Submitted by I’m still reeling from the unrivalled epicness and awesomeness that is Sucker Punch in IMAX (just got home – do not miss this film), but now I’m back to boring old reality where we apparently care about pieces of plastic that go beep. So, anywho. The deal between Nokia and Microsoft has many Symbian and Qt developers worry about the future of their platforms. To address these concerns, Purnima Kochikar, vice president of Forum Nokia, has published an open letter describing Nokia’s plans for Symbian, Qt, and Java for Series 40 devices. While the letter doesn’t deliver any hard dates, the transition phase to Windows Phone 7 is set to 2011/2012.
So, what can Symbian developers expect? Well, some of this stuff we already knew, such as a rather massive overhaul of the user interface, which will be delivered over-the-air to existing Symbian^3 devices, while new devices will ship with some of the updates, with the remainder also sent over-the-air. “The first major update will arrive in summer, delivering a new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons, a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps,” Kochikar details.
Further into the future, Kochikar can’t say exactly for how long Nokia will keep supporting Symbian devices. He does say that in markets where Symbian is very popular, such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, support may last longer than in other markets, which makes sense, obviously, Nokia hopes, at least, that when current Symbian users see their phones reach their end-of-life, they will switch to Windows Phone 7. Well, you can always hope.
As for Qt, there’s a lot in the works there, according to Kochikar. “We are readying app analytics, in-app advertising, in-app purchasing, a new browser and hardware enhancements,” he explains, “There are a lot of new things for developers to take advantage of in these soon-to-be-released APIs. We are continuing to explore Qt for use in other strategic investment areas as well.”
Nokia, of course, is the company that brought mobile phones to every corner of the globe. The spotlight might be on Apple and Google right now, but their contributions to the mobile world pale into insignificance compared to the massive impact Nokia has had literally connecting people in every corner of the globe – and not just in rich western countries with some pretty-boy phones. This is still Nokia’s strength; they sell one million feature phones every day, and so far, have sold a staggering 600 million (!) Series 40 phones.
And these phones can run Java applications. “We intend to drive more innovation and improvement in Series 40 developer engagement. We are continuing to develop easy-to-use tools and software developer kits to make it simple, easier and more affordable for Java developers to work with us,” Kochikar writes, “For example, there is free signing for Java apps; the new SDK for Touch and Type UI is in the market now; plus we have plans for increased proxy browsing capabilities on our device and support for web apps.”
This does look a lot like trying to appease Symbian and Qt developers with a rotting carcass wearing a princess dress. No matter how those Finns try to dress it up, the fact of the matter is that their future – assuming Nokia has one, the cynic in me wonders – is Windows Phone 7, and not Symbian or Qt.
As usual, very vague statements about future of Meego in Nokia. But that’s understandable – they have no idea about this future. I.e. it’s undecided. Nokia will release one device running Harmattan with Meego API, but what will be after that – no one knows.
This article tells us nothing new…there is still no clear migration path for S40 users. Just a bunch of vague, reassuring statements so that we don’t leave Nokia in droves. Are they saying it will be S40 on the low-end and WP7 for smartphones? I need something that does calls and texts and doesn’t need to be charged every day, and S40 does this well. I thought that Nokia would just push Symbian to replace S40, and Meego to replace S60…now it looks like they will only have WP7 and nothing on the low end. At least Samsung has figured it out with Bada and Android. You simply can’t give up the bulk of your market for something that’s trendy but overkill for most people.
Edited 2011-03-28 22:44 UTC
S40 will still be around on the low end.
what does sucker punch have to do with nokia?
pleasantries – A short polite conversation before the serious conversation; “Exchanging pleasantries”
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pleasantries
It doesn’t need a reason, Sucker Punch is just that awesome.
Sucker Punch is TERRIBLE. You’ll love it if you’re a 14 year old boy…but if you’re a grownup that likes a movie with a real script…then STAY AWAY!!
You are both accurate and unfair. Suckerpunch doesn’t have anything like coherence, but there are some beautiful (if inconsequential) battle sequences. It gave me a very Heavy Metal vibe (minus the music); the people making it were going for awesome but didn’t know how to get there, so some parts worked and some just fell flat. Anyone could enjoy it for what it was, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a must-see film. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it any more at 14 than I did at 29.
This was a script in need of a little more polishing before it was filmed to smooth some stilted dialog and either make clear what was going on (double framing is hard) or to tweak the plot and setting. I can’t praise it as a whole.
I can, however, praise the gorgeous ‘fantasy sequences’ which are epicly awesome and remind me a lot of manga and anime, only live action. There’s no question that the director is skilled and the effects are above top-notch.
