AAS: Branding Issue of Symbian & Symbian vs Android Smartphone
Before I head off to lectures again, I wanted to share a couple of Editorials by Steve Litchfield at AllAboutSymbian.
The first one discusses the Branding Issue with Symbian where we see snippets from Steve saying the war was already lost before the battle begun. Steve things Symbian should have been more prominent as a brand, not diluted by the various branches of different UI. It wasn’t made to be a selling point. It was just there.
But there was no way on earth, once the war of ecosystems started, once the battle for consumer mindshare was underway, that such a mess of name confusion could take hold in the High Street.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/15706_The_Branding_issue_was_Symbian.php
Next up, Steve compares Symbian smartphones with Android smartphones.
Was Nokia’s definition right all along? Or is a modern ‘smartphone’ much smarter after all? I look at the two ultimate exponents of the two definitions, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/15699_Symbian_versus_Android_Smartph.php
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To me its not about Android vs Symbian .. Its about the phone as a whole.
The 808 ticks all the boxes , so thats it really.
Doing all doesn’t mean doing the better
That’s a really odd statement and I’m not sure I understand it… but are you saying that something that does something (call it object A) that another something doesn’t do (object B) means that object B is better than object A… surely being able to do something in the first place makes it better than not being able to do it AT ALL (even if object A doesn’t do it in quite the shiny showy manner that object B might (if it were able to do it at all)…
I apologise if I’ve misunderstood your statement, but I’m rather befuddled at the point your trying to make.
+infinity
Jack of all trades vs master of some kinda example.
6600 was my first phone
Was my uncle’s old one. It was such a trooper
I appreciate this.
After experiencing UIQ (Symbian from Sony Ericsson), Symbian^3 (N8) and Android (on tablet) I am even more sure that the fall of Symbian at Nokia is just the matter of “Comfort Interaction” which I am always force to look into. Symbian before ^3 I tried on friends’ handsets and well, UIQ has got it all and its navigation leads user direct to where you want to be.
Forget the apps and other things because we are talking about 4 years back, the era where Nokia should start maturing Symbian’s interface. Instead till today, in Nokia^3, they keep on removing the useful features instead of tiding things up.
The looks are important too, but for a serious user, it is secondary. Because once you take something for its good look and it doesn’t do what you want to do, you hate the device no matter how good it looks. But if something that does what you want it to do, you just love it.
“once you take something for its good look and it doesn’t do what you want to do, you hate the device no matter how good it looks.”
I’m pretty sure you just described an iPhone.
Symbian S40. – USA (hope MNB doesn’t adopt disqus)
there is not such think as symbian s40 …only s60 , s80 and s90 were running symbian ….s40 UI is based on java.
And Android is the most horrible thing in multi-tasking.
it is very surprising for me to see android being the top dog now. a few years ago i imagined this would be symbian, i saw them as very similar in look and feel, but thining symbian is more feature rich i picked symbian as the number 1 os with a future. but because of the inconsistency in releases, poor job at improving symbian for touchscreen use android came on top.
it isn’t that android is so good and it defeated symbian, is more like symbian stoped growing and developing and android had the time to match it in a few years.
the same with samsung being the number one phone manufacturer in the world. this isn’t because they outsold nokia number from a few years back, but because nokia sales droped below samsung sales. a real shame and only the old management is to blame, cause from a tehnological point of view, nokia had everything, more than most of the competitors combined. but they failed to put it into one product and impress with it
And they STILL fail to put it into one product and impress with it.
Clowns
nah. the 920 has it all now for a flagship device. andfd when the 808 succesor wil be released they will also have the ultimate camera smartphone with the big sensor and ois and who knows what other things. i hope the carriers will offer their suport and stop being so picky
The only platform that can support 808 successor is going to be Symbian and I don’t think the carrier will pick up a Symbian even it’s going to be very good.
that’s complete and utter bullshit, that the only platform able to support a 808 successor ir symbian.
that’s just a myth.full pureview isn’t symbian dependent.and nokia had a lot of imput in wp8 ant it’s camera capability,so i’m certain they made sure wp8 will be up to the challenge for whatever is in nokia labs. a future where full pureview will be abandoned just isn’t possible
Ha, up here in Canada, my friends think I have a Sybian.
But personally, I think the crazy naming scheme and fragmentation is at fault.
You think android fragmentation is bad? Symbian fragmentation is 10 times worse, the non-nokia Symbians did not have the same app store, nor did they have the same appearance.
Also, Symbian 9.5, s60v5, s80, s60v3, Symbian^3, Symbian Anna, Nokia Belle, the naming is horrible.
yup, people didn’t care some years ago about platforms and ecosystem or apps. so having a standard wasn’t a priority. but it just shows what a big oportunity was wasted. if all the cards were played right, android wouldn’t have existed right now, or it would have a smalle marketshare
you guys are both right, Nokia had a big lead and great hardware and good software, but their software and plan was scattered, Apple and Google showed how a focus plan and bring in services and software together is a winner. I have the E7 and SG2, love the battery on the E7, but it just does not provide me with the usefulness of the Android device. the Nokia looks and feels better, and i like Symbian, but the E7 stays in my desk draw, even so i am tempted to buy the 808.
Had Symbian phones had better specs, and easier APIs from 2007 onwards, it would likely be the top dog instead of Android, or close enough. But alas, it did not have the specs or easy app-development.
