Sony Ericsson Abandons Symbian
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 24th Sep 2010 23:20 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless Well, this certainly isn't particularly surprising. The rising popularity of Android leaves more victims in its wake than just Windows Mobile. Sony Ericsson, one of the major manufacturers of Symbian phones (other than Nokia) has just announced it will pretty much abandon the platform to focus entirely on Android - leaving Nokia as the sole person cheering for team Symbian.
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RE: I used to love Symbian...
by Neolander on Mon 27th Sep 2010 17:57 UTC in reply to "I used to love Symbian..."
Neolander
Member since:
2010-03-08

As another E63 owner, I'd like to discuss some of these points

The build in browser is, well, no comments as I don't want to be rude (some say "yeah, it runs flash" but what's the point when it takes 1 minute to open a page, reloading it 2 or 3 times on the way, even with flash disabled?).

Yeah, it sucks for every page that's a bit crowded. Sounds like they fixed it in later releases of Symbian, though. For us, well, Opera Mobile just does the job well, and can be put on the home screen...

Then we come to the e-mail, oh the e-mail... I mean, I have an E series, a business phone, and it can't handle HTML!? WTF!?

Of course it can. Just open that Attachment.html file you see in just all HTML e-mails. I'm glad that the HTML version is not opened by default myself...
-It'd probably slow the phone down a lot (the E63 is made to last a little week on battery when used carefully, not to suck it up in one day with a 1GHz processor. Moreover, as you mentioned, the built-in browser is not that great).
-It requires an Internet connection for some reason (I don't have a data plan, and being able to download my mails when on wi-fi and then read them later is a much welcome feature)
-HTML is often (ab)used for the sake of making shiny graphics. Including with text. Readability of such picture-only mails with non-resized text on a phone screen is poor at best.

Most of the information of a mail are contained in the text anyway. HTML is just for cosmetics and vulnerabilities, so it's better as an option IMO.

And now, the bugs:

1) Open a contact and edit it (suppose that you were editing it to copy the phone number or some other info into an sms or a note). Do an accidental change (say, erase the last char on the name or phone number). Now try to undo that... Right...

I agree with that, it's annoying that you can't cancel your modifications in some places. Calendar is another one.

2) Call someone. Tell that someone to cancel the call (busy tone). See how long your phone takes to get to the home screen.... Right...

Less than a second in most cases, though it can be longer occasionally. I close applications which I do not use, though, by using the red button, or menus and the task manager for those apps which do not follow symbian's HIG (like, say, Opera Mobile and Funambol...)

3) Connect to a WiFi network. Try to get the IP you were assigned to.... Right...

How is that useful on a phone ?

4) Open the browser, enter an address. Now open a new tab. Wait, what, where?!

5) Open the browser. Open a non-mobile optimised page. Count how long does it take to load, how slow the phone gets, and how many times the page is reloaded during the process... Right...

Fixed by opera mobile, as you acknowledge yourself.

6) After the last firmware update, the special chars of my keyboard have gone crazy. So, I'm using the portuguese layout, and some accents aren't working anymore (regardless of the label on the key itsel). I have to run into weird Shift+Ctrl combinations when with the old versions, everything would work.

Wow, that sucks indeed. I'm glad I didn't try to update my own firmware (USB cables are too expensive ^^).

7) And the brightside, call audio quality is the best (puts SonyEricsson in a corner) both for me and the person on the other side of the line, and battery life is not bad.

Not bad ? ;) Try to find a phone with similar capabilities that does only half of that. It's one of the reasons why I bought my E63. Pricing was a good motivation too. And after using it for sometimes, I'd buy it again for one thing that's not about hardware : the OS gives you fast access to everything you often need, unlike things like iOS or Android where simply making a call can take ages compared to the symbian approach.

I mean, C'MON!!!! I've bought a business oriented phone and this is what I get? No wonder people are disappointed. Then I get to my PC and I have to deal with that crappy OVI suite, or (the old and good) pcSuite trying to convince me to download and install that piece of crap!

Really ? In my case, it told me about that OVI suite once, I said no, and I never, ever heard about it again ;)

There, and this is why I am a very unhappy nokia customer about to jump to Android.

Good luck with your next phone ;) Maybe you too will come back to nokia after trying what the competition has to offer and being disappointed. At least, looking at my girlfriend's N86 and especially the much welcome improvements of its version of Symbian, Nokia know how to admit when they make a mistake.

Edited 2010-09-27 17:57 UTC

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