Edited 2011-03-29 11:08 UTC
Just look at
http://www.logitel.de/handys/obergruppen/betriebssysteme/windows-ph… (sorry in German)
for example. You will see that new WP7S phones are now selling for 239 Euro WITHOUT a contract.(Look for the UVP prices) Android phones with same hardware specs (sans the 8 or 16GB storage) easily cost 100 or even 200 Euro more.
My guess is because nobody wants them they have to sell them for cheap.
Nokia is so doomed.
“Dear developer,
please continue developing for our soon-to-be-killed platforms: your application will be useful until our users will migrate to Windows Phone 7; and in that moment you are going to be as forgotten as our platforms… thank you very much and… remember, continue developing for our platforms…”
Am I right?
Edited 2011-03-28 23:53 UTC
And since no one really buys Win 7 phones, we, Nokia, will be a shell of former selves by 2014.
And eventually be bought over by Microsoft for a song.
It would be great if Symbian trickled down to their lower-end phones, simply for the sake of native programmability, but personally i don’t like touch interfaces – on the price of a common S40 or S60 phone, i wouldn’t trust such a cheap touchscreen.
My S40 phone has a modern(-ish) browser, WiFi, IRC, VNC, SSH, RDP, a gameboy emulator and i wrote a DC++ client for it. It was ridiculously cheap and i couldn’t be happier.
Pimped now primped up to be purchased by … M$ – not so far fetched. Most probably that was the plan all along. I think Microsoft is definitely shopping for mobile hardware company. Now it’s just playing the waiting game. Like a comodo dragon, after the 1st bite, let the poison do its wonders, then death – bon appetit!!!
Nokia has already moved to Windows Mobile and is paying Microsoft for the rights to do it.
Why buy the company when they already have the keys to the place?
Eh… Isn’t it the other way round, Microsoft paying Nokia for the rights to play in their sand pit? Nokia’s to pay the license per phone sold?
Thom, that movie was absolutely terrible. It’s the worst movie I’ve seen since Wing Commander.
Apparently, the entire Internet agrees with me.
What is wrong with you?
Did you actually believe that Nokia and other handheld manufacturers would dominate the mobile computing universe?
Did you think the Desktop OS world would just let opportunity drive by and not jump on and retake that domain?
Surely this cannot be.
HP will eventually turn webOS into what they did with HP-UX–a distant memory.
IMDB doesn’t agree with you.
If you go into such a movie expecting to be amazed by the script then you don’t really have a clue.
Been waiting for Sucker Punch with lots of anticipation; the reviews are bad but I’m certain that it’s still good enough.
Actually, this strength is actually their biggest weakness.
The policy of old school phone makers to keep adding more bling to newer iterations of their phones while barely changing the OS and the experience is their biggest failure. Along comes Apple and shows them how it’s done (and now Android and Palm) and the only thing they have left is these sales to keep them afloat.
They were just looking at capitalising on their success, milking the customers. They weren’t looking into the future, they were being complacent and these sales are all they have until most people start using smartphones and they’re just another company making Windows 7 phones.
They still have time until we get to this point but it’s not looking good for them but I’m glad it’s happening to them because they kept us back and they took advantage of their customers.
This is their wrong doing, a similar situation to the Music business where the Music Labels are to blame.
Edited 2011-03-29 09:24 UTC
And yet, you will be. That’s the part that blew me away.
See Bob’s review, he GETS it.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/29…
Funny i see it the other way. They didn’t know how to thoroughly milk their customers, but then Apple came along and showed them how it is done.
Yeap you’re absolutely right.
If it were up to nokia, today we would be using phones like this http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n92-1346.php
The only difference would be that it had a 12 megapixel camera and a higher res. screen and these devices mind you, weren’t cheap.
But I guess people like you prefer living in the dark ages, given a chance you would probably be among the crowd wanting to burn Galileo for wanting to show you the truth.
Ah, because spending boatloads of money for a phone which didn’t even include a proper keyboard, nor supported basic technology like MMS and 3G in its first iteration, was better…
It doesn’t have to be one way or the other, you know
Edited 2011-03-29 10:30 UTC
You also forgot to mention copy/paste, a native SDK etc etc.
Go dig up comments from Balmer, RIM and co.
There were so many back when the iPhone was introduced pointing out its flaws and predicting its demise… how right they were.
But oh wait, most of these issues were addressed in the years following.
On the other hand, 5 years later, Nokia is still selling junk.
Most of the features were left out for a reason, which is one thing Apple often excels in.
3G was left out due to battery issues, copy/paste/MMS so they could get it out asap and address them later.
