Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

I worked as an intern at one of the Nokia's branches (won't tell you where, but it's in N.A.) in a city where there are quite a few Symbian software houses. I talked to a few Symbian developers and they absolutely hate it with passion. We're not talking technology for technology sake but more like "Business wise, it's not worth it unless you'd want your workers to suffer productivity nightmare".

My (short) time at this particular Nokia branch wasn't glowing with roses either; they just laid off several hundreds of their employees and slowly but sure inserting contractors, moving some part of their departments to 3rd world countries.

Their development process was really slow: they'll get their Baseline (I never really sure what it consists of even after I talked to quite a few people but I'm guessing it's the Symbian OS with some standard API/Libraries/Framework toolkits) from Finland once every 2 weeks. Then they would have to merge their code to this Baseline and deal with whatever problems come up.

During the last 2 weeks I was there, some high-level management guy came from Europe. He would gathered everybody to a room to do some sort of All-Hands meeting. In this meeting, he would announce some organization structure "roadmap". I find it strange; instead of talking about the products, this roadmap discussed the company's plan to expand to China and India (DING DING DING!). Of course the guy would immediately told us all that "there won't be any lay-off". But you get the idea...

Here it is... the outcome of such environment: unhappy customers.

It's hard to beat Android that seems to operate in a more Agile way where the workers are far more enthusiastic and passionate.

"I also can’t continue to support a mobile operating system platform that continually buries itself into oblivion by focusing on ‘openness’ while keeping a blind eye towards the obvious improvements that other open platforms have had for several iterations."

I could not agree more!

I worked on a Symbian application a few years ago. Symbian C++ IDE (Carbide C++) costed 1,300 euros in 2007. Some S60 APIs are only available to Nokia partners (costs money). Now combine it with antiquated and poorly documented API, and the most godawful SDK and the simulator known to man.

Is it any wonder that Symbian has stagnated as a platform without any hope of recovery?

I know the IDE is now free and the simulator is about to be replaced with a new QEMU-based one, but it's a little too late.

Symbian, Palm (HP), Microsoft, even BlackBerry. In the long run it doesn't look like these guys stand a chance any more, does it?

I've used Nokia for a long time and I can't remember a phone that didn't have SOME annoyance. My e72 has several.

I'm looking forward to MeeGo, a true Linux mobile computer. Neither Android nor the iPhone cut it for me so far. The iphone is great fun, but too locked up and hyped, I hate hype and fashion. I don't like Android because I think that it's just one more piece in Google's plan for world data domination. Still, they are both compelling pieces of tech.

Ultimately, Apple, Nokia and Google are all corporations. Feeling attachment for them is a mistake.