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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Member since:2010-03-08
Well, you know, I wrote that post in a hurry, and when I rode it again I discovered that it was lacking in many areas... Will complete it here, hope you like the new version even more
Yep, Opera Mobile give Nokia a hand here (I have both mobile and mini installed, and only use this last one while on UMTS/GRPS to save some euros), but still, you kind of feel like a browser is an important part of a smartphone and such behavior from Nokia doesn't quite feel right.
Well, Symbian 9.3 dates back from 2007, where if I remember well the web browser wasn't seen as such an important part of smartphones, except by Apple who just released the iPhone thing (which still ran on EDGE and couldn't receive MMSs). I've heard that Symbian^3 behaves much more nicely on the web.
The main problem with this imo is not that Nokia made an incapable browser at that time, but that they don't backports new releases of symbian to other phones.
On the other hand, doing that on low-performance hardware like the E63's could be quite difficult... After all, with no application open, my E63 has 23MB of free ram according to PC suite, and symbian is not very good at swapping...
(PS : Did you know that you can use mini-like data compression on opera mobile ? Just use opera turbo, that you can enable on the settings panel. It makes access times quite worse, though.)
I am aware indeed of the attached HTML file (kind of like some OpenSource groupware suites in the webmail interface). But when I click it, lol, my all times favorite browser is fired up :p I know the E63 is not the beefiest phone around, but nowadays, specially in this segment of devices, I would say that the phone could at least have an option to automatically show the messages in HTML (not open them in the browser tho). That way, users could choose if they want clear text or HTML to suite everyone's needs.
Sounds like a good idea indeed, maybe you should report it to the symbian foundation (like your other gripes with the OS). I often think of doing that myself, but when looking at those shiny newer releases of symbian I have the feeling that they'll tell me most of it is already fixed.
On a more positive note, one of the highest ranked feature requests on symbian foundation's website is a trash, so part of the cancel issue might be subject to change...
Hmmm... Annoying indeed. What effect has pressing the home button in the hope that the application closes itself in the background while you can do whatever you want ? Is the phone completely frozen ?
Good point. After all, that network information screen will only be watched by techies anyway.
Indeed, I bought it at around €260 myself
Not twice as much but nearly. Was yours brand new ? In my case, I tend to be more kind towards my E63 because I've tried lower-end full keyboard phones before. The LG KS 360 especially was memorable. If you think that symbian 9.3 is buggy and unpolished, never try this one. In fact, don't try it even if you don't think so. Before it, I had never seen in my life a phone which doesn't even manage to reliably delete all SMSs in the inbox ><. My E63 was an attempt to go mid-end in order to get some polish and nice features without spending too much in a high-end phone I have no use for, and it did work...
Either Android or iPhone OS (on an iPod Touch, as I don't want data plans and paying more than €500 for a phone is not in my plans). I need a smartphone to take with me everywhere, that's the truth.
Well, hope that you won't find the Android equivalent of my LG360... AFAIK, polished touchscreen phones are still for rich people, but if you don't need to make calls the iTouch might indeed be a good option.
Well, some days ago I tried to download a specific app (Skype), and for such a use case it works quite well. My own issues with OVI store is...
-Infamous loading times
-Often forces you to update, which can make your phone dreadfully slow for minutes before you can actually get your app.
-It took them a lot of time before user account and app downloading and installing was done right (though now it finally works properly)
Didn't have this chance, I discovered symbian with 9.3 and only noticed that many nice apps from the past can't be used anymore (nethack, EEmame... I'll miss you).
Well, it's surely far from perfect, but there's several things which makes it good enough for me to give it a second chance with my next phones...
-E-Mail and texts, my #1 means of communication by far, work very well
-The homescreen is just perfect, once you've set it up properly. Never seen something like that on my previous phones, nor on phones and mobile devices I see around. WiPho7 plans to bring something like this, but I'm not sure their implementation will be as good. For a combination of instant access to applications AND instant knowledge about what's going on, the symbian homescreen is a pure wonder.
