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Symbian, the Biggest Mobile OS No One Talks About

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-death-grip-or-kill-switch-stories dept.

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.'"

7 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Symbian is a goner by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't Nokia moving to MeeGo for their premier phones? Even the guy who runs a big Symbian fan site has given up.

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    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    1. Re:Symbian is a goner by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      SymbianS60v3 and S60v5 (also known as Symbian^1) still powers pretty much all nokia's touch screen phones, which alone sell more then android and iphone combined.
      Symbian^2 is fairly popular in Japan, due to its extremely low system requirements (same as ^1 really), and some specialized features.
      Symbian^3 which is being developed for n8 seems to be the natural evolution of Symbian^1, i.e. mid range smart phone OS.

      The problem is that unlike android and iphone, these phones are very competitively priced, and sacrifice "bling" features for actual function, such as better features, lower price and business-directed application support. As a result, there's many fewer people with "loose money" who are willing to sink a few euros/dollars/etc into some funny looking application on a weekly basis. They also tend to look much less pretty, focusing on function, and have slower hardware, meaning less responsive UI, which is advertised as a major feature on IOS and android.

      This is really noticeable even on OVI store. Almost no games, but a shitload of various business-oriented and rather expensive applications ranging from call recorders to improved ms exchange handling to translation software. This stuff just doesn't sell to the young adult croud. Add to that the fact that much of smartphone hype is US-driven, and Symbian being big pretty much everywhere in the world but the US, you get the perfect storm scenario where little players on the market completely outshine the real behemoth in marketing and publicity.

  2. The real reason nobody talks about Symbian.. by multipartmixed · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...is they keep forgetting if it's Symbian or Sybian that's "work safe"

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    Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
  3. It isn't ignored by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is actively despised.

  4. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is not a goner as an OS for mobile phones. It is a goner as a major platform for 3rd party apps and games on mobile smart phones. People who are interested in downloading and running lots of apps and games, probably own a droid, a nexus one or an iPhone. People who just use their phones as... hmmmm... phones, and don't give a shit about apps, are probably the biggest chunk of Symbian's market share.

  5. Re:It's just not American by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  6. Symbian sure try hard to prevent you developing! by pslam · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.