Flashback: how Symbian Anna tried to bring an old OS into the modern touchscreen world
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- Sqx
- 13 Nov 2023
laVillete, 13 Nov 2023The best memories with cell phones I ever haddon't think it was the cell phone ;)
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- Sigamhsoupw
- pVM
- 13 Nov 2023
I was such a Symbian geek back then that I went from 5800 to N97 to C7 and then to 808.
I still remember cooking in the kitchen with oily hands, unlocking my phone with swipe gesture over the sensor and then speaking to the phone to find the recipe I wanted watching it in tube w/o touching it. Hardcore stuff back then, to a lovely era that apps were there to help you with things not just fish $ by collecting your data & make you an ads viewing machine.
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- Anonymous
- 3Z5
- 13 Nov 2023
Reading all these comments is perhaps even more interesting than the article itself.
Such a powerful tale... A mythical absolute (market) leader who crumbled to dust. Their last general, changing tactics on eve of final battle, with commentors in wide disagreement if he either changed them too late or shouldnt've changed them at all, some going as far as claiming he was a saboteur, a traitor in disguise. Nobody really thinks he did a good job, in all fairness.
It all just goes to show how
A) great Nokia was
but also
B) decadent, rotten and troubled Nokia was.
Multinational companies, kingdoms, empires and states all share that same fate. Ozymandias springs to mind (the poem).
Nokia is undeaniably dead, never to be rebuilt again to such height. It's greatest legacy tho, is constant reminder for all the big players out there how easy and quickly everything burns to ashes if steps aren't taken every single day to prevent that. Technological memento mori of sorts.
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- Ottonis
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- 13 Nov 2023
YUKI93, 13 Nov 2023I still think MeeGo is the best mobile OS Nokia has done. T... moreThis is true. MeeGo could have become the third big OS beside Android, iOS and the decision to go for Microsoft Mobile was probably the single biggest strategic mistake of Nokia ever.
We all know how the Microsoft adventure went out for Nokia.
- YUKI93
- K1L
- 13 Nov 2023
I still think MeeGo is the best mobile OS Nokia has done. That is literally the precursor to GNU Linux mobile OS like postmarketOS, PureOS, and Manjaro Phosh. They show us that smartphones can be a legit PC replacement if given the capability of running desktop software on smartphones*.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-xrjGqhHok
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhF1t-6ZSOA
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EK7Ua2efbE
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- Ottonis
- gDg
- 13 Nov 2023
As an owner of the Nokia N8 - back in its day the epitome of high end camera phone - I can witness these latest Symbian OS updates from first hand.
These Symbian updates were very nice and had a modern look.
But: Symbian was "doomed" by two factors:
1. Symbian ran on very limited hardware. The N8 used a puny single-thread Arm processor that was already behind of the competition and which caused the entire system to be annoyingly slow and sluggish.
Just opening a website or operating an app needed so much patience, the entire user experience was dominated by the phone getting in the way of the user.
2. The Symbian app store was fairly limited. Nokia included some content on the phone such a good racing game abd angry birds rio that came pre-installed, but overall, the entire ecosystem experience was closer to a feature phone than to the iOS or Android experience.
In my opinion, Nokia just missed to integrate a higher specced dual-core processor and to make its Symbian make proper use of multithreading, thus improving on the overall experience.
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- AlienNextDoor
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- 13 Nov 2023
I remember Anna and Belle fondly. They were good upgrades to Symbian for the time. Very minimalistic, good on battery life and great for people who weren't obsessed with apps.
It's not as if Android and iOS didn't have problems of their own, and still do. I remember debloating every iteration of Android and having to use Nova launcher for functionality and battery life. I remember iOS not having freakin' history in the calculator or a numbers row on the keyboard (they still don't).
Even today I have to either use Finelock in order to use Goodlock in order to get essential functionality for my Samsung phone, or go back to Nova launcher again.
- atichko
- M{V
- 13 Nov 2023
I still believe that symbian could have grown again to a full blown, full touch OS if Nokia would have persisted, especially if it would have adopted MEEGO as backbone. such a shame that Nokia didn't see (or did not want to) the full touch era of mobile phones coming and especially shameful that they sold their soles to Microsoft (who played a dirty role in all of it). This all results in a world were there are only two players (Apple and Google). The rest has been skillfully eliminated.
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- Anonymous
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- 13 Nov 2023
you can persist in your mistake forever , lol
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- Abdulkadir.AN
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- 13 Nov 2023
Anonymous, 12 Nov 2023You must be living in 2015 to write such a troll commentWell said.
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- Yahya
- KIs
- 13 Nov 2023
ithehappy, 12 Nov 2023symbian lagged in 2007. android lags in 2023. not seeing th... moreAgree. While Android has improved much because it had decade and backing of giants, lets not forget that Android started as a laggy mess on 800Mhz/1Ghz/Dual-Core 64/128MB RAM devices while Symbian has spent its entirety over 300/400mhz single-core CPUs with 16MB RAM.
Symbian could have done good if its codebase was fixed for scaling. Else, MeeGo was way better than Android or iOS at that time.
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- MRSTEK
- IW%
- 13 Nov 2023
Jongjave, 12 Nov 2023Ellop arrival as the new Nokia CEO at that time and changin... moreElop was Microsoft trojan, that was the answer for everything...
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- Swaraj
- CbG
- 13 Nov 2023
Then engineers decided a phone model . And it was a tool .
Now software guys decide a phone . And now it's a replacement to reality. Whatever wrong in yo life , Don't fix it , come , swipe videos we tell you to watch .
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- Sid5559
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- 13 Nov 2023
I think nokia should develop their os using all this skins with Android open source program with nokia design phone like lumia phone and thr camera also too good
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- 13 Nov 2023
ithehappy, 12 Nov 2023symbian lagged in 2007. android lags in 2023. not seeing th... moreYou never tried it though, did you?
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- 13 Nov 2023
NeonHD, 13 Nov 2023No you're right, my 1661 was way too primitive to call... moreAnd the fact that it doesn't classify as Symbian. Why? Because it's a completely different operating system compared to both Symbian and Series 40, and features exclusive formats for music playback and images not used on other platforms, including Symbian itself.
I think Symbian should not be confused with Nokia's proprietary operating systems such as Series 30 and 40, since they both have no relation to Symbian Inc, despite the namesake.
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- Anonymous
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- 13 Nov 2023
El Jefe, 13 Nov 2023typical one trick pony answer, and I guess Eflop managed Bl... moreBlackberry is not Nokia and failed much later and for different reasons to Nokia. Are you gong to ask me whether Elop was in charge of HTC and LG too?
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- El Jefe
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- 13 Nov 2023
Anonymous, 13 Nov 2023Elop was a Microsoft Trojan Horse who went in to destroy No... moretypical one trick pony answer, and I guess Eflop managed Blackberry too?
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- Anonymous
- 0p}
- 13 Nov 2023
El Jefe, 12 Nov 2023Let me guess you are 12 y/o; you have never programmed a si... moreElop was a Microsoft Trojan Horse who went in to destroy Nokia so that Microsoft could pick up its phone division in a firesale. That was pretty obvious to me.