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Symbian Won

shkspr.mobi

231–240 of 290 posts

Re: Symbian Won

#231
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Nokia starting in about 2004. Looking back on my career, one of the single greatest feelings of accomplishment was getting a Hello World application to run on Symbian/S60. I thought I knew C++ going in, but I wasn't prepared for two phase constructors and the 6 files you'd need to draw a simple list view on the screen. Felt amazing once it worked though!

Lol. At least you guys had actual phones to work with. Until we became Nokia all we had was a techview UI shell running on H2, or later, H4 boards that would boot an MMC card. Of course, when we became Nokia we got the flashing stations and access to Phoenix. Only a particular part of the company ever saw phones that were in development and you needed special access to get into that part of the building.

> Only a particular part of the company ever saw phones that were in development and you needed special access to get into that part of the building.

Oh, I remember it was near impossible to get access to service manuals Level 1 & 2 (just for understand how to repair/replace few parts on my N82), and fully impossible get its Level 3 & 4.[0]

AIKON service centers had monopoly on repairing devices.

[0] http://www.s-manuals.com/phone/nokia_n82

Re: Symbian Won

#233
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if all these things were possible on Symbian so early what in the world happened that they lost the market race so badly. TL;DR: "Operation Elop" organized by Microsoft...[0] [0] https://asokan.org/operation-elop/

Actually by Nokia shareholders, including a big bonus for managing to sell mobile division.

No. Nokia just sold its business to new owner, but new owner killed it.

Re: Symbian Won

#234
I think a better title would have been "Symbian did it right first!"

and this then illustrates that doing things wrong were about priorities, and a better focus for user-focus was the winning play by others.

Re: Symbian Won

#235
post #193

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

I loved symbian and the whole "java on phone" never seemed right to me. I would prefer having a linux phone - I dont ask for much - working camera, working calls, mms and sms, gps, bluetooth). I dont care for anything else. All my hopes are now leaning into Cosmo Communicator( https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator - please take care, I have jumped into this with "I will loose my money" mentality - I s…

As an owner of a Gemini, the hardware is innovative and good enough, but the OS is really an afterthought. You can browse their current wiki and see how organised it is.

No disrespect to the team, it just seems like taking sufficient care of this is a bigger job than they have the resources for.

But I'm glad I backed the kickstarter, and would do the same for something similar in order to diversify a very un-diverse market.

Re: Symbian Won

#236
post #193

I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Net…

I loved symbian and the whole "java on phone" never seemed right to me. I would prefer having a linux phone - I dont ask for much - working camera, working calls, mms and sms, gps, bluetooth). I dont care for anything else. All my hopes are now leaning into Cosmo Communicator( https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator - please take care, I have jumped into this with "I will loose my money" mentality - I s…

I have one of planet's previous devices, the gemini. It's not very good. The software is some unpatched old android. And the available linux doesn't support very much.

I'll have to try the pinephone next, but I have much higher hopes for it.

Re: Symbian Won

#238
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> offer a UI to change all these security/privacy permissions for an app quickly from the context of the app Isn't this exactly how Android does it? I long press the app icon, click app info. All permissions, data usage, battery usage, storage usage options and metrics are shown for the app.

That still happens outside the app, though. You have to go back to the home screen, find the app icon. I'm talking about a design where there's no "lookup the app" step in any menu (Settings or Home screen); where instead, you go straight to the foreground app's preferences.

You can do this from the app switcher: long-press the "title bar", and there'll be a round "I" button that takes you to the app's settings.

Re: Symbian Won

#239
A very small part of the Symbian OS consisted of a useful feature that is now similarly implemented in iOS and Android.

That hardly deserves the extremely click-baity headline of "Symbian Won"

"Symbian Won on User Permissions" would be reasonable, and probably get less attention.

Re: Symbian Won

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't edit my comment, but the source code seems to be here: https://github.com/SymbianSource I could never accept the coding standard for curly bracket positioning.

> I could never accept the coding standard for curly bracket positioning. Hahaha, how bad could it be... ... Why the fuck would they need to indent every function by an 8-space tab!?

8-space using the tab character is the Linux kernel standard, but the curly braces are closer to other coding standards.
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