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Handhelds Software Hardware

Nokia Takes Control of Symbian 208

Posted by simoniker from the symbiosis dept.
jpatokal writes "CNN reports: Nokia has bought out Psion's share of Symbian, pushing its stake in the mobile phone OS to a dominant 63%. This means rivals like Siemens and Samsung may now pretty much be forced to choose between proprietary Nokia or Microsoft technology. Symbian may be the more open of the two, but GPL it ain't - does Linux now have an edge?" We reported on a rumor to this effect late last year.
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Nokia Takes Control of Symbian More

Nokia Takes Control of Symbian

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  • Open != effectiveness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NecoX ( 750371 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:01PM (#8227344) Homepage
    Why does GPL have anything to do with how good an OS can/could be? Jeebus...

    • Re:Open != effectiveness (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:05PM (#8227413) Homepage
      Sadly, interest in things being open source is transitioning (my cynical colleagues might say it already has) from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about religion.

      Many of todays open source advocates seem to have lost touch with the reasons they originally became attached to the concept. This can only hurt the future success of these projects as more and more people associate this with zealotry instead of technical excellence.

      • Re:Open != effectiveness (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:17PM (#8227570) Homepage

        Um, the idea of controlling quality and maintaining old code isn't what Open Source or Free Software have traditionally been about at all.

        The original drivers were:

        • The desire to share code (and with GPL-style licenses, the desire to have others return the favour by sharing back)
        • "Free as in Freedom"
        • Not getting locked-in to proprietary companies
        • Doing something useful with software you would have written anyway, but don't want to commercialize

        I'm sure there are more, but controlling quality and maintaining abandonware have never been very high on my list and I'm surprised you think they were ever what Open Source was about.

        • Um, the idea of controlling quality and maintaining old code isn't what Open Source or Free Software have traditionally been about at all.

          Perhaps they should be/should have been.

        • That's really funny. You could say just about the same things when comparing American Democracy with COMMUNISM.

          The fact is, openness in itself does not make something better. I could go on and make a long list of communist governments which failed, but I'm not going to.... as there have been no successes.

          The orignal drivers of Communism:
          ----Everybody shares work. Every man does his equal part and gives back to the motherland.
          ----Freedom from oppressive governments. Let the people rule. (As y

      • In my experience you are very incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:54PM (#8228005)
        Sadly, interest in things being open source is transitioning (my cynical colleagues might say it already has) from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about religion.

        In my experience (working in the financial industry), it goes more like: Happily, interest in things being open source is transitioning from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about security from being held hostage by ones vendor.

        In other words, businesses are recognizing the concern and need to have the freedom to conduct their business without coercion from outside, i.e. they are recognizing the value of freedom as being of even greater importance than the cooperative, peer-review paradigm that improves quality.

        This is an important breakthrough in corporate mentality, and I have seen it spreading rather quickly among the suits of late.

        Strategicly, software freedom (particularly at the infrastructure level such as an operating system) is very important to an enterprise: not just from the orphaning of software your comment implies, but from other forms of vendor lock-in and coercion, be it coercive upgrade cycles that disrupt one's business, security patches that sabatoge competitors products one's enterprise may be using (by submarining in incompatible DLLs, for example), and by having a mission critical, proprietary product yanked when one's vendor suddenly becomes one's competitor.

        I've seen all of these things happen, and I suspect Siemens et. al. are very cognizant of this as well. These are scenerios that GPLed software does a great job of protecting against, BSD-licensed software protects against to a lesser degree, and proprietary products leave one completely vulnerable to.

        There may be very compelling strategic reasons for these companies to switch to a (currently) inferior GPLed product over a proprietary product rather than risk having their mission critical vendor (Nokia today, Microsoft tommorrow) becoming their most ruthless adversary...reasons that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "religion."

    • Re:Open != effectiveness (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n()_cHIEFz ( 203036 ) <nochiefs&hotmail,com> on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:16PM (#8227555) Homepage
      I agree, PalmOS is superior in the handheld market and it's proprietary. OS X is another expample, not everything is open.

      I think the point, us nerds would like to be able to hack our phones like we hack on our computer systems. One could do some interesting things with an open phone OS...

