4 ms·

Bah, even though Symbian was a bit workaday, think it was killed off too early. Microsoft killed S60 (Symbian) and kept S40 for their lower phones, when S60 co

by stuaxo 9y ago

Bah, even though Symbian was a bit workaday, think it was killed off too early. Microsoft killed S60 (Symbian) and kept S40 for their lower phones, when S60 could have just become the base.

skinnymuch 9y ago
I never messed with Symbian too much. You think it actually had a chance at being decent in the post iOS world?
- kccqzy 9y ago
  I've had fond memories of S40. It had a good-ish browser (Opera Mini) and lots of Java apps.
  - sundvor 9y ago
    I was going to say, I had fond memories of my N810. However that was a Maemo based device, which sadly fizzled out.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  With Nokia's purchase of Qt it had a shot, Symbians main failing was a really awful SDK IMHO - if they hadn't spread themselves so thin with Maemo/meego and just used Symbian as an underlying platform for new Qt apps and added touch support quickly they may have survived.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Symbian was great as user OS, for developers not so much. It used a C++ dialect called Symbian C++, basically Hungarian notation everywhere, special semantics how objects were created (Two-phase creation), strings could not be used directly, ARM trap errors instead of exceptions, and so on. They also rebooted the SDK multiple times, initially Code Warrior based, then a set of Eclipse CDT plugins, then they rebooted it and created another Eclipse attempt called Caride. They eventually added POSIX support (PIPS), but just nowadays with Android, due to lack of updates, not every device could take apps that made use of PIPS. Then came Qt, but it was pretty much WIP by the time the burning platform memo came to be.
- hackpert 9y ago
  Symbian was one really good OS for the pre-iOS world. A basic S60 button-phone was capable of multitasking, copy-paste, profiles (which Android and iOS still lack) and could even pull off some decent graphics in games that weren't seen till years later on iPhone/Android devices. I even remember writing an app to SSH into my computer in the rather awful implementation of C++ it supported. But it transitioned to touch interfaces poorly, at least initially. The first few versions of S60v5 for the Nokia 5800 were horrid, with basic things such as drag to scroll unimplemented. It did improve considerably over time (by late 2011-2012), but by then the market had moved on. Also, it was a great OS for tinkerers because it wasn't hard to gain access to the OS files and play around with stuff, install sis and jar files, modify signatures (alright, that's a bit shady but I was ten, give me a break) and whatnot, but I imagine the lack of a central app store until much later did the platform no good either, because apps were slightly hard to find for a general user, and carriers (where I lived) often scammed users by offering free jar apps picked from the web on their portals for absurd amount of money.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    The last version, Belle, was quite nice to use.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Another great feature for tinkerers was PyS60, the official Nokia port of Python, which had a decent API for many of the phone functions (GPS, camera, etc). Plus it had ask-on-use permissions built-in before the iPhone was even a thing.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    That said, Symbian didn't just have Nokia's S60 UI. There was also UIQ. Used by Sony Ericsson on their P series, and Motorola in various models.
quitegreen 9y ago
Sadlly, S40 platform hasn't been used for many years. Nokia/Microsoft feature phones use badly rewritten S30 platform for Mediatek hardware that doesn't even support Bluetooth hands-free headsets or any kind of synchronization capabilities while having Bluetooth hardware.

by stuaxo 9y ago

Bah, even though Symbian was a bit workaday, think it was killed off too early. Microsoft killed S60 (Symbian) and kept S40 for their lower phones, when S60 could have just become the base.

skinnymuch 9y ago

I never messed with Symbian too much. You think it actually had a chance at being decent in the post iOS world?

kccqzy 9y ago
I've had fond memories of S40. It had a good-ish browser (Opera Mini) and lots of Java apps.
- sundvor 9y ago
  I was going to say, I had fond memories of my N810. However that was a Maemo based device, which sadly fizzled out.
snuxoll 9y ago
With Nokia's purchase of Qt it had a shot, Symbians main failing was a really awful SDK IMHO - if they hadn't spread themselves so thin with Maemo/meego and just used Symbian as an underlying platform for new Qt apps and added touch support quickly they may have survived.
pjmlp 9y ago
Symbian was great as user OS, for developers not so much. It used a C++ dialect called Symbian C++, basically Hungarian notation everywhere, special semantics how objects were created (Two-phase creation), strings could not be used directly, ARM trap errors instead of exceptions, and so on. They also rebooted the SDK multiple times, initially Code Warrior based, then a set of Eclipse CDT plugins, then they rebooted it and created another Eclipse attempt called Caride. They eventually added POSIX support (PIPS), but just nowadays with Android, due to lack of updates, not every device could take apps that made use of PIPS. Then came Qt, but it was pretty much WIP by the time the burning platform memo came to be.
hackpert 9y ago
Symbian was one really good OS for the pre-iOS world. A basic S60 button-phone was capable of multitasking, copy-paste, profiles (which Android and iOS still lack) and could even pull off some decent graphics in games that weren't seen till years later on iPhone/Android devices. I even remember writing an app to SSH into my computer in the rather awful implementation of C++ it supported. But it transitioned to touch interfaces poorly, at least initially. The first few versions of S60v5 for the Nokia 5800 were horrid, with basic things such as drag to scroll unimplemented. It did improve considerably over time (by late 2011-2012), but by then the market had moved on. Also, it was a great OS for tinkerers because it wasn't hard to gain access to the OS files and play around with stuff, install sis and jar files, modify signatures (alright, that's a bit shady but I was ten, give me a break) and whatnot, but I imagine the lack of a central app store until much later did the platform no good either, because apps were slightly hard to find for a general user, and carriers (where I lived) often scammed users by offering free jar apps picked from the web on their portals for absurd amount of money.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The last version, Belle, was quite nice to use.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Another great feature for tinkerers was PyS60, the official Nokia port of Python, which had a decent API for many of the phone functions (GPS, camera, etc). Plus it had ask-on-use permissions built-in before the iPhone was even a thing.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  That said, Symbian didn't just have Nokia's S60 UI. There was also UIQ. Used by Sony Ericsson on their P series, and Motorola in various models.

quitegreen 9y ago

Sadlly, S40 platform hasn't been used for many years. Nokia/Microsoft feature phones use badly rewritten S30 platform for Mediatek hardware that doesn't even support Bluetooth hands-free headsets or any kind of synchronization capabilities while having Bluetooth hardware.