Following on from Steve’s discussion earlier this week on discontinued smartphones, it’s been interesting to watch the reaction from other publications around Google’s Nexus one no longer being sold, and how it was a failed experiment and customers will only buy devices from the High Street. Well I beg to differ.
Read on in the full article.
Well, there already sort of is a Symbian reference device, except it wasn't built by the SF. Samsung did: the i8910 Omnia HD.
I own it, in the U.S. (with spotty 3G, flaky antenna on EDGE and all) and it's a pretty decent device. Its best features are still the 720p video and the 8mp camera, but it's still buggy, and frustrating on occasion.
If it had official access to, say, Ovi Maps, it would be even better (yes, I know there's a hack, and I've used it in the past, but it stopped working, so the only maps option is Google).
But now, it's time for an upgrade and I'm eying the Droid X or iPhone 4.
Jeez Ewan I know you are known for your 'left field' articles on AAS and proposing some radical ideas. But I really wonder if you believe what your are writing or simply seek to be provocative for the sake of getting a reaction.
The Nexus Google could easily afford to be a failure. Sure, probably they didn't want it to be in their quest to sell directly, but with Android on an upward surge and the HTC Desire still out there, sure it's a 'win-win' for Google.
However Nokia/Symbian needs a reference design like a hole in the head. After 2 years of talk of code, committees and plans, they just need to get a handset (and a damned good one) into the hands of consumers. Prove that Symbian^3/^4 is the business and consumers want it and it is worth developing for, maybe then a reference handset could be an idea.
But until Nokia/Symbian regain their credibility amongst the buying public and in turn, developers, what you suggest is nothing more than a distraction.
Just to add:
Ewan, Symbian doesn't need a reference device...it needs third party partnerships. Lack of content is killing the platform.
Just today, Barnes & Noble made its Nook app also available to Android and already one exists for Apple and RIM. Nothing for Symbian.
This would only be a reasonable idea if the Symbian Foundation then guaranteed that it would get upgrades to at least Symbian^X (insert whatever version is appropriate depending on the spec of the hardware).
Part of what made the Nexus One popular with the Android community was the developer / open aspect, with Google / HTC allowing the user to flash custom ROMs to it legally and without jumping through hoops, although at the cost of the warrantee I believe.
Not much sense having a flagship reference device without firmware that's a) Exciting and fresh & b) is upgradable. ^2 left S60 a year behind the competition, I have no doubts that the N8 will be an amazingly capable device, but it's even more important that the foundation ensure that using it is a pleasant and fluid experience. Good amounts of eye candy can make even otherwise mundane phones shift rather well (X10 anyone?), on the flipside, a capable phone that performs like a lame nag tends not to leave a particularly nice impression on people right from the showroom.
Roll on Meego.
Down with Eye Candy. We've never cared about eye candy. If we did then phones like N95 and N82 would've never been such huge hits. Features are what matters and Nokia/Symbian phones are by far the most feature rich phones in the market.
Android phones Camera quality is mediocre, their applications are written in Java (lol) and all they have is a fluid UI that only Girls and Americans care about.
Bring on the N8.
Hardeep1singh wrote:Android phones Camera quality is mediocre, their applications are written in Java (lol) and all they have is a fluid UI that only Girls and Americans care about.
Haha. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Java or not. Apps on android still generally beat the crap out of symbian apps. And there's now over a hundred thousand of them.
Edit: just compare raging thunder 2 for both platforms.
i think nokia has already done this once, with the n900 which can be looked as a sort of test bed for the maemo platform.
Why not either:
- release a new communicator style form factor (developers need a keyboard!) that can have its OS firmware re-flashed.
or
- Sell/Release the tools to 're-flash' certain of the older phones (of varying form factors, e90, n95, etc.). It would not require creating a new reference platform, and it would allow people who want to tweak their own Symbian to do it.
I would love to do this for my phone.
"Down with Eye Candy. We've never cared about eye candy. If we did then phones like N95 and N82 would've never been such huge hits. Features are what matters and Nokia/Symbian phones are by far the most feature rich phones in the market.
Android phones Camera quality is mediocre, their applications are written in Java (lol) and all they have is a fluid UI that only Girls and Americans care about.
Bring on the N8."
Have you actually USED an android phone? Thanks for displaying your complete ignorance.