      • Re:Open != effectiveness (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:46PM (#8227909) Homepage Journal
        think the point, us nerds would like to be able to hack our phones like we hack on our computer systems.

        Close, but I'd express it differently.

        I don't really want to hack my phone. I want to replace it. What I want to replace it with is a PDA-like gadget that will fit into my pocket, and be able to talk to both the phone system and the wireless Internet. And I want to be able to use it like a computer, i.e., it must be programmable.

        An important part of this is the "will fit into my pocket" phrase. Most PDAs flunk this test.

        I have in my pocket what looked like a good start a couple of years ago: a Kyocera 6035 "smartphone". It has a lot of problems, though. One is that the web browser works over IP that's PPP over the phone system. It's sloooooow, and you get charged full air time for the connection, even when no packets are being passed. This is far too expensive to use it routinely.

        My wife has a new Tungsten, that comes with wi-fi networking built in. But it doesn't do phone calls. And it's too big for my pocket (though it does fit into her purse).

        Also, these are both PalmOS. After a couple of years of exploring their development stuff, I find that it's really not worth the effort. Doing even the smallest thing takes forever, because you just can't debug the stuff. The slightest error freezes everything, you have to reboot, and you have no clues as to what went wrong. There's nothing at all like gdb available. And most of the internal working are invisible and undocumented to outsiders like me.

        To be credible, I'd want something that I can actually program. This means that the innards should be documented, and there should be places to ask dumb questions. PalmOS doesn't even come close. I haven't tried Symbian, and I do wonder if it's better.

        But it's pretty obvious that a pocket-sized linux gadget with both wi-fi and cell-phone hardware would do the job quite nicely. Nothing hidden there, and lots of places to ask dumb questions (and get RTFM answers, for which I can ask "So where's the FM for that?" ;-)

        I'm not dogmatic about linux, though. FreeBSD would be nice, too, and OSX would be pretty good (though parts of its innards are blocked by brick walls).

        I also wonder about iTron. Is there any way for a US resident (with little Japanese) to get meaningful experience with it?

        • Most parts of SymbianOS can work as a layer over Windows (the "WINS" build), which allows you to do most of your development and debugging on a PC using a special version of CodeWarrior. (Previously Symbian supported Visual C++; I don't know whether they still do.) Of course the real thing works a bit differently; for example, it runs applications in separate processes with memory protection.

          In some ways it should be easier to debug for PalmOS since you can just run the app in POSE and attach gdb to it.

        • Sorry to be an arse, but what an iTroll post. You want either Linux, FreeBSD or OSX on your cell phone / PDA? Seriously, what benefit would an OSX kernel give you on a cell phone. You just mentioned it because it made you sound cool. Any other Slashdot approved OSes? How about BeOS... you forgot to mention that one... oh wait... from what I have heard the Be developers have put alot of their tech into Palm OS 6.

          As mentioned on other subthreads Palm OS does have debugging available through cross compilers.

        • Re:Open != effectiveness (Score:5, Informative)

          by twalk ( 551836 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @06:57PM (#8231638)
          The fact that this post got +5 Informative goes to show that the moderators really are on crack, and that many /.ers really don't know much about PalmOS development, but like to spout off their incorrect ideas anyway.

          GCC, GDB, and Pilrc (resource compiler) have been availible for a long time. POSE (Palm OS Emulator) is also completely open source and maintained by PalmSource. Right there is a complete open source dev environment.

          OS documentation is pretty complete, up to and including info on many of the internal data structures. There's also several easy to access newsgroups, faqs, books, etc, with tons of info for doing practically anything you could imagine.

          Really, after doing some side programming on the Palm for 3+ years, I've never seen anyone who's had as much trouble as this guy's said he had. Heck, I've got a better dev enviroment, docs, etc, for Palm, than the solaris & linux systems that I use at my full time job.

          PS, PalmSource is now working on a fully integrated & free Eclipse dev environment...
    • GPL != OpenSource either, things can be open without being GPL. GPL != Freedom.
    • For example take the entire hypothetical situation in which the OS on which your business depended suddenly becomes under the control of your business rival.

