There was a time when I love Nokia mobile phones, the Symbian OS and, importantly, the combination of the two. Symbian felt like something approaching a platform, something I could interact with, rather than the flatness of what had been up to that point — the 2D-ness of a microchip and LCD screen.
I never got anywhere near the point of developing for Symbian. I’m writing strictly as a user. But Symbian felt like people might be able to write applications for it. I could already read documents on it. And send email. Wow.
Of course, Symbian has failed to set the mobile world alight. It is inward looking, lacks killer apps and, worst of all, feels cobbled together. There didn’t seem to be any overarching interface guidelines or interaction design — and I think Nokia’s two-button navigation system is one of the most intuitive and elegant in the mobile world..
Anyway, this isn’y much of a blogpost, just a thought that was inspired by reading this guy’s blogpost. He’s so disillusioned by Nokia and Symbian that he’s closing down his Sybian news site.. Here’s a quote, but you should go and read the whole, long article:
“To Nokia, you guys are losing. Hard. Wake the hell up. Doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results is the definition of insanity. I’ve been a huge Nokia fan since my 2nd cellphone, and I just can’t do it any longer. You guys aren’t competing like you once were, and everyone but you seems to see that. You used to build the world’s best smartphones, the world’s best cameras, the world’s best GPS units – you’ve lost pretty much all of that, and with nothing to show for it.”