First, no Android is not about eye candy either, though lack of hideous Symbian icons and pixellated text does make life a little bit livabe.
Nokia/Symbian phones being most feature rich - YES if you count things like FM transmitter etc or useless huge internal memory that cripples the phone if ever filled.
Guess what: YES android phone camera quality is mediocre, but NO ONE CARES ABOUT THAT. If you have a great camera which takes 10 seconds to start, its useless.
ANdroid is every bit (if not more) powerful than Symbian. What takes Nokia/Symbian ages to do, Android does in weeks. Just look at how many alternative desktops are available for Android and compare how long it took Nokia to add five lousy, pathetic, ugly, inflexible, buggy, inept, slow widgets to Symbian homescreen. And it is NOKIA/SYmbian who are supposed to specialize in these things!VNC, remote desktop, exhcange mail, name it and it is 100 times better in Android.
the only advantage Symbian has is that it is available in dirt-cheap devices, and it is a huge advantage. It also means that it should be limited to dirt-cheap devices where customers are willing to put up with a locked, ugly, slow, clunky OS.
And I fail to understand why AAS keeps pretending that Symbian's main problem is that of image? I have been a loyal Nokia user for 5 or more years, yet 15 minutes of using an HTC Legend made me regret it all. Yes I would still like to see Symbian prosper and one day would love to go back to it, but ONLY if it regains its position as the best mobile OS.
talhamid wrote:Have you actually USED an android phone? Thanks for displaying your complete ignorance.
I have, I am using one and it's not all that. What's so great about it? It does a lot of stuff that irritates.
talhamid wrote:
First, no Android is not about eye candy either, though lack of hideous Symbian icons and pixellated text does make life a little bit livabe.
talhamid wrote:
And I fail to understand why AAS keeps pretending that Symbian's main problem is that of image? I have been a loyal Nokia user for 5 or more years, yet 15 minutes of using an HTC Legend made me regret it all. Yes I would still like to see Symbian prosper and one day would love to go back to it, but ONLY if it regains its position as the best mobile OS.
The problem for Symbian was the S60 UI was leapfrogged and left behind, and Nokia couldn't respond quick enough. The produced some poor architectures for their hardware and had some appalling software quality problems. I hope that SF is now far enough removed from its incompetent custodian that it will be able to prosper again, and Nokia can concentrate on getting hardware right.
[QUOTE=Hardeep1singh;471770]Down with Eye Candy. We've never cared about eye candy. If we did then phones like N95 and N82 would've never been such huge hits. Features are what matters and Nokia/Symbian phones are by far the most feature rich phones in the market. [QUOTE]
Hardeep, are you still living in 2007?
Welcome to 2010 - where the rise of the iPhone and Android platforms are testament to the overall experience now being 'what matters'. It's not just not enough be 'feature rich' by having a tick list of features
You may never have cared about eye candy but a lot of people do. Why should it be an 'either/or' situation - either have eye candy or have an OS that functions well? Why shouldn't we expect or demand both?
morpheus2702 wrote:
Hardeep, are you still living in 2007?Welcome to 2010 - where the rise of the iPhone and Android platforms are testament to the overall experience now being 'what matters'. It's not just not enough be 'feature rich' by having a tick list of features
?
What's so great about Android? I'm using an Android phone whilst I wait for Nokia to get its act together and release a decent handset with ^4 and I can't see what all the fuss is about. Frankly it's a disappointment , it's better but not the huge improvement over FP5 I was really hoping for and was led to expect.
The iPhone is definitely a really good all round UI and back up service environment and way ahead of Android - but has its own different negatives.
Don't think I said Android was great, just that it is on the rise.
And you kind of answer your own question: 'using an Android phone whilst I wait for Nokia to get its act together and release a decent handset with ^4'.
Android, great or not, is better than whatever Nokia has out there right now? And that's what Nokia/Symbian needs to deliver ASAP - a consumer handset with 2010 specs and expectations, in the hands of consumers.
Not any 'Reference' handsets.
my dream nokia phone would be the size of E61i , the look of E71, and the power of N8.all compined toghether would be an overkill..
morpheus2702 wrote:Android, great or not, is better than whatever Nokia has out there right now? .
That's what I wrote clearly already in the post you replied to. I actually used the word "better".
