% of iphone performance?

Some good points (some left behind like the most capable nontouch OS on the market) some bad points like very few of these actually matter to consumers with big wallets buying highend devices.

As much as I like symbian (daily E71 user for a long time now) I don't think these points apply to high end devices - Symbian is struggling there and loosing a lot of mindshare (will show off in sales eventually). I encourage everyone to be open minded and see things beyond Nokia's 38% current marketshare.

There are some things happening inside of Nokia (=Symbian) that have investors and the general public worried.

- Nokia admits losing leadership on the top smartphone market
- Restructuring in the organizations to become "faster" from development to release of devices.
- The boom of touchscreens wich Nokia missed (leaving alot of space occupied by Korean companies like Samsung)
- Less leverage from Samsung and SonyEricsson due to great sales from Android OS and so on...

Here's a question for you:
Who knows Nokia better than their own investors? They are frustrated and have every reason to be
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T1F820100430
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6452Z420100506

I suggest you guys read Eldar's analys on Nokia's current situation where he sums up the current situation (yes yes, he's a bit controversial but his analysis has a few good points and they're backed up by whats currently happening to Nokia)
http://mobile-review.com/articles/2010/birulki-66-en.shtml

All that being said: Nokia & Symbian is loosing alot of mindshare right now - it's good to see @AAS support at the same time I'd like to see more questioning, critical approach, say perhaps another article with 10 things Symbian need to improve. They say that a company works better under pressure (pressure from investors are not enough, consumers, bloggers, we do actually have a matter in this as well)

Oh and Steve looks like your nag on Xenon flash paid off 😉

Good article that opens up a good conversation, keep it up! / Swestar

I'm currently using a Nokia E52 as my main phone, and it may be the last Symbian device in quite some time.

My #1 wish for S60 in the past 4+ years been that the default music player should be able to play the ogg vorbis format, but it never happened. And now Android comes along and offer it in their music player right away.

As much as I dislike the increasingly big brother behavior from Google, it seems like my next device will be an Android device, probably from SE so the chances of getting a camera and xenon are there. So not Xperia X10, but whatever they make next.

Shame really, I would have prefered to stay with Symbian (and with a T9 keypad), but ogg is a major issue for me.

daos wrote:1. If only speakers, mikes and cameras are essential parts of hardware, then indeed symbian is the best of the planet. But what about processors, memory, screens, peripherals, usb host etc., etc. In this area symbian is just catching up, even android.

The items you mention are hardware, Symbian doesn't have any of those things, neither does Android.

I don't want to seem hostile or something, but this article was somewhat annoying to me (not to mention biased). Openness.. that is what everyone must show towards life, not to mention a technology reviewer to different software platforms.

Number one: familiarity to the platform, to say the least, is the weakest reason. That is totally contrary to openness.. Openness to new way of designing software, user interfaces..

Number two: British origins? No, THIS has to be the weakest reason.

Personally, I had given Symbian a lot of chances (I have owned and used as primary phone the nokias N80, 9300i, N95 and N85). All of them were good pieces of technology, being the N95 the most complete. But despite this, all failed to impress me because of buggy software, lack of RAM, poor battery life, and above all, sluggishness.

On those days, a good design was not a critical point, and except for the N85, all of them were ugly and bulky devices. Also, the UI was not as polished as it should be (al least for the price point, you might expect something better).. and Nokia continues to suffer from a less than spectacular user interface.

Number three: Price. Nokias were and are not cheap (at least the top of the line smartphones). Sure, you can get a middle/low range cheaper phone, but you are getting as well a device that in the end will turn to be a mixed experience, due to the trade offs that the manufacturer has to make in order to keep the price low.

Number four: Hardware. This is also weak, since all nokias have below average build quality. Easy scratches, dust behind the screen, loose sliders and plasticky housings are just some of the faults. It is ironic that the photo showed to back this point, shows a scratched N97 camera lens (scratched by the lens cover). In my personal opinion, the best hardware right now, is built by HTC.