      Wouldn't it have been nice to have your own OS, or at least an open one. Or you can just trust that your business rival will play fair and make sure that the OS can be made to work on your platform. It could happen.
    • Why does it matter if Linux on phones has an edge. More than likely even if a given phone is using Linux everything on top of it will be propriety anyway. Seems to me that as long as phone x can communicate with phone y using whatever standards I don't give a crap what low level code it's running and what license that code is under.

  • Gaming (Score:3, Funny)

    by lake2112 ( 748837 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:01PM (#8227355)
    Oh thats great ... 63% of cell phones will now by N-Gage'd!!!

  • The Enemy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by slutdot ( 207042 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:02PM (#8227358)
    So does this make Nokia the enemy now?
    • no, it just makes me that much more interested in buying a competing phone. Oh wait, I don't care about cell phones, carry on.

      • Re:The Enemy? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bojanb ( 162938 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:27PM (#8227683)
        While Nokia does own the largest market share of mobile phones (around 50%, while the best next competitor has 15% or something), they have never so far engaged in anything similar to strong-arm, no-prisoners tactics of a Redmond corporation we all know and love. In fact, they have pushed for adoptions of open (as in "not Nokia's") standards; Java Mobile Edition being the latest example. With 50% of the market they could have pushed for some custom, lock-in solution but they didn't.

        I think Nokia's track record has been OK so far. In my book it stands among the "likeable" corporations, like Toyota and Canon. It'll be interesting to see if they will be able to resist the temptation with Symbian though.

        • Re:The Enemy? (Score:3, Funny)

          by OuD ( 527033 )
          I think Nokia's track record has been OK so far. In my book it stands among the "likeable" corporations, like Toyota and Canon.

          Yes, because in Finland we have this thing called "reilu meininki".

        • For all their great marketing Nokia have always been terrible at really making data over cellular work for users. They have mostly put their efforts in to trying to create a Microsoft style monopoly and to make it hard for other companies or individuals to make innovative mobile data services. Lets look at some of the horrible things they have inflicted on us:
          • GPRS which is a completely overengineered way of running data over GSM. Nokia's poor ideas implemented in GPRS have lead to its low throughput, exce

    • Re:The Enemy? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      well, dunno about that but hopefully it means that nokia will be keeping it's symbian platforms going on for a while, and preferably standardised well enough that programs work over generations of phones so that there will be plenty of stuff available(6600 which is series60 v2 runs most of well thought series60 v1 stuff ok, sx1 from siemens seems to run everything ok as well.)..

      a shameless plug, http://kotiluola.net/~glass/visul.sis [kotiluola.net]
      asteroids clone with 3d rendered graphics for symbian series60 phones (
    • In a sense. Nokia is moving to a situation where they have a monopoly on control of the Symbian OS. But in buying a controlling stake in Symbian, Nokia will potentially alienate their other cellphone partners, and introduce OS fragmentation on vendor lines in the mobile phone market.

      Nokia, with by far the largest mobile market share, will obviously continue to put Symbian into its products. However, will others? Given Sony's heritage with the Clie it is very possible that Sony-Ericsson could move towards P

  • Symbian isn't only incrementally more open... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:04PM (#8227392) Homepage
    Their software is also generally superior to Microsoft's, and more mature. SymbianOS (and its predecessors) was engineered from Day One back in the late 80's to run without failure on highly constrained hardware. So if I were Samsung or Siemens, I'd still see little reason to switch to MS.

    • Microsoft not a competitor to Samsung/Siemens (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blorg ( 726186 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:25PM (#8227654)
      The problem is that Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor. As Microsoft just makes software, not the actual phones, it is not seen as a competitor in the same way, and licensing Windows Mobile may not be such a bitter pill to swallow.

      • Re:Microsoft not a competitor to Samsung/Siemens (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:50PM (#8227955) Homepage
        Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor.

        They are still partial owners of Symbian. And they've been paying these licensing fees to Nokia, Psion, Ericsson, Panasonic, and each other, all along. Financially speaking the only change here is that that Psion's share is now Nokia's. That's signficant to the other licensee/owners, but it's not as if Nokia had just bought Symbian outright. Financially it makes more sense to license the software from a company you co-own than one you don't.