I just don't think it would take very much to improve on the Android offerings.
@Hardeep: I would love to find out what Android phone you have and what bugs or irritates you about it. I am not saying it is without fault, but compared to Symbian......
@Everyone else: Well, I think Android is not only 'getting better', but at this very moment is light years ahead of Symbian right now. It is fast, non-pretentious, unobstrusive, and does everything you expect it to do. Not to mention it is flexible, 1000 times so than 'open source' Symbian. I will again cite the earlier example of alternative homescreens/desktops vs Nokia's hyper-pathetic s60 v5 homescreen.
Another example: see how SBP Mobile Shell operates on a Symbian set, vs other sets.
Nokia's last hope is Maemo/Meego, and the sooner they put it on more devices, the sooner they will regain lost customers like me.
I've never heard of Symbian, by implication, being 'pretentious' 😊
Putting the fanboisisms to one side, doesn't the wild ducks project address this, at least partly?
talhamid wrote:@Everyone else: Well, I think Android is not only 'getting better', but at this very moment is light years ahead of Symbian right now. It is fast, non-pretentious, unobstrusive, and does everything you expect it to do. Not to mention it is flexible, 1000 times so than 'open source' Symbian. I will again cite the earlier example of alternative homescreens/desktops vs Nokia's hyper-pathetic s60 v5 homescreen.
Nokia's last hope is Maemo/Meego, and the sooner they put it on more devices, the sooner they will regain lost customers like me.
Meego won't help if the UI is crap. How about S60V5 on Meego? On the other hand Symbian with a decent UI? What's the difference? There are not enough people who are geeky and nurdy enough to keep Nokia going because of the name of the OS on the phone. Symbian is what the normal humans will buy.
As for Android being light years ahead. Only in your dreams. I use both and Android is a bit disappointing. It's better than the existing S60V5 over Symbian (^1) but not by much. I guess that's why phone makers feel the need to enhance the UI.
talhamid wrote:@Hardeep: I would love to find out what Android phone you have and what bugs or irritates you about it. I am not saying it is without fault, but compared to Symbian......@Everyone else: Well, I think Android is not only 'getting better', but at this very moment is light years ahead of Symbian right now. It is fast, non-pretentious, unobstrusive, and does everything you expect it to do. Not to mention it is flexible, 1000 times so than 'open source' Symbian. I will again cite the earlier example of alternative homescreens/desktops vs Nokia's hyper-pathetic s60 v5 homescreen.
Another example: see how SBP Mobile Shell operates on a Symbian set, vs other sets.
Nokia's last hope is Maemo/Meego, and the sooner they put it on more devices, the sooner they will regain lost customers like me.
I used a Motorola Milestone for quite a while. Try:
- Excessive slowdown when playing Tower Defence and listening to tunes on Spotify. And when I say excessive I mean, the game is unplayable and the music is unlistenable.
- 'Reseting' of the contacts fields when switching between portrait and landscape mode. By this I mean the cursor is put back to the first field, from the one you were in.
- Flash gets out of sync if, for example - streaming music while taking a photo.
- Sticky keyboard in the web browser.
- Resets, hangs - you know, the usual.
Android isn't immune to bugs any more than Symbian. 'Buginess' needs to be seen as a per device problem, rather than an inherent property of a platform, such is the nature of embedded software.
As for openness. One - you completely misunderstand the meaning of 'open source'. How open source a software project is is precisely nothing to do with things like codecs supported, the ability to put whatever software you want on a device (that's the openess of the device, not the openess of the software). Two - if Android by your definition is so open, why can't a use OBEX push to send a vCard to another phone? Even dumbphones support this.
Symbian isn't perfect, neither is Android.
I would love it if they had 2 reference devices. There are companies, like Aava Mobile, that do just that. There reference device for Intel Moorestown can install Android or MeeGo OS and why not Symbian. With the plain, vanilla OS installed on a reference device purists can pay more and get an unlocked device that they can use for developing apps for different systems.
Hardware will always be more limited than software. A well-designed "reference device" that can load Symbian, MeeGo, Andriod, WebOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7 is probably possible as long as a device manufacturer had agreements to license the OS.
I would love a post from Rafe or Steve or Ewan on how Symbian 3 and the N8 functions day to day as a communications device, along with PIM functions.