Even 5 years after Apple launched the first iPhone, we still have to deal with nonsense like that. Apple does not “excels” at leaving out features. They are just slow to implement them. The iPhone is not the second coming of Jesus Christ FFS. When it is Apple, it is “for a reason”. When it is not Apple, it is junk. What did they do to your brain?
The iPhone is a landmark in smartphone history, that’s what it is.
You wouldn’t have devices like the HTC incredible S had it not been for Apple’s success with the iPhone. (Of course that goes both ways; Amazon’s Cloud will have a similar effect, in that it will push Google and Apple to deliver on something similar asap, not 5 years down the road)
That success was due to a number of reasons and one of those reasons is leaving out 3G for example in the first iteration because the battery would be miserable (just like most 3g smartphones at the time).
This is what you don’t get and what their competitors haven’t understood since the age of the iPod.
The iPad was ridiculed at the start for not having a usb interface, a card reader, a camera etc. Do I need to go on or do you get it now?
Those things were left out intentionally.
Edited 2011-03-29 14:57 UTC
Yup. To sell you the next iteration.
Nope they (the iPad ones) were left out (and are still missing) due to factors like:
price
size
elegance
design
simplicity
Most of these factors are intertwined or interdependent and they may eventually appear when it’s feasible to include them into the product or they’ve moved up the priority list.
Cramming up more and more features on a device is in the mindset of most handset manufacturers, as if they’re competing on who can make the best James Bond gadget. But they’re always missing the point, take a look at the outcome of most iPod competitors.
Obviously any company is trying to maximise profit and continuity of a device, Apple is no exception, however their mentality is totally different when it comes to product design and they prove most of you wrong time and time again.
Edited 2011-03-29 15:29 UTC
Absurdity upon absurdity. By your logic, if Apple claimed its reasons for doing anything were “Magic fairy elves”, then they are obviously correct as the products sell.
I see a new method to replace the old scientific method that’s gotten a little long in the tooth.
1) Claim what you want to be true is the reason for apple products being the way they are.
2) Notice success of Apple products.
3) Claim #2 is proof of #1.
\golf_clap{Thom}
Well, it’s working isn’t it?
I hope you are being paid by Apple. If not, you are either trolling or really brain washed. All smartphones have 3G since 2005 or so. There was no more battery problem than today. Most people just use GSM and activate 3G when necessary to save battery. If you don’t then you should. This has not changed since 2005.
How did they put that shit into your brain? Why do you have to turn any fail into the best ever move when it is Apple?
Edited 2011-03-29 16:02 UTC
Actually the chips draw less power today then they did back then.
Most phones back then could barely get more than 2 hours of call time on 3G.
I bet you’re one of those people who turn off their engine at every traffic light because they think they’re saving fuel. A word of advise. STOP. You’re actually using up more.
Oh and WTF who even turns 3G on and off manually ?
You know people use these smartphones for important stuff that requires data turned on all the time. Things like getting email pushed to their phone, notifications, twitter, browsing, maps.
Maybe if you’re a janitor, you can get away with it, good for you.
Sorry to wake you up, this is not 2005.
Edited 2011-03-29 16:23 UTC
Good job equating lithium polymer batteries to gasoline. Did you know that electric cars turn off their engines whilst stopped?
Yeah, tweets and emails absolutely gobble up all my bandwidth /sarcasm.
Other stuff I agree with, but you have to actively do that, why can’t 3g turn on when you need to browse etc.
What the hell do you have against janitors? How come janitors are stuck in 2005?
If they managed to slow down time then they are great people indeed…
Edited 2011-03-29 17:42 UTC
Hmm…my smart phone seems to do just fine with the Cell Data Network Disabled. Web, Mail, etc. is accessible when I want it via Wireless networks.
I could honestly care less about Cell Data Traffic. I have a phone for a phone. The fact that I have a smart phone (Nexus One) is merely due to the fact that I wanted a more advanced and backed-up address book. It also happens to do well for managing my calendar; but all the data I really need is synchronized to the phone.
Twitter? Skype? Email? Yep – I’m there. But I don’t need those while driving, nor anywhere else where a wireless (802.11) network is not also available.
I don’t need to be plugged in all the time, nor do I have any desire to be.
So is 3G/4G necessary? Well, from the perspective that all cell networks are eventually going to merge into a big wireless network – yes. From the perspective that the data networks are actually useful today? No.
> Most of the features were left out for a reason,
> which is one thing Apple often excels in.
It doesn’t mean that it’s good. Apple intentionally cripples their devices, and excels in DRM and obsessive control for whatever reason. It doesn’t improve usability – on the contrary.