Number Five: Maturity? Please do not confuse maturity with legacy. If we are calling mature a platform like symbian, that same point of view may apply to Windows Mobile, and we all know that this is a aging platform that soon will be phased out by microsoft.

Number Six.. Openness? THat is what is lacking in this article. Answer: Android (Sure, is not mature enough, but it is getting there). Seven.. Level of Customization? Again: Android. Please try Android (better if you try an HTC solution with Sense on top of andrid).

I know that all that I have just wrote may seem like a non sene rant, and more if I'm in a Symbian forum. But I would like to see Nokia to make it's come back as the top technology innovator and trend setter.. They are currently in trouble, they are trying to get the lasts breaths of life of an aging platform, that desperately needs a complete overhaul. Samsung and Sony Ericsson have abandoned the platform to Android.. And that tells something.

PLease read:

http://mobile-review.com/articles/2010/birulki-66-en.shtml

Eldar Murtazin and Mobile-Review.com has been historically a Nokia and symbian supporters, and even they acknowledge that Nokia and symbian have failed to compete recently.

And, I agree with a commenter above.. If you have to write an article to convince yourself to stick to your favored platform, in the light of a whole new wave of innovation.. that is telling something.

Unregistered wrote:You are right man the only good things in 5800 xm you can right sms when u driving the rest forget about it OVI it's carpy store when u compre it to app store. but in other hand maemo it's better than symbin but still new os to nokia still need lot of work but i heard nokia they are going to upgarde the symbin os and make it like iphone with upgarding the UI for the new symbin 3^ almost out with the new n8 and still there is a new symbin 4^ this one will out in 2011 it will reach 80 or 90% of iphone performance?

When you say "it's a carpy store", I'm assuming you don't mean that it sells fish...

And if you think SMSing while driving is a good idea, you're a bit of an idiot.

Grajales wrote:

Number two: British origins? No, THIS has to be the weakest reason.

Personally, I had given Symbian a lot of chances (I have owned and used as primary phone the nokias N80, 9300i, N95 and N85). All of them were good pieces of technology, being the N95 the most complete. But despite this, all failed to impress me because of buggy software, lack of RAM, poor battery life, and above all, sluggishness.

That suggested reading had far more wrong with it than Steve has ever had.

As for the British origins, when Symbian was British in its EPOC32 form, it was superb. The fact that its most recent custodian managed to lose all that brilliance is not the fault of Mr Potter. Certainly the Symbian organisation doesn't have the poor image other phone OS makers Apple and Google with their bare-teeth nastiness. They lost their cuddly image some time ago.

Why is it that only Symbian seems to have its faults highlighted? I own Apple, Android and Symbian phones and I have to point out that they all are pretty poor in terms of "bugginess", the Symbian being always the best ofr battery life.

Steve could have written the article in such a way as to point out the bad side of the other OSes, of which there are a lot. But he is not negative in his outlook, unlike many of those that respond. Grajales being a prime example. Radiators and drains.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Drains-and-Radiators---a-Vital-Influence-on-Your-Time,-Energy-and-Success&id=521201

As much fun as it is reading Buster being baited by every unregistered comment in this thread, it's not very productive. How many people have to ask how many times to ban unregistered posters? At least it keeps a track of who is saying what instead of one collective 'unregistered'?

morpheus2702 wrote:As much fun as it is reading Buster being baited by every unregistered comment in this thread, it's not very productive. How many people have to ask how many times to ban unregistered posters? At least it keeps a track of who is saying what instead of one collective 'unregistered'?

Registered posters like you going off topic don't help.

Required registration = less popularity
Less popularity = lower page rank
Lower page rank = less ad revenue
Less ad revenue = no site.

Unregistered wrote:You probably missed this, as S60 user experience is a beast at best, but playing Podcasts thru music player will remember position and which podcasts are played past shutdown.

abubasim wrote:This only works on some models, probably only the N-series and the only N-series I have owned is the N900 which is running Maemo with it's own completely different application set. Of the three S60 phones I've used recently, E61i, E90 and E72, none of these remembers last played position past shutdown. Kind of disappointing as I was hoping Nokia would be adding this feature to all S60 devices as of the N95.

