When Microsoft and Nokia announced Nokia's move to Windows Phone 7, most people assumed the worst for Nokia's stewardship of the open source Qt, and indeed the company quickly sold its Qt licensing interests to Digia. But it looks like the company still has plans for Qt - and for the Symbian OS. Aaron Seigo, a Qt hacker employed by Nokia, told blogger Brian Proffitt that "Nokia is predicting over 150 million Symbian devices still to come" and "I think they've underestimated the longevity of Symbian".
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Member since:2010-03-08
Member since:2008-10-23
"THE" browser? Which one are you talking about? Which browser are you using on Android and why do you prefer it over the other browsers? Mine is Opera mini and I'm very happy about it.
Which text input method are you using? What is so superior to which text input method on Symbian? I use the hardware keyboard and Swype on my E7. I didn't find anything on Android that was so superior that is was funny.
And finally, which application is so better on Android? So far I've installed Opera Mini, Putty, Swype, Angry birds and Fruit ninja. I'm pretty happy with them. So what are you talking about? Can you be more precise please?
Member since:2008-10-31
Sure (this is in reply to the other comment too).
1) Opera Mini is hardly a real browser and I don't think it needs much of an explanation in the age of Javascript-based web applications and HTML5. (I have to admit it's pretty nice for static pages though.)
The S60 browser is seriously bad in rendering (e.g. fonts), control (try touching small links, buttons, etc.), standard compliancy (Javascript, HTML5) and usability (Where are the tabs? Why are there a load of popup questions when accessing secure sites? Why is it so hard to exit?). There's even a funky issue for developers (Why does an application need greater capabilites - SwEvent - to open the already running browser?)
Opera Mobile is, by experience neither stable, nor fast, nor any more comfortable to use. (I'm an N8/Omnia7/iPhone4/S8500 user and a multiplatform developer, so I know what I'm messing with.)
2) Text input. I'd gladly shoot the guy responsible for taking the portrait QWERTY out of Symbian. Every other platform can provide a usable, small full-QWERTY keyboard, and we're left with T9 and/or multitapping.
The landscape QWERTY is bad because of the wrong layout (some indentation of the rows would really help; the space button is too small and the left-right arrows next to it are too easy to hit instead), and in general it's too imprecise (it's a software issue, see heuristics and other voodoo in iOS). Not to mention that there's no multitouch, which would greatly help fast typing. (A real shame that the media flagship N8 is not really multitouch-capable.)
Swype is really cool, but it only works in landscape and it only supports a limited number of languages. Android users have it better, there are a lot of language betas available for their Swype.
Baidu Input would be another alternative, but it's really messy to get running and still ugly after that.
Nevertheless, every text input method pops up another screen for the keyboard. And that's really primitive and slow. (I'm an avid Nimbuzz user, so I do use the keyboards much. And I can tell.)
3) Applications: there are a lot of missing types of apps. Is there a really usable EPUB/other ebook reader? A PDF reader that doesn't suck? An FTP client? Music player capable of gapless playback? (I could sit here for a longer while, but I have to go.)
That's it for round one.
I'm really open for any comments and further questions.
Edited 2011-03-17 17:11 UTC
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Member since:
2008-10-31
Maybe he prefers Android because the applications, the browser and (the most critical!) text input are so superior that it's almost too funny to compare.