I’ll be honest, this whole S60-Symbian thing has me a bit confused. Add to that Nokia’s Maemo 5 that’s coming up, and their recent oFono announcement, and it’s tough to tell what’s going on with Nokia, S60, Symbian, and Maemo. There was also recently a leaked screenshot of the next, next Maemo interface, apparently called ‘Harmattan’, which has created even more confusion.
Leave it to David Wood, over at Symbian, who we’ve interviewed recently, to clear things up quite nicely. You can read the full explanation over at the official Symbian blog here.
Basically, the fact that Nokia is exploring different platforms, including both Symbian and Maemo is apparently not cause for alarm, and is also apparently not indicative that Nokia might be phasing Symbian out. As David puts it, it’s kinda like if you live in an apartment building, and you notice that your neighbor has just taken out some insurance.
Of course you could freak out and assume that your neighbor knows something you don’t, or that they’re aware of some theivery plans. Or, you could just accept that your neighbor is taking measures to simply make sure they have a backup plan.
Sounds like a fair explanation to me. To be honest, I’m not the least bit excited about anything Maemo is working on. You may recall that I started Tablet-Guru.com a while back, and eventually put it on permanent hiatus, due to several things that I found wrong with the platform. The new hints on the Maemo 5 aren’t really thrilling me either, but it’s obviously too early to tell anything for sure. I’m still kind of sad that apparently S60, the brand, is going away, and it will just be called Symbian.
What do you think? Are you still confused by the whole thing, or does it all make sense now? Which do you prefer, S60/Symbian, or Maemo?
