A couple of days back, we told you that Nokia will be changing to MeeGo based phones for the Nseries of devices from N9 onwards. This is not something unexpected from Nokia, considering Symbian had been under fire for being an old looking OS.
Symbian was hived of into a separate entity, by Nokia in 2008 and named the Symbian Foundation, tasked with creating a newer, better more robust Symbian. now, exactly two years later, Nokia decided to drop Symbian from its Nseries line up of devices. let’s understand why this has happened.
The Nseries has been under fire for quite some time now, primarily for not being able to showcase the technological brilliance of Nokia in terms of features, software, etc. With rivals like Apple, Samsung and HTC making tremendous headway into the touchscreen category, Nokia unfortunately has been forced to play catch up.Adopting resistive screen technology, implementing S60 5th edition – which does look like something adapted, rather than created specifically for touchscreen devices; and a bad set of hardware meant that Nokia could never really challenge the new favourites.
The S60 5th edition despite being a good OS, suffered from quite a lot of issues and never really delivered on the user experience front. The N97 and the N97mini hastened this process and to be honest it is only after the X6 launch, that this process might have slowed down a bit. But the fact remains that the X6 came in a little too late to help Symbian and Nokia in general. Having to face a lot of flack for being behind the times in the tech domain – Nokia responded with a slew of devices, with one in particular slated to be their flagship device, the N8. The N8 is the first Symbian^3 device from Nokia and now, the last in the Nseries family. Symbian^3 is a functionally complete OS, something that the Symbian Foundation had stated a while back. While the new iteration visually looks similar, if not same as the S60 5th edition, it seems that there has been a lot of work put into the new OS.
It is important for the Finnish giant to take care of its devices in order to compete against its rivals: from South Korea the Samsung Wave has just been released, running on a brand new platform, Bada. Most devices in this article should be available at Phones4u.
A look at the video put up by Michael Hell on Fonearena, gives us a glimpse of what the new OS can do:
So what does this transition mean.
Symbian per-se will not be dropped off from the rest of the line up, this something we all know. Having matured, this OS will still continue to serve on the Cseries, the Xseries and the successful Eseries. The non touch version of Symbian that does duty on many Nokia devices still continues to be one of the best OSes on non-touch phones and there is little doubt in that. It does need a few new features and some advancements, but rest assured it will remain a mainstay for Nokia’s QWERTY, and non-touch devices. the touchscreen devices will continue using the S60 5th edition (aka S^1), while the future devices will migrate to the newer S^3 platform. This will allow Nokia to bring down the cost of it’s smartphone and thereby build up volume and turnover.
What it means to you: Symbian is not being dropped completely by Nokia, it is being expanded. Look forward to many new exciting (Symbian)smart-phones at unbelievable price points and with the right features.
MeeGo, the OS being developed jointly by Intel and Nokia will become the mainstay for high-end Nokia devices and Nseries in general. MeeGo will be primarily provided on devices that will provide a much more PC like internet experience, it will be more tuned towards doing more with a ‘phone’. MeeGo is also likely to use next generation mobile phone technology, meaning faster processors, bigger screens with better resolutions, etc. This platform will also allow Nokia to integrate Ovi much better and also expand their lineup of products. This means an iPadesque device from Nokia, netbooks and what not.
What it means to you: MeeGo will be the new OS for your next Nokia mobile-computers/smart-phone. Better features, better user experience and definitely more than just a ‘phone’. Phones that will be comparable to an Apple in user experience and better than it in terms of features. Look out for those Snapdragon devices from Nokia!
Symbian S^4 will bring about the evolution of S^3, meaning faster, more functional, better Eseries, Xseries and Cseries devices. Who knows maybe the Sseries are the S^4 devices? S^4 will definitely change the landscape and consolidate Nokia’s offering and allow it to better develop products. It’s safe to assume at this point that MeeGo will the weapon of choice to bridge the divide between hand-held devices and PCs as such. While Symbian based devices will be pure smart-phones, engineered and developed to serve as phones that can do that little bit extra.
What it means to you: S^4 will represent the next generation of smart-phones. A more user-friendly UI, better feature set, better hardware and a better Nokia smart-phone to have. It will be a true touchscreen specific OS from Symbian.
All in all, the coming few years will be exciting for Nokia, Symbian and MeeGo. As consumers it will be an even better time for us. We will see better software complimented with great hardware, more features and overall, a better experience of owning a device. Nokia definitely is banking big time on this strategy as it’s quite in line with how convergence is taking place.
If you have any comments, opinions or would like to add to this, please leave your comments below.
For a in-depth read on why Nseries is headed there, I strongly recommend you read Rafe Blandford’s brilliant article titled, The changing shape of Nseries – no scaremongering, just the facts.