NewLC - Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian? - Comments

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

alh — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:44:41 +0100

Quote from: arizkohli

May be Rockbox hacks the iPhone fw soon and makes it open

AMK

Not very probable unfortunatly.

Rockbox didn't hack the original ipod, since it didn't need being hacked, it was more or less open to begin with, just not publicly documented (you could just write your own fw to it with any raw disk write tool, and the hw was quite standard)
And I think the ipod linux project was before them anyway

In last generation ipods, they have started to add protection, wich have stopped all attempts so far. (thats why rockbox and ipod linux doesn't work on the latest ones)

I would be very supprised if the iPhone was easily hacked.

I know a lot of people will try though

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

ariz_m_ — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 10:17:28 +0100

Everything will be ok if we just stop caring about it. Lets see what happens when it is actually out. It's Nokia/SE/Symbian's job to care about it.

If it's open we write code for it, if not we've always got Symbian and WM to innovate on. May be Rockbox hacks the iPhone fw soon and makes it open

AMK

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

sysctl-forum — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 12:56:03 +0100

Quote from: tote

In my opinion the border between the two is so blurred that it's really difficult or rather up to anybody to decide how he/she calls this device.
Tote

I think those are called "convergence devices" now.

P. S.
And speaking of convergence devices, I have been looking for a "perfect" one for a long time. iPhone looked like a good candidate until I heard it is not 3G and is only extendible by Apple... Oh well.

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

alh — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:30:18 +0100

Nokia have already been calling their high end smartphones for "multimedia computers" for some time now

The Apple iPhone is in my oppinion a bit less of a computer then these, since it does not support 3rd party software. (and doesn't have any feature these doesn't.. )

Its more of a connected ipod...

I still think the most revolutioning thing on it is the UI. (Only part where they have something technically different too) Hopefully apple has done as good work on this as it seems, and their marketing momentum can get others to realize the importance of usability.

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

tote — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:24:49 +0100

One more thing: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/01/iphone-is-not-phone.html. Michael Mace points out that in his opinion iPhone is not a phone, but a multimedia computer with phone capabilities. In my opinion the border between the two is so blurred that it's really difficult or rather up to anybody to decide how he/she calls this device.

Tote

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

tote — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:56:20 +0100

Quote from: arizkohli

If unification means monopoly then thank God it's getting segmented.

If segmentation means the Java mobile mess then.....

AMK

Well, what I meant on segmentation was basically that we have just "got" another manufacturer producing a quality(?) phone. Which is a good thing, in general. The situation would be a little bit different if Apple had decided to make an open phone, for which we could write (3rd party) programs. In that case we would have just another platform we should have taken care of. This is not the situation for now, I'm unsure though if Apple changes their mind with regards to the openness of their platform. Steve Jobs seemed determined not to open iPhone - even though his arguments sounded stupid.

Tote

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

ariz_m_ — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:08:38 +0100

Quote from: tote

It's also worth noting that despite all the predictions that the mobile space will be unified in the near future, I can see that it's just getting more segmented.

Tote

If unification means monopoly then thank God it's getting segmented.

If segmentation means the Java mobile mess then.....

AMK

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

tote — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:12:53 +0100

Sure, that's the best thing we can do at this early stage. However, the question was about what we see how iPhone will affect Symbian? Hopefully it will benefit from it, however I don't see that iPhone poses a risk to Symbian for the well-known (i.e. already mentioned) reasons. For the moment, I mean. It's also worth noting that despite all the predictions that the mobile space will be unified in the near future, I can see that it's just getting more segmented.

Tote

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

sysctl-forum — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:55:26 +0100

Let's see... iPhone is not a 3G device and is not extendible by 3rd parties, which leaves it in a slightly different market niche than Symbian-based phones, I think. Besides, Steve Jobs expects about 1% of market share in 2008, which is 2 years from now.

I'd wait and see.

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

alh — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:51:17 +0100

Quote from: tote

Quote from: alh

Hopefully symbian can finally get the push they so much need, to understand how important the user interface is.

Let's NOT talk about Symbian with regards to fancy UI: Symbian is not involved in that part of the mobile sw. That's Nokia and SonyEricsson and some Japanese operators that are doing UI development.

Unfortunatly, they very much are involved.

Its still symbian that writes the window server, and the base control set (CONE), and all the component drawing functionality.

S60, UIQ, etc, is "only" writeing their control set (akn/qik) on top of this, and is very much limited to what symbian provides.

If you want to do fancy stuff, you have to bypass the whole symbian drawing system, and that opens up a lot of problems.
Specially if you are UIQ/S60/etc and have to guarantee it works with everything else.

What is needed from symbian for a more dynamic UI is a complete rewrite of the wserv and how drawing is handled.

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

tote — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:18:59 +0100

Quote from: alh

Hopefully symbian can finally get the push they so much need, to understand how important the user interface is.

Let's NOT talk about Symbian with regards to fancy UI: Symbian is not involved in that part of the mobile sw. That's Nokia and SonyEricsson and some Japanese operators that are doing UI development.

However, I'm also happy to see iPhone to appear on the horizon, though, unsure what I can expect from it. You know, if it hadn't been Apple who announced its new phone, there wouldn't have been this hype at all. There is nothing special about iPhone (yet) except for the fact that it's Apple's iPhone.

Tote

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

eric — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:48:11 +0100

Quote

Probably about 90% of S60 phone owners are using them as normal phones, not as smartphones.

Making a phone was the original goal of the Symbian Pearl DFRD which is the foundation beyond S60 so from that point of view, it is kind of normal that user think they do have a phone.

UIQ is a little bit more advanced as a platform to make a real smartphone however having a real nice UI is still very hard with Symbian (and worst with Windows Mobile). Nokia has presented a new XML-based UI scheme that might enhance that - still a little bit too static IMHO. We have written a couple of Flash UI and this allow a true user experience on the S60 platform and is for me the way to go if you need interactivity and real sexy look.

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

Andreas — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:06:27 +0100

Quote from: rbrunner

For me one of the biggest advantages of the iPhone and hopefully the one with the most positive influence on Symbian: People will recognize that this is a true smartphone, something that is definitely more than just a phone.

I hope that this will push the notion of "smartphone" further into public awareness, and this will benefit Symbian as well. I hope that more people than now start to demand more from their phone, with a corresponding increase of smartphone market share.

Many of the current S60 phones are more or less the opposite: They look so much like "normal" phones and normally behave so much like them that some people even don't know that they just bought a true smartphone, with according sales of third-party apps for example.

You just don't get a craving "I must have a smartphone" from them...

I agree. Probably about 90% of S60 phone owners are using them as normal phones, not as smartphones. I wonder what kind of statistics of manufacturer distributions among smartphones we would get if research only included users that really use the phone's "smart" features...

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

rbrunner — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:44:04 +0100

Re: Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

alh — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:16:43 +0100

Hopefully symbian can finally get the push they so much need, to understand how important the user interface is.

The quite static and slow UI has been one of the most lacking parts in the symbian phones imo.

Not only symbian though, a lot of manufacturers.

And its not just about putting more processor power in the phone...

Wonderful with finally a device with multitouch, also opens up a lot for makeing the UI more intuitive. I hope more manufacturers follow.

Will iPhone affect the future of Symbian?

Fructose — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:06:23 +0100