        The main thing the other owners have lost here is the ability to (collectively) veto Nokia in the boardroom and determine the direction of development and licensing terms... also signficicant, but again not the same as a buyout.

        • I think the financial issue is probably not as important as the control issue. Symbian has now changed from an independent consortium over which no one phone company had a controlling stake, to a company in which Nokia has a controlling stake. As such I am presuming that Nokia can now control the future direction of the OS. I may be wrong on that point (feel free to correct me) but if that is the case I don't know how attractive that is to other phone companies. Symbian's lead, and popularity with many phon
      • The problem is that Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor. As Microsoft just makes software, not the actual phones, it is not seen as a competitor in the same way, and licensing Windows Mobile may not be such a bitter pill to swallow.

        Not a bitter pill? Well, there are not manyWindows Mobile Phone Edition licencees, but one of them got royally screwed [theregister.co.uk].


    • I code for WinCE and Symbian. I have a Nokia 3650 (Symbian OS 6) and 6600 (Symbian OS 7). The Symbian OS is FAR from bulletproof and has reproducible OS crashes. I have never had WinCE (PocketPC 2002, 2003, or Smartphone 2002) crash on me.

      Plus the Symbian SDK and APIs use a peculiar dialect of C++ (with strange non-standard exception handling) that is incompatible with standard C++, making cross-platform code sharing difficult.

  • what about palm? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:04PM (#8227400) Homepage Journal
    like kyocera 6035/7135?
    don't they count at all?

    • Re:what about palm? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Phekko ( 619272 )
      if you look at market shares, they don't. Plain and ugly truth: market's pretty much dominated by Symbian and Bill is trying very, VERY hard to get his share, too. Doesn't look good for PalmOS

    • Re:what about palm? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      I have one of those phones. It's absolute trash. I've had fatal exceptions crash the phone just from trying to answer it.

      The simplest phone functions are counterintuitive, unless you have skinny, skinny fingers you pretty much need to take out the stylus to dial a number in the address book. Really nice, a quick dial feature that you need both hands to use.

      As far as palms go, its just a wee bit more sluggish than the m515 I picked up used for 20 bucks. Borderline useless.

      If this is the best Palm can

  • What about Palm OS? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Scyber ( 539694 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:05PM (#8227402)
    Sure its still proprietary, but it is another option.
    • I think this is just as likely as changing to PocketPC. Look at the alternatives:

      Symbian: Mature, Lightweight, Proprietary - controlled by competitor.
      PalmOS: Mature, Lightweight, Proprietary - controlled by neutral third party.
      PocketPC: Mature, Heavyweight, Proprietary - controlled by neutral third party.
      Linux: Immature, Heavyweight, entirely open
      • Symbian: Mature, Lightweight, Proprietary - controlled by competitor.
        PalmOS: Mature, Lightweight, Proprietary - controlled by neutral third party.
        PocketPC: Mature, Heavyweight, Proprietary - controlled by neutral third party.
        Linux: Immature, Heavyweight, entirely open

        Ecos: Mature, lightweight, entirely open
        • Ecos: Mature, lightweight, entirely open

          Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Does it have any sort of GUI library though? I didn't think it did. Qtiopia on eCos is immature, and would make the system as a whole heavyweight, although not so much as Linux.

  • No, not yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:05PM (#8227411)

    "...does Linux now have an edge?"

    No, No, No, NO! This has been discussed so many times it is unbelievable. Linux on your handheld is for people who want to run X apps remotely, ssh into their routers/servers etc. It is NOT (yet) for folk who want to simply write e-mail, update a calendar, play games and synchronise with a windows machine. Sorry, but it just isn't ready for this market area yet. Every year we hear how "200x is year of the Linux desktop" and every year we get excuses, lack of support from big vendors and API change problems which make porting apps a nightmare.

    What "Linux on a PDA" needs is backing from a big vendor with plenty of cash to back it up. The only way this is going to become a reality in a fast moving sector such as PDAs is to play in the big arena with the giants (Microsoft and Nokia).

    • Re:No, not yet. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) *
      Is Linux (running on a PDA meant to run Linux) more stable than one running PocketPC 2002? I have CONSTANT issues w/the device locking up hard and forcing a complete reset (losing everything that wasn't stored on the CF card -- many programs require at least pieces of themselves be installed on the main memory and not a storage card).