Why anyone needs some screwed iTunes to transfer files from a computer to a device? Why one can’t use normal USB connection? Apple think they know why and they think everyone agrees. But I really don’t care about crippled devices.
Edited 2011-03-29 14:39 UTC
If you want to see crippled devices due to DRM and obsessive control, look no further then plain old Symbian / Nokia.
Oh, well, they had copy/past, MMS, .., and horrible usability. Some techies still don’t get it that pure feature lists don’t count in the end. And given a Joe Average user, syncing a phone via USB / filesystem manually is under no circumstances better than something like iTunes.
Using USB is much better. Don’t forget it is U-S-B. “U” standing for universal. It’s an ubiquitous standard. Any sensible computer would have a USB port and it’s OS would support it, being able to connect to other device with USB. Ditching USB for the sake of control cripples usability, limiting the use case to availability of certain service (iTunes), running only on certain OS. This is not at all ubiquitous and very far from universal. That proves the point basically. Apple’s claims about usability are rubbish. Their main concern is paranoid power and control.
Edited 2011-03-30 06:37 UTC
Oh my god! You are not serious, are you?
Yes, because as we all know, it’s an OR situation, and not AND.
And please, be reasonable. Even manually flipping the bits on an iPod’s memory with magnets is more user-friendly than iTunes.
You might not like iTunes but can you imagine users having to copy files to and fro manually to sync addresses, calendars, mails, notes, messages, music, documents, photos, movies and download and update apps, podcasts, etc. etc? You can’t be serious.
I agree it would be nice to use an iPhone as an external USB drive (like the 1st gen iPod with Firewire – fast and simple). But to sync things – no, definitively not!
You shouldn’t need an extra application to sync anything. It should be handled by the operating system using open standards. All the things you mentioned can be handled, by the operating system, automatically, using nothing but open standards, without ever opening a special badly-coded crash-pone slow piece of shit such as iTunes or whatever.
iTunes exist for one reason, and one reason alone: lock-in.
Amazing how much MS and Apple are alike, eh?
yes, it is funny to see someone bash Apple for not having copy-paste in the iPhone (years ago!) while MS dares to release a phone OS without copy-paste just months ago
Honestly, WP7 is going to be just a small pothole in the future of Nokia. Expect to see that they’ll deliver a couple WP7 phones and the sales won’t do well compared to non-WP7 phones. Then expect them to pick up Android in its place, or at least continue offering Meego/Maemo and (yes) Symbian phones. Symbian is not likely going to go any where no matter how much money Microsoft tosses at Nokia.
No one has seen enough of Meego/Maemo to say whether it will succeed or not; but Android would be an easy thing for them to pick up if they needed to.
So it’s just a small road bump in their history. One that Nokia accepted $1Billion to ride over.
I was thinking about this very thing yesterday.
Seriously, if you read between the lines “we plan on coming out with a few WP7 phones this year” and “MeeGo is going to be for our next ‘distruption'” Really always kind of sounded to me like they were basically saying “well, we’re not able to get MeeGo out the door soon enough, and we want something that is sensational and makes the world all say a collective ‘WTF?’ to get ourselves noticed again!”
Then BLAM! Out comes the new MeeGo phone. Nothing else makes (logical) sense. I mean what are they going to do, kill off their bread and butter (Symbian and Qt) and release another ‘test’ phone for MeeGo and just go with WP7? They would have no low to midrange phones, have to depend on Microsoft for any updates, and basically deficate on all of their developers / supporters.
Given the overarching services and ecosystem tune I woudln’t be so optimistic. Elop seemed to suggest that it’s the service revenue sharing with MS that they bet the company future on and the phones would only be bearer of that. Surely this could be extended to other platform than WP7 but I doubt MS would be happy to allow that.
I’m lucky. I was really excited about Meego, so much I had started learning Qt, and intended to base my Bachelor’s Degree Final Project on it.
Fortunately, the Nokia-WP7 announcement came when I just had started, so I didn’t lose too much.
Instead of investing time and effort on a dying environment, I’m now happily learning the Android platform.
In the future, Nokia’s suicide will be studied at business schools…
Though Nokia left the “burning platform”, as someone wrote somewhere, the platform [Qt] right now is “burning brighter than ever”
Learn Qt, do something for Meego… Intel is still promoting it; C++ is more challenging to learn than Java and Qt is the right framework not just for mobile development, but for desktop development too.
WP7 will die only in case of 2 events:
– WP8 announcement
– MS demise.
MS will never ever let mobile market go away.
It’s no doubt WP{whatever} will some day become successfull sharing hefty part of the market.
It’s only painfull to see MS raping Europe (once) greatest tech company to provide them an easy path.
Edited 2011-03-31 14:43 UTC