I must admit that I too find this slightly annoying on my E90. The automatic updating is nice, but it does mean that every time I come to listen to a podcast that I was previously listening to, I have to fast forward to where I was (if I can remember!).

it's interesting to see why people stay with symbian.

i've had the 3650, n70, e61, e61i and e71. the e71 was a disaster for me and drove me away from the platform.

since then i've had the iphone 3g and the htc hero. the iphone i bought as a toy and i ended up using it for a year. still use it as a media player. the htc hero is on android 1.5 (really old) and i love the thing. it's not perfect. i want a keyboard like the e61 preferably. maybe a flash for the camera.

symbian or rather nokia stopped offering what i wanted. a silent camera. an unannoying os.

>>Hardware, Maturity and depth, Power management, Openness, Security and Price.
hardware. nokia made the best phones. when i wanted my first phone i asked the guy in the nokia shop for one that i could club somebody to death with and still make a phone call. the 3310 i was sold was exactly that. a tough phone that only died when after the mobile comany started bombarding me with crappy smses and wouldn't stop took 5 minutes to stamp to death under my boot. when my boss tried to convince me that windows mobile were tougher than nokia i threw my then n70 up through the ceiling tiles and let it fall and bounce of the floor. it survived perfectly. though my e71 popped out its keyboard when it fell less than a metre onto carpet. 8/10

maturity and depth. nokia and symbian have been around forever. the later devices seemed far less stable than the earlier ones. maybe i was doing more with them but they seemed to be more flakey especially the e71. that phone drove me away from symbian. first with the crappy global search the took forever to load and then with the camera click. the fact that it rescanned my memory card for music every time i ejected it to move a photograph to a pc was another particular annoyance. with the 3650 and n70 they worked out of the box but with the later ones it like microsoft were you are waiting for the first service patch before you touch them. 6/10

power management. nokia make the best batteries on the planet and their mobile devices have extraordinary lifes. i can run the iphone to dead in about 5 hours of use. the htc hero takes quite a bit longer as i don't use it at the mo for multimedia. all my nokias battery lives was measured in days. the n70 was 3 days usage. the e61i was 4 days usage. the e71 was about 2days usage. 11/10. i know 11 is wrong but i have to give 11 to nokia for battery life.

openess. well they took away my silent camera without warning so i have to fail them on that one for me at least. they seem to put out contradictoray information in relation to maemo or symbian been the flagship product. the reason i got the htc hero after the iphone though is because the iphone openess is getting worse and worse with each steve jobs decree. so i would score symbian above iphone but less than android. 3/10 i've been told that the n900 has a silent camera and have thought about buying one but my n70, e61i and e71 were all silent before their last firmware update. so i don't trust them on openness.

security. the symbian model for usage is quite good allowing the user to configure each app only to do what they want. bit convuluted but powerful. my iphone on prepay has the annoying habit of jumping onto 3g data when the wifi fails or is slow in starting. eats a lot of credit that way so i don't use it for browsing much anymore. android is not too bad in this respect. not a fan of the signing apps though. some of my favourite apps could only be installed if i set the clock back a few years. annoying. 7/10

price. well i always bought high end devices. price was not a factor. i was looking at the n97 and originally it looked like it was going to be around �700 here in ireland. in the end it was �500-�600 and still nobody i know bought one. i bought my iphone 3g on prepay at over 600 and even had the cash for the 3gs until apple started their banned from itunes nonsense with googletalk. so this was never a factor for me. they are cheap though so i'll give them 10/10.

i'm a developer. nokia has never caught the imagination of developers like iphone or android. in this respect i think they have lost the war already. its a pity as they are currently the only device that can be programmed on itself using python. the iphone and android need a pc/mac to develop apps. iphone will never allow a programming app and android simply hasn't caught up yet. maybe the acquisition of qt will help. though i suspect it will drive away a few who are currently developers when they have to start from scratch learning a new development system. it should attract a few people who are familiar with qt to the platform so it might work out.

ovi. i last looked at ovi at the start of 2009. i would imagine it has improved since then. hard to imagine it's worse. anybody who has used the 3 platforms would have to rate symbian as the worst of the 3. to find and install an app on iphone is beautifully simple. i've seen people browsing and installing apps in a supermarket queue. android is nearly as easy though the market is fragmented between the various versions of the os. symbian is akward at best. the person i gave my e71 to took 20 minutes to find and download an app when he knew the name while we sat in the cinema waiting for the picture to start.

ymmv

-moylan

First point - Steve made very clear that these were his reasons: MY top ten reason...

