Nokia veteran leads MeeGo and Symbian fight A 19-year Nokia veteran will lead the mobile giant's open-source smartphone fight against Apple and Google. Marketing chief Anssi Vanjoki will head Nokia's newly created mobile solutions group beginning in July, Nokia said on Tuesday. The new group's remit is to research, develop, and build devices using the joint MeeGo mobile …
No it's not.
S60 = Series 60. Just as S40 = Series 40.
S60 runs ON TOP of Symbian.
The 2 are independent of each other. Symbian is the OS, S60 is the "front end" applications.
Qt also runs on top of Symbian OS.
Unfortunately, Nokia themselves sometimes perpetuate the common misunderstanding that S60 and Symbian are inseparable whenever there's bad press against their (as in Nokia developed) S60. (Or maybe it's just the way El Reg spreads that news).
The reason why iPhone and later Android took their market share was Nokia's QA. It was beyond pale. Yes they shipped phones with loads of features,but most of these did not work. Example - my wife's N95 as originally sold by O2 2 years ago:
1. Try to use VOIP - after 7 minutes phone reboots. Memory leak
2. Try to read the beeb via the web - after 3 pages phone reboots. Memory leak
3. Try to upgrade the phone - phone reboots on loading the Nokia phone upgrade page because some cretin has made it in flash and it can cripple an average PC to render it
4. Try to send a moderate size file via email - phone goes into a continuous reboot where a normal user would simply send it back to the operator with a request to insert where the sun does not shine.
5, 6, 7, 8, 9... infty...
It has now gone a long way. Pity that they are once again emitting a whalesong message instead of sticking to what worked for the last 2 years - fixing their user experience so it is on par with the competition.
While you make some good points you do kind of miss the point that Nokia HASN'T lost much market share to the iPhone and Android.
A quick google comes up with Nokia having 40% in Q1 2006 (pre-iPhone) vs 39.2% of global handset sales in Q3 2007 (iPhone launch quater) vs 34% in Q1 2010 and 39.1% in the Reg. article figures.
Shame about the facts.
The N900 comes with a face camera for video calling, no on board software exists that can use it.
There is is more than one post on their forums detailing the dodgy workmanship of their internal housing for the power socket, which comes loose inside and stops you charging your phone.
And it isn't hardware only, some software choices like no MMS support, no automatic off switch for wireless, no notification of messages received. Basic funadamental tools on phones across the planet but that Nokia has decided to remove or not bother putting on in the first place.
This veteran guy has a mountain to climb, not because they have a new open source software, but because they can't attract developers when their hardware is shockingly awful and the open source software changed less than a year after their first attempt at backing open source (Maemo), neither of which (Meego, Maemo) is supported by Nokia, merely by some part timers in a community who spend all their spare (unpaid) time filling in basic functional gaps, so don't port or develop any real apps.
Guess which phone I use?
Rather than fight an attack on all fronts, with a bloated and increasing unpopular re-hash of Symbian, buy yourself some time and launch an Android handset FFS!
You can piss about developing your own OS as much as you like then, as you'd have staved the flow of customers away from Nokia for better handsets that work simply.
Been loyal to you, Nokia, for 14 years, but have jumped to the 'droid and wont look again at anything powered by Symbian or Meego (or whatever it's called) as it just ruins the phone.
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