So Android grew, despite being at least as unstable and laggy as Symbian, but it had the hardware to lag a little less, and java-based APIs, which ensured tons of low quality ( and some high quality too, I admit ) apps.
Symbian is much better than android and winphone:
Key features:
1-great file manager
2-great video player(supporting a large group of formats with 720p resolution)
3-great multitasking(just buy a 603 with a low price and compare its multitasking with htc one x and galaxy s3)
4-great connectivity(work easy with your bluetooth or usb mass storage even when your phone is off! nfc fm transmitter tv out usb otg etc…using them is just simple!)
5-great UI android is got a boring ui like winphone so it needs for example sense in htc etc…
6-light os doesnt need much power in cpu and other hardware so your phone will be cheaper and its battery life will endure more and even middle price phones will bring same experience as expensive ones!
7-messaging is wonderful i saw a lot people needed inbox outbox etc….just like file manager you can easily select copy etc and organize your stuff like your files in file manager
there are a lot of more great features which were not mentioned here!
soooooo working with symbian is simple and fast every thing is where it should be and the only bad thing about it is the number of apps and games….and as you can see this part was nokia mistake and the world desire to kill this wonder full os
now go play with your android phones and be happy
I came from an n8 which is now with my wife(she loves the camera and xenon) currently own a year old galaxy s2
you have a point in some of the things youve mentioned but most also exist in android (particularly the galaxy s2
1-great file manager(sgs2 also has a file manager)
2-great video player(supporting a large group of formats with 720p resolution)samsung wins in this as i was surprised it could play a blueray ripped 6gb film.no conversions needed.
3-great multitasking(just buy a 603 with a low price and compare its multitasking with htc one x and galaxy s3)i agree here the multitasking was much better with the n8
4-great connectivity(work easy with your bluetooth or usb mass storage even when your phone is off! nfc fm transmitter tv out usb otg etc…using them is just simple!) sgs2 also has usb to go features and bluetooth and mass storage functions
5-great UI android is got a boring ui like winphone so it needs for example sense in htc etc…this is really subjective plus there are alot of great launchers out there
6-light os doesnt need much power in cpu and other hardware so your phone will be cheaper and its battery life will endure more and even middle price phones will bring same experience as expensive ones!this is true as i also have a zte blade and it sucks on android bigtime
7-messaging is wonderful i saw a lot people needed inbox outbox etc….just like file manager you can easily select copy etc and organize your stuff like your files in file manager ..i actually prefer the threaded messaging which both platforms have..nothing against symbian as i still love the platform coming from n958gb, n82, n8 and then galaxy s2. i still miss the fm transmitter of the n8:) you might wanna try an android if you havent still. the way i see it i love tinkering when i was using symbian,hacking the os customizing everything and if you want a similar os that you can also tinker, you only have android as both ios and winphone are really too restricted for me:)
ya my friend i have worked with android im not living in a cave:)
but dont be mistaken we are not talking about devices we were talking about os itself i mean symbian against android….if sgs2 got a file manager samsung put it in there but android itself lag it!
Just see how old is android…..its not as old as symbian…..well you may say what is the good point of being old!
its simple the os bugs were reformed during the years as you almost see no big bug in symbian but android is buggy and heavy and low security and…remember a great man like steve jobs hated android because he knew what it is!
the positive point about android is that its open source and there are a lot of apps and games available for it!
The os itself is worse than symbian!
symbian was just ignored and killed…nokia wont succeed with windows phone just wait and see
no need to be harsh, never said you live in a cave. Only meant to say that i think if you were a symbian user and wanted to switch to an os quite similar in terms of tinkering and customizations, i guess android is the choice because of those options and its much shall i say slicker? youre right about the OS being heavy, as i mentioned i also have a zte blade and the experience is like on the 5800:). 5800 had better features of course. I cant agree with you on the buggy part since i havent encountered problems with the ics sgs2(international). My n8 up to belle had bugs, (hanging,up to suddenly only numbers showing in the sms.losing my mp3 files etc) i think most were because of hardware limitations. I wonder how the experience is in the pureview 808 with faster processor.
i also dont think that steve jobs was a great man, he revolutionized the smartphone era was key in apples huge success, probably but thats it. and his opinion about android well …was his opinion:)
The multitasking on Symbian is much more nature, as same as in Windows. The pseudo-multitasking on iOS is weird and much more weird on WP. Android, on the other hand, does not distinguish running apps and recent apps, which makes me impossible to know whether an app is closed or not.
PlayBook OS (and by extension BB10 when it releases) has the best multitasking of any current OS. (I’d put webOS with it too, but you can’t buy a product that features it at the moment).
The problem with Symbian is it would trick you into thinking you could have that many programs open and would just close them out if there wasn’t enough RAM. And there was no way to prioritise which apps stayed open and which ones closed.
Android is fairly annoying with not making that distinction, but I’d say WP is almost worse with maxing out at 5 recent apps (and sometimes it wastes 2 slots on the same app for some reason).
iOS is also pretty damn weird, I never got the hang of it since the JB options were always way better.
The good think in mobiles is that I can take a system I want. I can try it, I can change it. Microsoft want a situation when I would have to use Windows like it would be a must. But this is quite hilarious for me. I prefer Linux>MeeGo>Symbian>S## but not Android and not Windows as both are uncomfortable and not working as mobile system should.