All the geeky stuff
My thoughts on Symbian, MeeGo, Android and future Nokia devices
According to Anssi Vanjoki, (EVP of markets at Nokia) in next five years Symbian is going down. By that he means Symbian will be the platform of low and mid range smartphones. The high end Nokia smartphones will use MeeGo.
Digging deeper into this, it means high end Nokia smartphones will not be running on Symbian. Nokia N99 or perhaps N100 ? will be running on MeeGo.
What happens to Symbian here?
We geeks, are active contributors of Symbian. We test Symbian devices, Symbian Apps, provide ideas and inputs and generally swear by and defend Symbian. But we also have the tendency of using high end devices only. That means, we will be using MeeGo or some other platform.
So, is Symbian 3 and Symbian 4 relevant now?
-Mid and low end users will hardly ever use the features which Symbian 3 and 4 is going to give them. We geeks are not interested in Symbian 3 & 4 devices if it does not have a high end hardware. Correct me if I am wrong but the future prospects doesn’t look too good for Symbian, OR, is Symbian OK with being an operating system of mid and low range smartphones?
The present “Symbian” situation is also bleak…. the developers concentrate mainly on iPhone and Android, Symbian is an afterthought.
Many internet services in addition to the web and desktop client, also have a mobile client. And most of these mobile clients are only for iPhone and Android. I pay to use these web services (Paypal, last.fm, Evernote, Dropbox etc. etc.) but my experience is incomplete because these services don’t have a Symbian client. This makes me look at Android in envy. (never an iPhone) Android is just an year old and the attention it is getting from developers is awesome.
Now, to get the full benefit of cash I’m paying.. either there should be a Symbian client for these services or I should jump to Android. Symbian is getting some of the apps but they are being developed very very slowly and they lack the functionality provided by other platforms.
At the current stage we really don’t know anything about MeeGo, how it’s gonna look, or the developer attention it’s gonna get etc. So for now, Android seems to be the most promising platform with great user experience.
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people who have more knowledge of Symbian, MeeGo, future Nokia devices…please tell me your thoughts and views.
Thank You
- Vinit
| Print article | This entry was posted by vinitneo on February 28, 2010 at 1:04 pm, and is filed under Mobile. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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Comments are closed.
about 6 months ago
On one hand, it's indeed astounding in a way, considering the number of Symbian-powered devices in the market, that Symbian's getting such low amount of attention – but at a second look, it might not be that surprising at all? I mean, a majority of those devices are running S40 instead of S60, or S60 but a few version older than they should. I guess the S60 version just became too fragmented in the last few years…and incompatibility issues discouraged developers to approach it because they'd've to work on too many different versions for what's basically still one platform.
On another note, that might just be the thing Symbian needs – think of it, all those rich new features seeping down into the low-mid range, people will get to use it sooner or later. And if it's gonna be universal, devs will have an easier job making apps for those devices too. All the while the system itself will remain familiar (at least that'd be my guess/hope) for those currently using it as well, making the transition smooth and painless. These things might be the key in bringing Symbian back to life.
As for MeeGo…I've already said this too: Nokia debuted Maemo 5, in virtually beta state, on the N900, and now they're already talking about another platform… I don't think it's good. It's not speaking convergence they want to pummel into us, it's speaking another split. Further fragmentation. Why can't they just adopt Android, is way beyond me.
about 6 months ago
Except that S40 has nothing to do with Symbian. Series 60 (S60) is Symbian based platform. Series 40 (S40) is not Symbian based platform.
And MeeGo is excellent thing, no more Moblin & Maemo but a combined effort MeeGo. Nokia has no reasons to use Android which is highly controlled by Google and let's be honest: proprietary Google OS which claims to be open source. Why start using Android when using it would basically mean that Nokia would have to fork it to get rid of all the Google nonsense (stupid jvms etc.). It would just mean more splitting. Why Google had to do/buy Android? They could have chosen to use Maemo which was already out…
To the author:
I'm pretty sure Anssi Vanjoki has never said anything about Symbian coming “down” to low-end or mid-end phones. MeeGo is for mobile computers, Symbian for smartphones (all segments including high-end).
about 6 months ago
Hi Eric, please call me vinit. He said it in all about symbian
video interview 3 — Anssi Vanjoki [Nokia], on being asked
where he sees thing going in five
years:
Two things. I see Symbian going [points downwards]… and when I go
down it does not mean functionality goes down, but it will allow us to
make computer type of product for the great masses in this world in
the developing markets. So the first computer they will have will be
an extension of the phone based on Symbian. So we are driving Symbian,
cost wise,
to India, China, Africa, Russia, Turkey, you know everywhere.