S60 Open to new features

As I understand it, the break was forced by the move to Symbian OS 9, with the smartphone-on-a-chip thing, plus Platform Security, etc. The fact that S60 itself is a bit different is just Nokia taking advantage of the fac that binary compatibility was being broken anyway and changing a few things while they were at it.

Sony Ericsson have done a similar thing with UIQ 3. i.e. if you're going to break compatibiity, fix everything you can while you're there to save having to do it again in the future.

Steve Litchfield

That is a pretty funny post. Every taken a look at Windows Mobile? Makes Symbian and Palm look like the Apple II. Symbian dev tools are junk. PalmOS has not multitasking. Windows Mobile has MS tools everyone knows, good high level APIs, multitasking, a somewhat crappy UI, but that can be fixed easier than developing new tools for Symbian which no one is doing. Symbian is not selling well in the U.S. and Motorola just posted $1 billion in profits for the quarter. Symbian is a great OS in certain ways, but the various Series XX/UIQ, garbage development tools, useless and painful signing process, lack of U.S. market share, are serious handicaps. So yeah, binary incompatibility was a bad decision on top of quite a few.

Full agree with Jake Peterson. No such good idea to break binary compatibility and to hide some important APIs under signing process. May be Nokia will be released new smartphone platform, based on Linux for example? Thats full explain new Symbian platform security issues, new stupid signing and testing process etc. because of shifting S60 to PHONE, NOT SMARTPHONE market.

Steve, I think you got it right :)

I think the binary break while annoying to a degree to an end user like me at present it's only for a short while. All the popular apps are being ported or have already been ported and once that process is over everyone will forget about the break.

However I do think it's a good thing. The new security saves Symbian based phones from virus problems before they ever really started. You can no longer get a virus over bluetooth that is capable of sending off 100's of texts to reverse charge numbers without you knowing it. A virus like this doesn't exist that I know of for a mobile platform but now on S60 3.0 and UIQ 3.0 it's not possible. On Windows Mobile it is more than possible.

Windows Mobile if they don't take the same steps with be no different from desktop Windows, requiring you to run antivirus, antispyware, etc, etc.

Also Symbian apps can no longer be as easily pirated because modifying the code will result in the signing process breaking so it should mean higher sales hopefully for the devs and hence greater reason to write more apps.

Maybe Symbian needs work on the dev tools but as far as I can see they have been making a lot of effort on them. Windows Mobile needs a lot of work on it's core OS, it's slow and crash prone.

No platform is perfect anyway.
Binary break in Symbian OS has happened for a good reason.
Let's concentrate on the future... we have to keep compatibility from this point of time, including in the next S60 4st Edition or 5th Edition... :)

Steve: spot on!

Jake: I have taken a look at Windows Mobile, many times actually. You have some valid points, but for various reasons I'm still placing my bets on S60 :)

James B: really good points.

Everybody: thank you. Receiving this kind of comments is one of the reasons I love writing a blog. It's just like Confused of Calcutta put it: "Part of why I blog is to articulate nascent thoughts and opensource them in order to improve them."
http://www.confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/03/31/four-pillars-identity-please-flame-this-post/

Jake: "developing new tools for Symbian which no one is doing"

You probably missed Tommi's earlier post about some interesting new blogs, one of them is:
http://blogs.s60.com/creatingcarbidecpp/

I recommend everyone check that one out, especially if you are interested in the future development tools in Symbian/S60 area.

Having developed across all 3 platforms PalmOS, Symbian, and WM, the latter is the easiest. Sure it's Windows and people love to hate it. However it will win in the U.S. which is nothing to sneeze at. Symbian will win around the rest of the world. That being said, open platforms win, and the new signing process destroys any openness on the Symbian platform going forward. At least given the current bureaucracy involved. Which it seems sometimes involves Nokia directly approving the application? The other thing we've noticed about Symbian is the inconsistent implementaiton of APIs requiring workarounds across each model of phone. This is something a more disciplined software company would strictly prevent. I personally don't mind the inane barriers to entry, however eventually when smartphones become mass market (like the PC) the platform with the least choke hold may well win.

Having developed across all 3 platforms PalmOS, Symbian, and WM, the latter is the easiest. Sure it's Windows and people love to hate it. However it will win in the U.S. which is nothing to sneeze at. Symbian will win around the rest of the world. That being said, open platforms win, and the new signing process destroys any openness on the Symbian platform going forward. At least given the current bureaucracy involved. Which it seems sometimes involves Nokia directly approving the application? The other thing we've noticed about Symbian is the inconsistent implementaiton of APIs requiring workarounds across each model of phone. This is something a more disciplined software company would strictly prevent. I personally don't mind the inane barriers to entry, however eventually when smartphones become mass market (like the PC) the platform with the least choke hold may well win.

I'm thinking Nokia and Symbian played a bad joke here.Compatibility is compromise?Yeah!But if you'll take a look on PC history... well, my powerful 2-core 64 bit AMD processor still can execute plain old dos apps which were happy on i80286 if I need it.Therefore saving my investments into software.And WinXP still can run [at least some] DOS and Win 3.x apps, saving my investments too.Nokia is not a case.You're completely depend here on developers and their politics.If some project abandoned, you have to suck.If some dev's will decide to charge moneys for upgrade, because porting and re-compiling IS A WORK you'll have to either pay SECOND time for same SW or suck.And finally, platform security f**ks up cheap or free\opensource developers.Now free and cheap apps can not be fully-featured.Let's prove it!There was good open source player, Symbian OGG Player which used MMF framework of S60 2nd ED and installed it's own decoder plug-in so I can use my favorite OGG files everywhere.I.e. my 6681 phone recognizes OGG files as ringtones, etc.Now, what will be in S60 3rd ED?It will not load plug in because free certificate lacks required permissions, so players will not load decoder DLL anymore snice it has fewer rights.So... I will be unable to set up my favorite OGG files as ringtones on S60 3rd ED for free."Thanks" to your damned security.As for me I would prefer if OS pretending to be secure will just ask me "Security warnung: application X is about to install sound plugin Y.Only allow this if you're installing some codec\player!Othervice it could be malicious app!".And sad thing: nothing will save platform from human stupidity.Except users education.There was story when JAVA appllet was a trojan horse and sended dozens of SMS to expensive number.How do you expect to protect from it?So, actually, I'm not willing to move to S60 3rd ed and will not recommend my friends to do so.I'm fine with 2nd Ed, sorry.It does not f%%ks my brain with stupid security and there is lots of apps.So I do not need to buy expensive apps (does someone expects developers will cover certificates costs from their own pockets?I'm not!). So if you'll continue in this way I'm better about to take a look on PDAs, etc.These are much more powerful, do not restricting use of free software and a way better compatible between versions.

And well, there were tools to create Symbian apps under Linux.Now, what about it?I'm persoally do not like Windows and do not like Carbite.Greetings to great Nokia and Symbian guys who managed to get really annoying dudes and cause major headaches to both users and dev's (sum these headaches for power users who is coding sometimes).