4 ms·

My favourite phone was the Nokia 6210. That thing was damned near indestructable. The 6310i was also great but it only really added bluetooth and had no authent

by iuguy 16y ago

My favourite phone was the Nokia 6210. That thing was damned near indestructable. The 6310i was also great but it only really added bluetooth and had no authentication on the AT modem profile (which meant anyone could connect to it and dial up to the Internet, snarf data and so on whenever bluetooth was on). The problem with Nokia was that they kept messing around with Symbian and didn't really know what it was for, making clunky interfaces that while better than Windows Mobile at the time were just blown away by the iphone. Instead of trying to provide a better experience than the iphone, they went crazy trying to imitate it and as a result failed to innovate. Ultimately Nokia's marriage to Symbian pretty much screwed the pooch. They had to ditch it but for what? If they're just another android OEM they're going to have some interoperability issues and it'll still be quite expensive. Switching to Microsoft means that if the tech is good it'll be well supported with a long term roadmap by guys with a good track record elsewhere. Nokia won't be just another OEM - they will be able to influence Microsoft's development. They still shift huge amounts of phones especially at the lower end of the market, and Microsoft will recognise that. Sure Nokia are down but not out, and I think this is better for both than the title suggests.

ansible 16y ago
Years ago it seemed to me that Symbian was a dead-end. Just reading about the programmer APIs was enough to convince me of that. Motorola finally realized that P2K and their other proprietary stuff wasn't going to cut it for the future. Most of these mobile phone OSs were designed for very small, resource-constrained devices. Which is fine... that's all that was viable in the market at the time. But they weren't designed to scale up. For example: Android uses Linux, and it has had MP support for a long time (late 1990's?). Even as of five years ago, many people would have thought that a phone with a multi-core CPU is crazy. Why would you need all that power (and power consumption)? And here we are in 2011, with the Nvidia Tegra 2 and other CPUs in shipping phones. For most of those phone OSs, adding multi-core support would be a multi-year re-write. Linux? No problemo. And beyond that, there is database support, and support for various Internet-based protocols (chat, radio, web, etc.). And what is needed for that is a really solid TCP/IP stack. I've seen (and done) things to a TCP/IP implementation to get it running on a small device. It wasn't pretty. Or high performance. It will 'work', but not for heavy duty use like you'd need on a smartphone these days. Edit: grammar. Mention of TCP/IP stack.
- iuguy 16y ago
  That's a good comment, but bear in mind that the MP support in the 90s was Pentium Pro only (and expanded to x86/64). While multi-processing algorithms can be generalised, they're best when they're optimal for the architecture they're running on. MP on Arm is quite different when it comes to things like thumbing and pipelining compared to x86. I only know this because I did some work on Arm 7 after doing some MP work on Pentium Pro 200s a few years earlier. It's amazing the crap your brain collects over time!
  - ansible 16y ago
    Oh, indeed. My point was that the rest of the kernel (VFS, device drivers, etc.) was already fairly well prepared for MP when ARM multicore came into the picture.
regularfry 16y ago
Here's the thing: as a phone, the 6310 was simply never beaten. It's almost as though Nokia thought that if they left it on the market, those sales would result in consumers stepping off the upgrade treadmill for several years. I know several people who still have theirs, and frankly I'm utterly envious. My 6310 was the last phone I could use (as in, answer calls, dial arbitrary numbers, use the phone book, whatever) without actually looking at it. Damn, I miss that phone.
- iuguy 16y ago
  You are right. As a phone it (and the 6210) scored a flawless victory. I've never had a phone since that was as perfect for it's purpose. Sure, I like my iPhone but it's not without it's flaws (like putting mute on because the screen comes on mid call, or not being able to hold it in my left hand without a cover) but the 6210 and 6310 just worked. The day I found the exposed bluetooth profile I threw up in my mouth a little, because my perfect phone wasn't perfect anymore.

by iuguy 16y ago

ansible 16y ago

Years ago it seemed to me that Symbian was a dead-end. Just reading about the programmer APIs was enough to convince me of that. Motorola finally realized that P2K and their other proprietary stuff wasn't going to cut it for the future. Most of these mobile phone OSs were designed for very small, resource-constrained devices. Which is fine... that's all that was viable in the market at the time. But they weren't designed to scale up. For example: Android uses Linux, and it has had MP support for a long time (late 1990's?). Even as of five years ago, many people would have thought that a phone with a multi-core CPU is crazy. Why would you need all that power (and power consumption)? And here we are in 2011, with the Nvidia Tegra 2 and other CPUs in shipping phones. For most of those phone OSs, adding multi-core support would be a multi-year re-write. Linux? No problemo. And beyond that, there is database support, and support for various Internet-based protocols (chat, radio, web, etc.). And what is needed for that is a really solid TCP/IP stack. I've seen (and done) things to a TCP/IP implementation to get it running on a small device. It wasn't pretty. Or high performance. It will 'work', but not for heavy duty use like you'd need on a smartphone these days. Edit: grammar. Mention of TCP/IP stack.

iuguy 16y ago
That's a good comment, but bear in mind that the MP support in the 90s was Pentium Pro only (and expanded to x86/64). While multi-processing algorithms can be generalised, they're best when they're optimal for the architecture they're running on. MP on Arm is quite different when it comes to things like thumbing and pipelining compared to x86. I only know this because I did some work on Arm 7 after doing some MP work on Pentium Pro 200s a few years earlier. It's amazing the crap your brain collects over time!
- ansible 16y ago
  Oh, indeed. My point was that the rest of the kernel (VFS, device drivers, etc.) was already fairly well prepared for MP when ARM multicore came into the picture.

regularfry 16y ago

Here's the thing: as a phone, the 6310 was simply never beaten. It's almost as though Nokia thought that if they left it on the market, those sales would result in consumers stepping off the upgrade treadmill for several years. I know several people who still have theirs, and frankly I'm utterly envious. My 6310 was the last phone I could use (as in, answer calls, dial arbitrary numbers, use the phone book, whatever) without actually looking at it. Damn, I miss that phone.

iuguy 16y ago
You are right. As a phone it (and the 6210) scored a flawless victory. I've never had a phone since that was as perfect for it's purpose. Sure, I like my iPhone but it's not without it's flaws (like putting mute on because the screen comes on mid call, or not being able to hold it in my left hand without a cover) but the 6210 and 6310 just worked. The day I found the exposed bluetooth profile I threw up in my mouth a little, because my perfect phone wasn't perfect anymore.