-The main menu is properly organized (except in the settings region), instead of being a stupid and unsearchable heap of applications.
-Aside from doing what I want, this phone and the OVI ecosystem bring a lot of well-polished extras on the table when you look for them. Youtube, Opera Mobile, Skype, Funambol, the calculator and the translator, the file browser...
Then, the thing requires some developer love and lots of polish before adding any new feature to the mix, in my opinion. Specifically, the following should be fixed :
-The aforementioned cancel issue
-The out of memory issue. There should be more free memory for apps, and background apps should just be swapped out instead of wasting precious memory.
-The occasional slowdowns and lockups of the interface. They should not exist. On a sidenote, killing apps should be a near-instant process.
-Opera mobile should be better integrated in the system and made the default browser. Except if they manage to get their webkit-based monster fixed, which would be the best option of course.
-Management of multiple Wi-Fi networks is ridiculously bad. I can't set several networks as preferred networks, so since I equally use two wi-fi networks (home and work), I have to put the default network setting on "always ask" mode. It's highly annoying.
-On the same wi-fi topic... Currently, if your wi-fi network's signal strength is too low, symbian won't detect it as a preferred AP and hence not show it in the network list. And you can't reload that list either. You're more or less stuck with canceling your current task and starting over.
Member since:2010-03-08
Note that nokia actually already took care of part of this. Network management has been greatly (and I really mean it) improved on newer releases of symbian like the one on the N86, though that comes at the expense of silly sluggish animations that just make the device feel horrendously slow.
If Nokia have taken care of most of these issues by the time my E63 dies, I'll go back because of the other benefits mentioned.
Windows Phone 7 looked as another interesting platform in its early builds, but in my opinion it has just gotten worse and worse as time passed and is currently prone to be a big failure unless a miracle occurs or the apps for it are *really* good. I don't buy the iOS/Android philosophy at all, as you should have guessed by now. Meego will probably only run on €400+ phones, so it's not for me either. Well, if I was desperate about Nokia at that time, I could still go RIM... But their platform doesn't feel as friendly and efficient as symbian, looking from a distance.
Yeah, indeed, it just spit such a warning on me. Guess I'm too good at ignoring them
Maybe the windows 7 popup management options can do the trick of making these warnings disappear ?
Member since:2009-06-23
Right, three things first:
- I have a problem trusting manufacturers other than Apple about the quality and functionality of touch screens (you can blame it on a previous bad and too long experience with Windows Mobile 2003). I would prefer to avoid touch screens, but I know that if I am using a trusty one, I'll be OK (last nokia I tried with touch screen was one of those xpress music ones, and I hated it!!!)
- I truly hate this social networking trend, and therefore, I avoid phones that use their social integration features as a flagship feature. According to some reviews I've been reading, these new phones have facebook integration, and I am afraid that by not using this, I'll be crippling the device or locking other basic features (just like what happened on the Vodafone 360 if you didn't had facebook/bebo/whatever).
- According to my carrier's website (vodafone.ie), I see a hell lot of bad reviews for these new Nokias, regarding slowdowns, freezes, and phones going back to service over and over again. So, regardless of how nice they look on the video, I ain't buying it until this new platform is well established and all the sharp edges are gone.
Now, about your post:
- (again) The browser
Mainstream usage of the mobile phone browser started with the iPhone, yes. But depending on where you live (and most EU countries had been ahead of the US on this matter, in pre-iPhone ages), it is something being done for years. I've been using that (and video calls as well) in an almost daily basis because on the country I was previously living, you could get a plan with €20 per month with unlimited data, text, voice and video communications (with conditions). I must admit that, back then, there was a whole less of stuff for the browser to process, but still, even when it was born, it was already showing its age.
You mention that the weak hardware might be a bottleneck... Well, I don't accept that when I see basic phones using the native browser in a proper manner (I'm talking, for example, SE K530i) while I have to find workarounds.