      It's a big time hassle for me and I would love to switch if Linux had the stability on the PDAs that it does on the PC side.
      • What model and what programs are you running on it?

        I have a PocketPC 2002 and I install every program I can find and the most I've needed to do was a soft reset.
    • The Motorola A760 [itmedia.co.jp] is based on linux, but that doesn't necessarily mean it runs X. It could just be using linux's memory management, file system, etc. code. I don't know how good of reviews it's getting, but I don't think you can really say that linux isn't ready.
    • Linux is a kernel. There is a JDK available for linux. (Actually, aren't there three? Just on x86 though.) Many of the little apps on cell phones are now written in some form of Java.

      Regardless, if you can get Linux to run on the device, there's no reason you can't write e-mail and calendar programs for a linux-based handheld or cellphone. You don't have to use X, either. There ARE other GUI options.

    • What "Linux on a PDA" needs is backing from a big vendor with plenty of cash to back it up.

      Like Motorola [linuxdevices.com] perhaps?

      I have no idea if Linux is better than Symbian for smart-phones, but it's clearly adequate, and technical issues aren't everything. Cost and politics play an important role. Phone vendors have seen what happened to the PC market and don't want to be owned by any software vendor - Microsoft or Nokia. Linux provides an alternative.

      I'd be really surpised in Linux doesn't take at least a 10%

      • the problem with linux on mobile phones is that in the current state it looks like you get the plus sides (for normal guys) on the symbian phones(6600,p800,3650,n-gage,sx1), not on the upcoming linux phones.

        I count a growing library of 3rd party independent developer software and free as in beer development tools that have access to most of the phones functions if so wished as those plus sides, currently it looks like you wont get that with motorolas or any others 'linux based' phone. they look like they'r

        • I'm not 100% sure, but I think most of the phone software is developed using Java APIs that should be cross-platform (at least in theory).

          But you're right, the fact that these phones run Linux/Symbian/Palm/MS is of no interest at all to the user. They're all locked down anyway.

          • j2me can be made to run pretty well on 'all' devices that support it if you don't rely on spesific apis.

            however compared to native symbian it's very limited in power(both in _what_ you can do and access, and of course on how fast you can do it).. ..but j2me is also much easier to pick up and 'safe' to install without knowing that the program isn't malware.
    • MOt disaggreees with your lack of facts dear fool..

      Their new handsets are runing linux oh foolish one

      When you want real knowledge about Mobile devices ask a real mobile device hacker or view my blog

    • Re:No, not yet. (Score:3, Informative)

      by demachina ( 71715 )
      Linux competing with Microsoft on the desktop is a whole different thing from Linux competing on devices. Microsoft has already won the desktop war so its a matter of defeating an entrenched monopoly which is really hard to do. They most definitely have not won anything in consumer electronics yet and Linux is still very much in the running so DON'T GIVE UP before the fights really even started.

      Linux, especially running Qt.Embedded and Qtopia, is a great platform and gaining an OK application base thanks
      • I have no problem with Linux on a PDA. I own a Zaurus sl-5500 but... It sucks... It's really bad as a PDA, the user interface badly needs massive amounts of work to make it as usable as the competition. The integrated applications badly need to be... well... integrated.

        e.g. The Symbian word processor supports embedding of objects from the other applications; sounds, images, spreadsheets, charts etc. It has a spell checker a thesaurus, styles, outline mode, templates.

        The Symbian spreadsheet uses workbooks,

    • Not yet -- but soon? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jpatokal ( 96361 ) *
      As the submitter of the article...

      What "Linux on a PDA" needs is backing from a big vendor with plenty of cash to back it up. The only way this is going to become a reality in a fast moving sector such as PDAs is to play in the big arena with the giants (Microsoft and Nokia).

      Yes, this is exactly what I meant. If a big phone company -- say, Siemens or Samsung -- wants to compete without licensing Symbian or whatever Microsoft's portable OS is called today, pretty much the only option (other that sluggi

    • You seem to be confused about what part of Linux is being ported.

