Symbian, the Biggest Mobile OS No One Talks About

blackbearnh writes "The iPhone vs. Android wars are in full swing, but no one talks about the mobile operating system that most of the world uses: Symbian. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that the Symbian developer infrastructure is so different from the Wild West approach that Apple and Google take. Over at O'Reilly Answers, Paul Beusterien, who is the Head of Developer Tools for the Symbian Foundation, talks about why Symbian gets ignored as a platform despite the huge number of handsets it runs on. Quoting: 'Another dimension is the type of developer community. [Historically, Symbian's type of developers] were working for consulting houses or working at phone operator places or specifically doing consulting jobs for enterprise customers who wanted mobile apps. So there's a set of consulting companies around the world that have specialized in creating apps for Symbian devices. It's a different kind of dynamic than where iPhone has really been successful at attracting just the hobbyist, or the one- or two-person company, or the person who just wants to go onto the web and start developing.'"

Comments

Re:It's just not American

[IamTheRealMike]

As a Brit living in Switzerland, I disagree. Nobody cares about Symbian in Europe either.

Symbian sure try hard to prevent you developing!

[pslam]

It's been a year or so since I last used Symbian (thank science) but it struck me at the time just how much crap they put in the way of you actually developing apps.

Take this quite normal scenario: You need an extra engineer on cell phone app development. You need them to install an environment and be productive as soon as possible. Here's what happens with Android:

• Google search for 'android sdk'. Download SDK after 1-2 click-thrus. A few minutes to download and install
• Run emulator (nod in appreciation how easy that was).
• Read instructions for favorite editor plugin (e.g eclipse), setup. Compile and run 'Hello World' app.
• 'Enable untrusted sources' on real device, couple of setup things, running Hello World on cell phone
• Be productive within 1 hour.

iPhone is much the same plus some sign-ups:

• Google search / go to apple.com, search. Get a developer account (quick verification). A few minutes to download and install
• Run Xcode. Use app generator tool, run in emulator (nod).
• Get signing key for real device (automated, few minutes). Select iPhone target, recompile, run with device connected, works on cell phone
• Be productive within 1 hour.

Here's Symbian/Nokia's idea of Getting Started:

• Google search for 'symbian sdk'. Ok there's like 3 versions depending on which device, all incompatible.
• Download appropriate version. 3 times: x86 simulator, arm emulator, arm target. Dick around with moving them into fixed locations on C:
• Download 10 patches for various compiler bugs. Manually move patches in place and run scripts.
• Find the bundled IDE is unusably shit and revert to your own editor. Dick around with poorly documented build systems and eventually get something compiled.
• Find you can't even run the simulator without a signing key (WTF). Apply for a developer key. Find that this is a Web 0.5 experience and imagine some Norwegian dude is sorting these by hand.
• HOURS LATER you finally run the simulator and find it doesn't work because of an obscure missing CFLAG.
• You then try it on a real Symbian device. Oh, you need another signing key. Some hours (took me 24 hours) later you have that.
• Swear in frustration as the build system fails to switch simply to ARM target on real device.
• Be productive within 1 week.

Pardon my English, but that's not how to make a fucking SDK. I will refrain from talking about the daily experience of coding for Symbian, because I may start using a lot of profanity.