That means people aren't going to agree as everyone position is different.

I also think we need to be careful to differentiate between Symbian and Nokia (and other manufacturers). They are separate entities - case in point is processors - Symbian is quite capable of supporting the most recent process, but Nokia have chosen not to use them. Of course you do have to tie these together to an extent in these considerations. Similarly with UI and OS - this should be well understood but UI is not the whole OS and the way ahead here has been documented extensively - S^3 and S^4...

You can clearly pull apart any of the points on Steve lists with a 'yeah, but...' and they can be replied to. e.g. Openness - Android seems to be perceived as being more open, but that's really not the case (part of the issue here is how you define openness).

Symbian has problems, but that is true of every mobile platform. It is playing catch up in the UI department (with particular relevance at the high end) but it is under-rated in other areas (e.g. BoM).

Oh and I think someone suggested we should do an article on weakness of Symbian - good idea! I'll look into that.

Speaking of Nokia:

I've read Eldar's article and he makes good points. I don't think anyone would dispute Nokia's failure to perform at the high end. Yes Nokia is using pricing to cover this gap to an extent, but its not as excessive as some imagine. Where we might disagree is the consequences, how long they will have an impact and on the interpretation of what comes next.

As I have said before I do agree Nokia has had a gap at the high end (and its still going on). They've said so themselves (OPK Anssi Vanjoki etc). Whether you want to call this 6 months, a year or 18 months) is open to debate. A lot is riding on Symbian^3 products - and even more on Symbian^4 and MeeGo 1. Nokia is suffering because of this gap, but I think the pieces are in place to sort many (not all) of the issues out. However at the same time people have ignored Nokia's performance in the low end smartphone space, which has been impressive.

Incidentally I think this gap was inevitable because of an under-investment in Symbian's top layers - something that dates back some time. Symbian was focused around making the OS fit on devices with lower and lower BoM (cost). This has been very successful. However this had an effect on the higher end. These are not decision that can be made over night. Symbian^3 was, in a broad strategy sense, roadmapped 3 or 4 years ago (e.g. USB Host (OTG) was added with Symbian Os 9.5 which was announced in March 2007)... I think you could probably say that the move over to the Foundation delayed things by some time as well (though that's debateable).

I think Nokia's performance should also be seen in the context of its traditional rivals. Compare their performance in the past year or two to Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung etc. Samsung comes out with a lot of credit, but it has issue in the smartphone space of its own (compare its smartphone share to its overall market share - Bada is on the way, but seems to be bit late and underwhelming - though people should not under estimate it).

On investors - I've commented before than being an investor does not guarantee you know more, just that you are willing to put money behind your guess... and even then its based on market behaviour not what's really going on in a Nokia (and yes in theory they are linked, but that assumes perfect knowledge and predicting ability). The market seems to focus only on the high-end. That means Nokia has, in my opinion, suffered disproportionately in the market.

Yes there is cause for concern - a lot depends upon execution in the next 6 - 18 months. It also depends on what Nokia's competition does.

On unregistered users: I'm close to caving on this one. It's been my decision to keep this open against the advice and opinion of many others (my instinct has always been to allowing debate - but yes I too attach much less interest in an unregistered post in general). However it will be a less of an issue (I hope) when the new comment system gets introduced.

I am still using Symbian but not as my main platform. The reason for this is simple: the killing of S80, S90 and UIQ which drove the OS away from the PDA market (and no, iPhone isn�t a PDA either so that�s not an option). I certainly prefer a "pocket computer" with full qwerty and to this day the HTC Touch Pro 2 offers this in a very good way.