Specifically, Facebook and Twitter intergration into contacts.
Nokia Messaging: did it get any better?
Are we finally going to get a native Foursquare app or maybe bundle it into Ovi Maps?
How about notifications in Symbian 3?
Destinations? Am I going to still keep on getting annoying pop ups in every single seperate application on how want to connect to the internet, 3G or Wifi, or which connection (I expect to need to do this ONCE when I first set up the phone and that's it. All applications should take their cue from that existing information.)
I think many others would be interested in this too fellas.
Jimmy1 wrote:I would love a post from Rafe or Steve or Ewan on how Symbian 3 and the N8 functions day to day as a communications device, along with PIM functions.Specifically, Facebook and Twitter intergration into contacts.
Nokia Messaging: did it get any better?
Are we finally going to get a native Foursquare app or maybe bundle it into Ovi Maps?
How about notifications in Symbian 3?
Destinations? Am I going to still keep on getting annoying pop ups in every single seperate application on how want to connect to the internet, 3G or Wifi, or which connection (I expect to need to do this ONCE when I first set up the phone and that's it. All applications should take their cue from that existing information.)
I think many others would be interested in this too fellas.
Yes please! Things mentioned here make or break the ux and make it meet or miss current day needs. Show us how these are handled on N8.
While everyone here waiting anxiously for the N8, do we know exactly it will be released? It seems years since we know and talk about the development of N8.
@Hardeep: Yes, I agree both are not perfect. At the same time, one two-year-old OS is considerably further on the path of perfection than another 12-year-old with pedigree.
your problems with Milestone seem more hardware related than any fault of Android (I think that's what you are saying as well). My point is that I have found every s60v5 device just as buggy, if not more.
I think Android is inherently more open than (open-source) Symbian ever was, and no, it is not a device specific thing. I am not aware of many ROMs available for Symbian devices. I am no programmer, just a user so I accept that I may not get many terms right.
Besides, what going open source ever did for Symbian? Did we see better flavours of the OS? Did we see any revolutionary apps? On the contrary, there has been very little, if any, innovation.
The contact card thing is just one instance. You are ignoring (1) very easy hacking on most ANdroids (2) Ability to install ROMS relatively easily (3) Facility for COMPLETE backups and restore available both at system level (Nandroid) and at UX level (many programs) (4) Seamless sync with Google services (5) Overall faster operation (5) Instant switch from portrait to landscape (6) Ability to place bookmarks, web addresses, contacts, folders, as well as apps, as shortcuts on homescreen (7) ability to reprogram hardware keys very easily (8) Ability to install and use multiple homescreen programs (9) Many programs enable you to directly play with and use motion sensors as well as make things happen when you touch the edges of the screen (10) Must faster acting motion sensor for games.....
Yes I know you'd say most of it is available with Symbian as well, but it is not as easy, and not as elegant. Whether it is hardware's fault or software, I don't know and don't care. I just can't throw money away in mere HOPES of someday someone getting things right. ANdroid sets (and Iphones) are a million times better working out of the box than anything SYmbian ever graced. This is 2010 and users demand their cake and permission to eat it too.
Let me revert to that homescreen thing: if Nokia, and SYmbian foundation, with hundreds of talented and experienced programmers working day and night, could only come up with S60 v5 after all those years, and Symbian ^3 after a FURTHER two years, is it right for anyone to expect a bright future for Symbian?
I'm not saying they're hardware related. Just that device firmware is a case-by-case thing.
You're in fact wrong about there being 'no ROMs' for Symbian devices. The Hyper-X firmware for the Samsung i8910 is widely available and used by a number of people including folks from this website. It really is a device specific thing. Nokia like to keep their devices locked down, for whatever business reasons they have.
Symbian has only been entirely open-source for a few months (since February), so it's not like the effects are going to be seen straight away. The first device released based on an open-source version of Symbian is yet to appear (the N8), so let's reserve judgement until then shall we?
And lastly, about the homescreen thing. You really think it's not a debatable point that this:
http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/10381/631389.jpg
looks a lot better than this:
http://media.tested.com/uploads/0/5/2182-buzz_widget_homescreen_super.png
?
Well, the N8 pretty much looks like a pleaser to me already. It even beats the living crap out of the HTC Android's by a wide margin in performance:
