Quit flogging Symbian, people. It was great when it started and it is now going into retirement, honourably.

It is only natural that the new OS be better than Symbian. If they weren’t, they won’t be worth a pinch of salt.

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The Maemo news item has been given its own page here: Maemo to replace Symbian on N-series phones.

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The Symbian UI can be easily improved upon by Nokia but it has failed to do so..if u check some videos on youtube of people modding their N97 and 5800 to include the swipe effect popularized by the iphone and so third party applications like Handy Shell which gives u slide, rotate and the cube effect like samsung in the application. It just seems the Symbian Foundation have been sleeping under a rock. The eye candy effect is easy to implement. I have tried these effects on an E71, N73 and 6220 classic and it works just fine.

The Videos of Nokia N900 is quite impressive i like the thumbnail task list best. I might start saving for that device but i am afraid of being an early adopter, i would definitely be buying the third maemo device to debut by then it might the capacitive screen amd multitouch.

Symbian is all but dead to me now..No more N-series.

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EyeBeeKay,

I’m not quite surprised. The numbering used for the N900 had hinted at this shift. Plus, the N900 user interface is miles better than what obtains on Symbian 5th edition now. Plus, the N900 is everything the N97 was pretending to be.

I recommend that you take a look at some of the N900 hands-on videos floating around on Youtube. Even Nokia knows that the Symbian user-interface as it is now is lame.

Also, this explains why its only a documents viewer that’s included out-of-the-box. It is a device targeted primarilly at the multimedia crowd.

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Just came across this: Nokia dropping Symbian from N-Series by 2012

It would appear than Symbian’s Competitors do not even have to out-market Symbian. Symbian is scoring he goal into its OWN net!

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yomi..i have to agree with u that the usability of the phone would associate the mass market with the Apple iphone or though the price of a basic iphone puts it a the high end segment of the market.

To me the Android is a genuine mass market contender. We tend to forget that the masses tend to acquire phones because of the fact that they can send smses, make calls and mms. the app thing and UI eye candy is a preserve for geeks and the tech savvy ones.

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martinkem,

May I also add that at no time have I said that Symbian will be overtaken by the newcomers. Losing some marketshare does not necesarilly imply being overtaken. Just clarifying.

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EyeBeeKay,

Your reference to Formula 1 races misses the point. The point is, Formula 1 cars are not mass market. They are niche. No car manufacturer ever has or ever will win the marketshare race based on Formula 1 car numbers.

Again, you mention the rock solidness of Nokia phones (though we are discussing operating systems; not hardware), and I challenge you to play with an iPhone and tell me in what ways it lacks rock solidness. Apple is king of quality hardware.

My guy, no-one here has compared accesories with build solidity, and if its build solidity you are holding on to, Nokia is a sore loser there beside Apple. Even some of Nokia’s flagship devices have build solidity issues.

Back to discussing operating systems, the mass market wants sleek, user-friendly interfaces. They do not want to click through 3 to 4 menu levels to launch an application. They do not want to have to earn a degree in rocket science in order to use their phones. So far, Symbian currently fails in this department.

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Geeks, nerds, technophiles. These are what all are on this forum. I quite agree with Yomi’s view that the mass market is d driving force behind the iphone’s success. The average phone user doesnt even know what an operating system is. He is most likely interested in or attracted to a phone because of its look and feel.

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martinkem,

I did take the pains to qualify what I meant by “mass market” in the context of my comment. Again, by mass market (in the context of my comment above) I mean products that are not targeted at geeks, hard-core computer types, or those referred to as “power users” in some quarters.

These niche group, to which you and I probably belong, was not the target of the iPhone, as it fell short of our needs and requirements. The iPhone was targeted at everyday people who want a highly usable user interface – and it meets that need just fine.

Cheers.

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