      The equivalent of your idea is for Microsoft's phone OS to be able to run an unmodified version of Microsoft Word. Though perhaps interesting to a few people, it should be pretty obvious that this is unnecessary and probably undesirable for a phone, and is not what Micorsoft is going to do. This does not mean that they cannot reuse great amounts of code they have written for Windows.

      In the same way, a Linux phone that can run X might be inte

  • Psion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigBadBri ( 595126 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:06PM (#8227417)
    Anyone know what Psion are going to do now?

    Seems to me that now they're out of Symbian, they are a company w/out a product, since IIRC they announced that they were stopping making organisers a while back.

    • Re:Psion (Score:5, Informative)

      by ElGuapoGolf ( 600734 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:19PM (#8227589) Homepage
      Well, they do still make "industrial" portables, like the Netbook. Shame of that is, the Netbook now runs Windows Mobile (Windows CE, PocketPC, whatever it is now).

      It really is a loss, as my Psion (Revo+) is still the best organiser I have ever used. I bought a Sharp Zaurus because I was suckered in by the Linux angle, but it couldn't hold a candle to the Revo. And nobody seems to be releasing any Symbian based organisers anymore, which makes Palm the default next best choice.

      • And nobody seems to be releasing any Symbian based organisers anymore

        Your best bet for that would be a phone with organiser features included, like Nokia's 9190/9290. Or in case of a broken unit, leftover stock and used Revo/Makos on eBay.

        I tried a PalmOS unit but was disappointed that the third-party spreadsheets available for it couldn't handle the things I was doing (collecting and analysing data) with Psion's Sheet app.

      • Pretty much the same story here.

        The 9210/9290 is a Revo with more RAM, colour display, multimedia and integrated into a mobile phone. If you're happy with a Revo you will be completely comfortable with a 92X0.

        The keyboard isn't as nice, and no touch screen but otherwise it's spot on. It's Epoc version 6 rather than 5.

        It's what Psion *should* have been doing and it's the only PDA/smartphone worth using, especially for a business. Bit pricey but easily worth it.
    • Their product is the Netbook Pro, a version of their Netbook legtop (bigger than a palmtop, smaller than a laptop) that runs WinCE.
    • Basically, Teklogix [psionteklogix.com], which they bought in 2000 [bbc.co.uk], is all that's left. They make "industrial" handhelds. In a way, it represents Psion going back to their roots, but I am still somewhat sad that they didn't make more of their mainstream PDA business; I had a number of Psion PDAs, (Series 3, Revo) which in many ways were more functional than the PocketPC I'm using now.

  • Funny, when I first read the posting I had an image of women on their new humming pleasure phones [sybian.com]...One more place mobile phones probably don't belong.

    -AP

  • Says Symbian (Score:4, Insightful)

    by glesga_kiss ( 596639 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:07PM (#8227428)
    Symbian may be the more open of the two, but GPL it ain't - does Linux now have an edge?"

    Yeah, and follow the link and you see it's Symbians own webpage that says it's the better. Are peoples bullshit detectors broken when it comes to M$ competitors these days?

  • Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TJ_Phazerhacki ( 520002 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:08PM (#8227445) Journal
    Interesting. I have an n-gage, and don't think too highly of it. How long do you figure it'll be before you physically cannot buy a cell phone and service for calls only? No games, ringtones, just battery life and an address book? Too bad, I was liking this whole information revolution thing until I got lost in the middle of it.

    • Re:Wow... to tell the truth I want lots of stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adzoox ( 615327 ) * on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:15PM (#8227540) Journal
      To tell the truth I want lots of stuff:

      An address book that can sync with my computer

      A remote to change my TV/DVD/VCR

      A remote to cut on my house lights

      A calendar

      A few games to keep me occupied while waiting for a dinner reservation/girlfriend in the bathroom

      A presentation remote for my computer.

      A camera - great for emergencies - you always have your phone with you - you rarely have your digicam with you.

      A good MP3 player for trips

      The cool thing is that all that pretty much exists in the phone I have a Sony P800.

      I think the p800 and p900 will be the shift that Sony has already promised away from the Symbian OS and onto Palm (that is powerful enough to do all the above) BUT IT WILL TAKE A COLLABORATION WITH APPLE in my opinion to get the cell phone right. The only reason my phone is what it is now is because it synced to my Mac via Bluetooth.