PS: I am aware of such option, but I don't thing that goes all the way. I can tell a difference on the pages, just can't tell if it is because they're being rendered on a java or native application. Still, I must check that better.
- The calendar
A recycle bin?! LOL, all I want is an undo or cancel button!!!
- The freezing
The phone is usable, just the home screen is inaccessible. I can get into the menus, but if I return to the home screen, I see a static image of the last screen.
- The price
Yep, brand new in store around 1 and 1/2 years ago.
I gave up on trying other manufacturers. Basically now, I'm comfortable with Symbian, iOS and Android, don't need (nor want) to get to know and use other phone OS's, thank you!
- The touch
I need to make calls indeed, but if I get the touch, I won't mind having a dump phone as my mobile. I wanted to avoid carrying two devices almost all the time, but if that suits me better, then I'll have to be.
- OVI store
You can get apps from OVI and they work, no question there, but they aren't always up to date. For example, a couple of months ago, the version of YouTUBE available on OVI was way older than the one available at google. Same goes for Opera Mini the last time it was updated. So, I cannot trust the store, I have to go and get my apps somewhere else.
- The old days
Ah, EEmame, good times I spend with that app (specially on the N-Gage)
Ah, one funny thing... You know that, when I had ver2 of the firmware, there was an option to create access point groups? Pretty handy, 'cas I could create a group containing all my trusty wifi networks and have the phone automatically connecting to voip or e-mail. Then firmware update came, and that option went away... Thank you Nokia!
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Member since:
2009-06-23
NeoLander, good points you raised, lets see if I can cover all of them:
The Browser
Yep, Opera Mobile give Nokia a hand here (I have both mobile and mini installed, and only use this last one while on UMTS/GRPS to save some euros), but still, you kind of feel like a browser is an important part of a smartphone and such behavior from Nokia doesn't quite feel right.
The E-Mail
I am aware indeed of the attached HTML file (kind of like some OpenSource groupware suites in the webmail interface). But when I click it, lol, my all times favorite browser is fired up :p I know the E63 is not the beefiest phone around, but nowadays, specially in this segment of devices, I would say that the phone could at least have an option to automatically show the messages in HTML (not open them in the browser tho). That way, users could choose if they want clear text or HTML to suite everyone's needs.
1) I wasn't aware that the calendar was suffering from this blow as well :| The way I see it: if such basic things were left untouched, I wonder how's the rest... Can't avoid feeling pessimistic on this one.
2) In my case (very often), if I call someone and that someone gives me a busy tone, I press the Red button to go back to the home screen and so whatever I need to do. The thing is, while the busy tone is playing (and it doesn't stop for about 3 or 4 seconds), the phone application kind of freezes.
3) It is useful if you are a techie in certain scenarios. For me it is useful, plus, if I can see security information of the network, why can't I possibly see my IP?
4) & 5) Yep, Opera covered the gap here, more or less.
6) I did the update hoping that most of the issues I described here were gone.... yeah....
7) Hum, indeed, but for an E series and full qwerty keyboard, I would expect more as well. Forgot to mention the price as well: €150 unlocked in store, not a bad deal at all!
New phone
Either Android or iPhone OS (on an iPod Touch, as I don't want data plans and paying more than €500 for a phone is not in my plans). I need a smartphone to take with me everywhere, that's the truth. The main reasons that lead me to buy this phone were wifi, built in VoIP client, e-mail and SSH (via PuTTY, installed separately). I will not go back to symbian until Nokia ditches the OVI store, which lacks content and organization. Besides that, I've seen symbian in the early days and I don't like the evolution it took since the release of 3rd edition phones (and trust me, IO was symbian ALL THE WAY!)
PS: pcSuite is constantly nagging me with updates, when all there is is a new software to install (OVI Suite), nothing to update.
Nokia, hope you guys are reading this!