I�m using Symbian as a media creation OS today with a Sony Ericsson Vivaz. I think the platform has strong advantages especially when it comes to the phone related parts. The profiles and call management solutions available are the best on the market. The resource efficiency etc is very good too. The Symbian OS itself is a very good OS but the killing of the PDA market for it is a serious blow. S60v5 can�t compete with either S80, S90 (Hildon, later ported to Linux) or UIQ. The later was the perfect combination of a full featured phone and a full blown PDA in one device.

Now when Nokia is working on Meego it seems they will approach the PDA market with that platform instead of releasing a really powerful Symbian OS PDA - a true successor to the S80 Communicators.

In my opinion Android and iPhone are overhyped platforms. There�s very much hype around them but I has failed to see why Symbian or Windows Mobile is "worse". Especially when it comes to the PDA market where Windows Mobile 6.x is still the leader when it comes to customization, tweakability and usability for such devices. Symbian when UIQ and S80 was a very good competitor and provided better telephony paired to the PDA (than WM).

i just keep returning to aas just o laugh at nokia fanbois inane coments 😃

With every blog and story you write about how much you think Symbian is better than iPhone or android I'm beginning to think that it is yourself that you're trying to convince. I run both a satio (main phone, used for texting, calls, sat nav and camera) and an iPhone (for running things that the satio, while maybe capable hardware wise, can only dream of being ported to it).

Times move on and if we're all honest Symbian is being left behind. Looks like Android will take over the baton as it applies to most of the 10 points Steve mentioned about symbian.

You've had a good innings, Symbian, my friend but thinhs peaked with the N95.

Unregistered wrote:With every blog and story you write about how much you think Symbian is better than iPhone or android I'm beginning to think that it is yourself that you're trying to convince. I run both a satio (main phone, used for texting, calls, sat nav and camera) and an iPhone (for running things that the satio, while maybe capable hardware wise, can only dream of being ported to it).

Times move on and if we're all honest Symbian is being left behind. Looks like Android will take over the baton as it applies to most of the 10 points Steve mentioned about symbian.

You've had a good innings, Symbian, my friend but thinhs peaked with the N95.

It says a lot about the iPhone that you feel the need to have another phone do fulfil certain important functions that the iPhone doesn't do well. What are these things you speak of that the Satio can only dream of doing? I can think of one or two things, but most of them are available on other Symbian phones.

As an user formerly using an e71 I can assure you, that it is not a slight problem to kill the battery within one day. Same as an recent Android handset, but the later simply is more fun.

My only knocks on this article is that i think the percentage of hacked Symbian devices out there is alot more than 0.001% and possibly 1-2%. Ask dotsis. I just wish symbian had more codecs built in like divx and xvid so we could enjoy .avi files without the need for coreplayer. I totally agree with this article in that while the symbian interface is not as pretty as the iPhone's or Adroid's (its still not as ugly as Blackberry), it is still one of the most functional, if not the most functional OS today. Wifi tethering, seamless bluetooth transfers, true multi-tasking, (although I've had it up to here with those 'memory full' notices on my N86) and almost unlimited customization.

I look with great interest to the arrival of the E8. Myfirst phone is an e63 and I am very happy with it especially for $A200. It does a lot of things including office stuff, podcasting, speaking dictionary , PDF, Ebooks, Data safe, music multicasting etc. Also the free maps are good (no GPS of course but it is still a street directory) but they scroll very much faster than my tom tom go. The doco is very poor and one picks up details along the way. The OVI and the PC suites puzzle me a bit. Still not sure if one is supposed to superceed the other.

For a small box it is very impressive, a biggerscreen for Web of course would be good. But where does it all end ? I dont know the ins and outs of the various OS but this truelly multitasks .
Sure it looks a bit dated but it works. I must confess I have never used any of the newer phones.

I enjoy all the comments

Cheers

First of all, do you even know how much you have to pay for an iphone?

brendand wrote:You don't need to hack your phone to record calls - there's an app for that. In fact there are a few, so have a look.