      • *I think the p800 and p900 will be the shift that Sony has already promised away from the Symbian OS and onto Palm (that is powerful enough to do all the above) BUT IT WILL TAKE A COLLABORATION WITH APPLE in my opinion to get the cell phone right. The only reason my phone is what it is now is because it synced to my Mac via Bluetooth.*

        I'm not getting this,(presumably se) p800 and p900 are symbian 7.0 uiq based so where you getting with this them being the 'shift' onto palm?
    • Games aren't NECESSARY, but ringtones are. Because cell phones are so popular, you need a unique ringtone, or every time a cell phone rings, you'll be looking at yours.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)

      by enjo13 ( 444114 )
      For the foreseeable future, you will no trouble getting a 'phone only' phone.. There are still a lot of pieces to the wireless market (infrastructure, carriers, cell phone manufacturers at the highest levels)..

      Within a company like Nokia they have many phones in development at all times. Their strategy has always been to target individual phones and very precise markets. If you just want basic phone service, Nokia has a phone for you (not a Symbian phone). If you want more they can do that to.

      This works o
    • How long do you figure it'll be before you physically cannot buy a cell phone and service for calls only? No games, ringtones, just battery life and an address book?

      If the handset models with games and ringtones are selling for $9.99 apiece... does it even MATTER?

  • Good for Linux (Score:2, Insightful)

    by osullish ( 586626 )
    I think this is very good for Linux, Any manufacturers who are looking to develop any new handheld technology,but do not want to be tied to any corporation like MS and Nokia will opt for linux - and even though they have a large market share, Nokia aren't completly dominant in the Phone/Handheld market.

  • This *will* help M$ (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lonesometrainer ( 138112 ) <vanlil AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:12PM (#8227501)
    Siemens, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, et al (see former ownershop smybian [symbian.com]) are all ambitious mobile phone companies. They would be completely dependant on Nokia if they exclusively chose Symbian a.k.a. Nokia Series 60/70.

    Instead they'll expand their technological portfolio.

    Current situation: nearly no M$ smartphones (except some models from motorola), mostly symbian dominated market.

    Possible future situation: M$ *and* Symbian phones from Siemens, Samsung, ...

    Conclusion: M$ is the lucky winner.

    Damn.

  • What will Motorola do? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:13PM (#8227506) Homepage
    Motorola has at least one phone (a 3G phone, the A920 [mobilemag.com]) based on Symbian. I like it so far, the interface is pretty well done. But does this mean Nokia will soon be pushing Motorola away from that as well? Motorola's has released phones with their own OS, Symbian, Linux [slashdot.org], and one of microsoft's OS too, so I guess motorola has all sorts of alternatives.

  • Consumers usually choose the phone design...etc (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wongqc ( 555152 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:14PM (#8227527)
    Having used both types of handset before, I personally feel that the Symbian OS is more user friendly, and better. But ulimately, I believe consumers usually take more into consideration the phone design, weight, stylish factor....than the OS features. As much as I would love to buy a linux phone, it first has to appeal to me in terms of looks and design, and the easy availibility of third party apps.
  • That damn Symbian Liberation Army is the group that brainwashed Patty Hearst. Don't be their next victim!!

  • Shrewd Move (Score:4, Funny)

    by sbowles ( 602816 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:29PM (#8227708)
    1. Buy Symbian
    2. Force competition to either:
      • Pay for use of Symbian,
      • Use inferior M$ OS allowing Nokia to lead the "Feature War", or
      • Spend their R&D money developing their own OS putting them squarely behind the proverbial 8-ball.
    3. ????
    4. Profit!
    • Spend their R&D money developing their own OS putting them squarely behind the proverbial 8-ball.

      More likely:

      2. Force the remaining 76% of the worlds handset makers to coalese arounf the Linux kernel.

      3.????

      4. Loss

      Remember Nokia is view as the potential Great Satan by the balance of the makers. They will do almost anything to avoid MS' and Nokia's SW

      • Re:Shrewd Move (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sbowles ( 602816 )
        If the other makers go to a Linux based solution it is still going to take them time to rebuild what they have now, let alone putting in differentiating enhancements. This is either going to be done in isolation or as a collaborative effort (the former taking longer than the latter). If the solution ends up being Open, then Nokia may have the ability to pick and choose which ever of the 2 ends up being best.

