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Symbian Was Right

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Symbian Was Right

#1

Post by _448 »

I am using a "smartphone". Here are the specs:

A 5-inch qHD+ screen, a quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, 5MP and 2MP cameras, 2000mAh battery, and runs Android 11 Go Edition.

Android Go is touted to be the OS that is easy on the mobile resources.

But my experience using this "smartphone" is dismal. The battery life is a joke. The applications crash. And privacy is, well no words for it.

Looking at what was available before the availability of Android and iOS, we see that Symbian was a world leader in the mobile OS space. And they were fanatic about battery life, security and reliability and customisability of Symbian OS. They use to go an extra mile to see to it that the development of the OS does not affect these basic requirements.

Symbian was right all along in its approach to mobile OS development.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#3

Post by flypenguin »

apple is also fanatic about battery life. it's just that the "phone" is no longer a phone, it's a mini-computer which by accident also does audio connections over a certain wireless technology ...

Re: Symbian Was Right

#4

Post by fkzle »

Symbian was used and developed in a time before "always-online" was a thing. Check the battery life of your smartphone without internet connection. You'd be surprised. Also, Symbian phones did not have more than 2" displays, that were also very dark (compared to modern day >1000 cd/m² oled stuff). without any installable app (forget that shitty java mobile crap), the OS running on a specific phone was fragile and probably had lots of bugs and vulnerabilities.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#5

Post by anotherhue »

fkzle wrote: post #4

Symbian was used and developed in a time before "always-online" was a thing. Check the battery life of your smartphone without internet connection. You'd be surprised. Also, Symbian phones did not have more than 2" displays, that were also very dark (compared to modern day >1000 cd/m² oled stuff). without any installable app (forget that shitty java mobile crap), the OS running on a specific phone was fragile and pro…

Agreed. Constant network wake-ups is the norm. I think apps should have a budget that they need to beg to increase.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#6

Post by hkwerf »

fkzle wrote: post #4

Symbian was used and developed in a time before "always-online" was a thing. Check the battery life of your smartphone without internet connection. You'd be surprised. Also, Symbian phones did not have more than 2" displays, that were also very dark (compared to modern day >1000 cd/m² oled stuff). without any installable app (forget that shitty java mobile crap), the OS running on a specific phone was fragile and pro…

This is the key. I'm running a 6 years old galaxy tab s2 for reading at night, about 10 to 30 minutes a day, with an OLED display in airplane mode. Due to the display and white-on-black colors, only standby really contributes significantly to the power consumption. Still, even though the battery is very old by now, with average use, the battery indicator is usually at around 60 % at the end of a week without charging.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#7

Post by Markoff »

not really fair comparison to be comparison OS running on various devices with OS optimized for specific hardware

if you wanna compare Symbian with other OS, you should compare it with iOS

Yes, I am aware Symbian was also on other than Nokia phones but that was rarity and rare experience.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#8

Post by controversial97 »

I loathe the state of the mobile device market in the year 2022.

I'm long past the stage of being angry about it. The big phone manufacturers are going to do whatever they think will make them most money. I carry a dumb phone.

I had several Nokia 9300 and 9500 smartphones because I wanted a qwerty keyboard. They used Symbian series 80. The software was infuriatingly buggy and trying to get an official Nokia service center to upgrade the software properly was more hassle than it was worth. (Upgrading the software properly required upgrading both the firmware and some included apps that were stored on the SD card, it could only be done by a service center.)

Most likely, the buggy software was mostly the fault of Nokia that made their own UI rather than the symbian consortium that made the base OS.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#9

Post by jillesvangurp »

Symbian and reliability was never a thing. I worked at Nokia at the time, the various Nokia phones I had rebooted more than windows 95 back in the day. Also, they were slow and the UI was pretty bad.

As for battery life, my Pixel 6 is fine. Easily lasts two days on a battery. I had a cheap Nokia Android phone before that; also fine. Stable, just worked. Fine battery life.

Symbian was pretty much obsolete before it launched. Nokia (and the other Symbian consortium members) bet against the clear trend towards mobile Linux in the late nineties. And they lost. Of the Symbian consortium, most of the companies no longer produce phones or have disappeared entirely. That's how badly Symbian lost.

Re: Symbian Was Right

#10

Post by kkfx »

You miss a point: smart-phones are "smart phones", so the user must be the dumb since smart and dumb are relative classifications.

SmartPhones are not made for the human user/formal owner how actually own next to nothing but as macro-spy devices, maintained by the spied target, bough by him/her directly. It's the modern evolution of classic spying: in the past was those who surveil to pay, install, maintain spying gears, now they just made them attractive like a drug and their target do the rest.

Of course when you are able to form such big cohorts of junkies it's hard not abusing them too much. Some have a certain understatement and control their behaviors, some do not.

Oh BTW be happy, because your next smartphone have 4 wheels, can kill you or someone else and it feature more cameras, mics etc.

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