Anyone who had their hopes set on the death of Symbian following Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft is going to be sorely disappointed with the Finnish handset makers announcement of not only two new Symbian smartphones, but an updated version of Symbian as well.
Overnight Nokia announced the E6 and X7 Symbian-based smartphones, with the former targeted to business users and the latter a consumer phone. As per usual with Nokia smartphones, the hardware is well designed, gorgeous to look at and almost definitely comfortable to use. But also as per usual with Nokia smartphones, they both run Symbian, although these particular models will run the updated “Anna” version of the mobile OS.
Among the features that make this latest version of Symbian noteworthy are new icons, improved touchscreen text input, a new browser and a refreshed Ovi Maps application. None of which truly deals with the biggest problem with Symbian as a smartphone OS.
Then of course there’s the question of why anybody would buy a Symbian Nokia smartphone that will be obsolete within 12 months when the company shifts to Windows Phone 7. Obviously the company still has its roadmap and has to release products before the Windows Phone model hit the market, but it’s still an issue worth looking at.
Both phones are set to land in Australia Q3 this year, with more precise details to come closer to release date.
[Nokia]
dawdle
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:51 PM*snooze* Why bother?
Nokia’s internal hardware & software engineers are constantly struggling to perform against each other :\
hugh
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:56 PMWho Said anything about wanting Symbian dead. i think Elop’s call about nokia going to WP7 was just a ploy to hurry up the Symbian and MeeGo developers. Ovi is growing quickly with new quality apps all the time. Every day im amazed by by my n8 i can process images faster than on my 2007 mac book pro while. Symbian is just better than WP7 and these updates make it better again. I just hope they have a much smooth update process than the pr1.1/pr1.2 updates
Richard Djordjevic
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 6:05 PMHow will sending the message to developers that Symbian is a dead end platform and they are moving to WP7 going to entice the speed up of Symbian developers?
Ross
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 3:41 PMSome times you just have to scrap somthing to creat somthing new.
Symbian is dead, iOS and Andriod will dominate the market just like iPod killed Walkman.
This is the truth and there is no arguing.
Watch E7 review, crap cpu, crap screen, slow os but nice design.
Jamie Borg
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:21 PMI…….. disagree
Terence D
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:45 PMI don’t disagree.
Symbian is dead and Nokia is a fool for not jumping on the Android bandwagon. Nokia’s amazing hardware coupled with Android’s robust OS would have made a killer combination. Instead they’ve saddled themselves with WP7.
Sorry Nokia, it was a great ride while it lasted. I’m jumping into bed with HTC or Samsung or anyone using the Android OS.
Greg
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 5:28 PMDear god WHY!?!?!? All the Symbian engineers should be repurposed or made redundant. There is no market for Symbian anymore.
John Popovski
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 7:19 PMNo market for Symbian?? Not all of us need or even care about mobile technolgy that relies on dual core processors and 1mb of RAM with accelerated graphics capabilities. Most people use their mobile phone to :
1.make calls,
2.check e-mails,
3.Send a text message
4.casual web browsing such as facebook, twitter or internet banking
I agree that Nokia need to re-evaluate their offerings at the top end of the smartphone market, but bending over and copping it sweet from Google is not the answer. I suppose this is why they’ve decided to produce phones based on Windows Mobile.
From a consumer’s perspective, Nokia devices running on the Windows platform won’t be ready for another 12 months, which is basically the life of a smartphone nowadays (don’t confuse this with people who buy feature phones, since they tend to keep their handset for 2-3 years). Although the practice of changing your phone every 12 months may appear ridiculous, this is the sad reality software developers like android has created.
Nokia have made the right decision going with Microsoft instead of Google, because ultimately a move to android would have seen the demise of its world class navigational capabilities as well as a significant deterioration overall smartphone capability.
Simon
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 8:46 AMFor Nokia to really sell these handsets they will need to set a price point that is nowhere near that of the high-end smartphones (eg iPhone, HTC flagship phones). Overpricing the handsets will be the killer.
Greg
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 2:15 PMWhen a large proportion of phones sold these days are smartphones, I think your understanding of what most people use their phone for is a little dated.
Symbian is/was always a joke. There is nobody who could possibly justify its existence any longer.