        The other side of it is that Nokia may have development plans for the OS that they have no interest

  • Nokia Phones Bogged Down by American Monopolies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stuffduff ( 681819 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:33PM (#8227755) Journal
    FWIW Nokia has been light years ahead of the U.S. in cell phone technology for over a decade. Hell, just look at the Nokia Communicator [nokiausa.com]. This phone doubles as a pda (and has for several years!). Unfortunately the U.S. markets feel that there is no need for these kind of features so we get stuck with crap for web browsing phones and absolutly astronomical pricing for any data aware wireless devices. I think that this will bode well for Nokia, but we will not see the benifits until Amercian consumers realize that they have been getting second-class wireless data communications and decide to do something about it.

    Why can't we just accept a better product when it is already out there instead of having to wait for Microsoft to develop a 'new software tedchnology' and wait still longer for hardware vendors to use it and still end up with an inferior product.

    • Oh please. One of my co-workers actually bought one of those things about a year back. The damn thing is huge. Seriously, it's larger than the original analog AMPS cell phone I had ten years ago. It's an interesting technology demo, sure, but not something that any actual human being would want to cart around and use.

      I think he actually cried when I showed him my Treo 270. Then he bought one himself. :)
  • Last year, it was already obvious that Nokia (who controlled the Symbian UI) would become the primary vendor for Symbian itself.

    Motorola tried Microsoft, decided they did not like it, and started to build Linux phones.

    This is going to be a three way fight between Symbian, Linux, and Microsoft. My guess is that Symbian will win because it is a superb platform and Nokia have timed this move perfectly.

    Linux will beat Microsoft because anyone who is unwilling to pay the Nokia license fees for Symbian is unlikely to want to pay Microsoft either.

    But this does not really change things for firms like Samsung - they will probably be happy to ue a standardized UI and OS while also developing their Linux platform on the side.

    The big loser here is Microsoft, who might have fragmented a Symbian owned by several people, but are unlikely to score a good hit now.

  • So how does this affect Sony-Ericsson and UIQ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shadowj ( 534439 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:51PM (#8227968)
    Like Nokia, Sony-Ericsson uses Symbian on its top-of-the-line phones (P800 and P900), but they've slapped a completely different user interface called UIQ on them. UIQ is used by a couple of other vendors, too... Motorola and BenQ use it on a couple of their products.

    I own both a Nokia 3650 and a Sony-Ericsson P800 and I strongly prefer UIQ. Last I looked Nokia and Sony-Ericsson were competitors. Does this bode well for the future of Symbian/UIQ phones?

  • An edge? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @02:59PM (#8228090)
    does Linux now have an edge?

    Only if it's a superior OS in terms of compatability, usability, and cutting-edge features. Please remember that on the whole, consumers don't care which phone is more open from a codebase perspective, only whether it supports the features they want.

  • Porting Linux to Mobile Phones? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beeblebrox87 ( 234597 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMalexander.co.tz> on Monday February 09, 2004 @03:14PM (#8228303)
    It seems to me it would be Good Thing to be able to choose your phone hardware vendor seperately from what OS your phone would run. It would therefore be helpful to have a port of Linux running on Nokia phones, Sony phones, etc, so that users can choose to install Linux if they wish. The Linux kernel and gcc have already been ported to arm, which most of these phones use, so running Linux would seem to mostly be a matter of supporting I/O devices (GSM, screen, keypad, bluetooth, MMC, speaker, microphone, camera, etc). Are there any efforts currently to get Linux running on mobile phones that ship with Symbian or Windows by default? How proprietary is the hardware? Are there other open-source systems better-suited to this task?

    If a Linux for Phones distro was available I'd install it on my Nokia 6600 in a second. Symbian is just too limiting.
  • 1: Make fabulous PDAs which are years ahead of the competition.

    2: Don't tell anyone.

    3: Give up on the PDA business as a silly idea and give away the technology.

    4: ?????

    5: Profit.

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