Buried deep within Nokia's press release about its financial results, there's a line that pretty much signals the end of one of the most popular and successful mobile operating systems in history. With Nokia retiring its use, Symbian is no more.
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Member since:2005-06-29
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Member since:2005-07-06
There are other models which were updated to Symbian Belle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Symbian_platform how much is Nokia 500? And/or you can always resell it)
PS. And, really, what about that RISC OS review? 
Edited 2013-01-25 14:57 UTC
Member since:2008-12-12
Still using my trusty E6 as my primary phone. That has Belle on it. It's really what the E71 should have been. Only the browser lets it down in my opinion. The Lumia 800 I also use just doesn't allow you to whack an email out as quickly or accurately as a physical keyboard. A Blackberry X10 is next on the list to try. I use few apps which is probably just as well based on these app stores!
Member since:2008-09-21
Agreed with the other dudes. Belle is really good. Look & feel improved significant. I have no doubts that devices like the PureView 808 running Belle would sell well when not killed 2 years ago. Todays news of Symbian's discontinuation is really not news. We all knew it ever since Elop's burning Nokia memo.
Edited 2013-01-25 20:04 UTC
Member since:2005-07-07
I've been using webOS since a little more than a year and I'm pretty satisfied (it's the only mobile OS in which I feel my phone is *also* a computer), except for some annoying bugs that will never be fixed and especially the subpar browser.
But thinking about that review or just for some experimentation, I would strongly recommend installing Preware on your Pre 2 and experimenting with the patches. I have my personal collection of patches (approx. 30 patches, I can post the list if there's interest) that I feel mandatory to make the use of webOS significantly more satisfying.
I know it's like cheating a bit because it's no longer stock webOS, but at the same time Palm designed it to be so open that modifying the behavior of the UI is really easy and does not involve any 'dangerous' steps. It's far easier than rooting an Android phone, and that's easy already.
Edited 2013-01-26 00:35 UTC
Member since:2009-08-21
Latest incarnations of Symbian are really nice to use indeed, well-designed Qt apps are a pleasure to use and the UI is quite consistent if you exclude some third-party oddballs. I use an 808 as my primary phone and I'm enjoying it very much, its camera being a notable plus.
So BB10 remains the only non-discontinued mobile OS to offer true multitasking accessible through a non-broken UI.
I still hope someone can make something out of the available source code - so that we may see a new effort rise from the ashes of Nokia's past. Seeing a realtime microkernel based OS disappearing like this is too sad.
"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:
2005-07-06
Perhaps Thom could grab some inexpensive recent handset running the last version, Nokia Belle feature pack 2, and do a goodbye review?
(right after that long overdue RISC OS review? ;p )
Edited 2013-01-25 14:44 UTC