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Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

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Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#11

Post by yardie »

StudyAnimal wrote: post #5

I understand that. I have an N97 and it is a dog. I hate it. 32 Gig E: drive which is plenty, but the C: drive has around 100 Meg or so, around 50 free, and after using it for a week it is straight down to 10, after a month it sits around 5 and you get errors all the time and you have to do a hard reset which takes it back to 50 so you can use it again. I don't even use it as more than a phone anymore because it is n…

I have an N97

I feel so sorry for you. A few years ago I really wanted one but the people that already had them told me not to do it to myself.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#12

Post by SandB0x »

yardie wrote: post #11
StudyAnimal wrote: post #5

I understand that. I have an N97 and it is a dog. I hate it. 32 Gig E: drive which is plenty, but the C: drive has around 100 Meg or so, around 50 free, and after using it for a week it is straight down to 10, after a month it sits around 5 and you get errors all the time and you have to do a hard reset which takes it back to 50 so you can use it again. I don't even use it as more than a phone anymore because it is n…

I have an N97 I feel so sorry for you. A few years ago I really wanted one but the people that already had them told me not to do it to myself.

Second example of funky italics I've seen today. You want to use asterisks :)

See: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#13

Post by SingAlong »

I too feel bad for Symbian. I did my first mobile dev on my Nokia N70 phone which I still have (bought my HTC Desire a week ago).

I can only see 2 reasons here...

1.) Too much fragmentation. Fragmentation in android is nothing compared to slaughtering in symbian phones.

2.) No unified app store for developers. And that's probably due to #1

And #1 and #2 made it pretty easy for others to compete after apple showed the way.

All the above is not true for India though. Nokia seems to very popular even today. HTC is almost non-existent. And the BlackBerry only with the executives at corps. Palm is unheard of. iMate was once popular among the rich and classy and it's almost dead.

Nokia, Samsung and Sony can still happily sell their non-Android phones here and people would grab it happily.

Whatever, the nokia label would take a while to fade here in India until Android phones or iphones become goat-nut cheap. We've been having a slew of low cost manufacturers of phones with high-end features (touch screen, accelerometers etc) with products almost half the price of a nokia low-end smart phone. And still a lot prefer Nokia.

IMHO I would surely credit Nokia and Symbian for making some of the first easy to use devices. My mom who's been using a Sony phone for the past 6 months still can't figure it out quickly like she did the Nokia 1100 (!!) a few years ago. And I loved my N70 (S60 2nd edition FP3) when I first bought it. But again I have similar experience as Rick mentioned in the blog post - poor Memory and processor. And when I had 100 songs, the music player took ages to open. Like around 10 seconds.

I'm forced to mention that HTC, which has released the most number of Android phones has a clear website. Clean, simple to navigate and use and no conflicting pages offering different info on the same topic like Nokia's site. Takes only a 2 clicks max to reach the support page of my phone on the HTC site. The same would take a minimum of half a dozen clicks on Nokia's site even after going thru google.

P.S: Offtopic - just check out http://www.imate.com/ for some fun. I have on idea why iMate has been busy making a phone that meets U.S Military Standards? :P (or am i wrong and every phone in the US has to meet U.S Military standard?)

EDIT: Wikipedia says i-mate is now defunct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mate

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#14

Post by hcho »

SingAlong wrote: post #13

I too feel bad for Symbian. I did my first mobile dev on my Nokia N70 phone which I still have (bought my HTC Desire a week ago). I can only see 2 reasons here... 1.) Too much fragmentation. Fragmentation in android is nothing compared to slaughtering in symbian phones. 2.) No unified app store for developers. And that's probably due to #1 And #1 and #2 made it pretty easy for others to compete after apple showed the…

The real fragmentation was in the UI level for a long while. Remember UIQ and S60? This led to half assed ownership of documentation and developer relations. Funny how business models have impacts on products.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#15

Post by snom370 »

blub wrote: post #10

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. Sti…

You do realize that being anti-hype and anti-fashion is fashionable nowadays? ;)

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#16

Post by nailer »

SandB0x wrote: post #8

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 wouldn't write of BB. Exchange clients are commoditized: BES clients aren't. BB would never release a phone requiring holding in a particular way - they take things very seriously. They also know they've fucked up on web browsing and have the brains to scrap their old shit.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#17

Post by sapphirecat »

latortuga wrote: post #9
loewenskind wrote: post #3

People always trash Steve Jobs over the "walled garden" of the iPhone, but this looks like exactly what he wants to avoid. Of course if all the problems he was talking about came from apps that are part of the phone then I guess my point doesn't apply to this specific article (though I could see this happening if the Nokia apps were good but the downloadable ones weren't).

Total false dichotomy, you don't have to become nokia if you open your garden. It may be what he wants to avoid but it's not true that opening the garden will automatically result in customer dissatisfaction (otherwise why would Android market share be growing?)

> (otherwise why would Android market share be growing?)

Because it's the least-awful alternative if you don't want to go to AT&T. People will live with bad things or bad situations quite well, if they believe they have no choice.

ETA: Of course, for them to have 'no choice' but to go Android, they have to perceive AT&T and/or an iPhone as unacceptable, as well as the other alternatives.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#18

Post by StudyAnimal »

vetinari wrote: post #7
StudyAnimal wrote: post #5

I understand that. I have an N97 and it is a dog. I hate it. 32 Gig E: drive which is plenty, but the C: drive has around 100 Meg or so, around 50 free, and after using it for a week it is straight down to 10, after a month it sits around 5 and you get errors all the time and you have to do a hard reset which takes it back to 50 so you can use it again. I don't even use it as more than a phone anymore because it is n…

You know that you can install apps on E:, right?

Yeah, no problems installing apps on E: Doesn't seem to help much though.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#19

Post by p0ppe »

I had a talk about a year ago with a developer working for Nokia, regarding the future of Symbian. There seems to be some understanding within the company about the issues facing Symbian, which is why we've seen Maemo and Meego. Nokia does, however, seem to lack the nimbleness and daring to really abandon Symbian quickly.

Re: Symbian-Guru.com Is Over

#20

Post by blub »

snom370 wrote: post #15
blub wrote: post #10

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. Sti…

You do realize that being anti-hype and anti-fashion is fashionable nowadays? ;)

I dislike hype and fashion because it is not rational, promotes strong emotions over judgement and it is costly for us as a society.

You could almost feel this guy's soul tear while writing this. For what, a phone? A corporation?

When the market slams Nokia in the face, they will feel it, not when a fanboy jumps ship. And Nokia is getting slammed pretty badly right now.

They need to control the Os less they become a comodity producer like Htc and Moto already are. Sony didn't go full-android, but they're a shadow of themselves. We'll see...

Nokia have their hopes set on Qt and MeeGo and that looks fine to me, even if I don't know whether they will ultimately succeed or fail.

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