Nokia Admits To Pushing Symbian Away From The High End

I, for one, welcome our new Maemo-powered overlords.

I, a long time Symbian user, welcome this change and am looking forward to getting my N900. Will Maemo solve all of the problems? No. But after the N97 fiasco Nokia can’t do much worse, can they?

Symbian in its’ current 5th edition form just isn’t for me. Symbian was great in the past but has simply gotten stale in my opinion. Out of all the Symbian phones I have owned beginning with the circular keypaded 3650 I can honestly say the N97 is not much better.

Bring on Maemo!

Symbian has been dying a slow and painful death for years, so this was inevitable. I just have to wonder if it’s too little, too late.

Nokia has surely planned to replace Symbian with Maemo for a long time – probably since the first internet tablets – but things have changed drastically in the market. I like Maemo, I really do, but in this day and age what advantages does it really provide over Android?

I can’t help but feel that Nokia is living in its own world, blindly following internal roadmaps without an eye to the rapidly changing marketplace. 5 years ago, Maemo must have looked like the future. But now, it just looks like the past.

It’s Nokia’s last gasp to try and remain the ‘platform’ vendor, the same way Apple is, and to provide both the software and the hardware. I think it’s a fool’s erand. Nokia makes damn good phones, but as long as they’re shackled by Symbian (and, going forward, Maemo) they’re going to struggle to remain relevant.

I saw it coming. Maybe that’s why the N-series team put such bad hardware on N97 when compared against the N900.
Symbian is still a stable and great mobile OS but it needs decent hardware from Nokia to make it look good.

I think that Nokia should divide their smartphone lineup into 2 parts.
For touchscreen phones they should use Maemo and for the keypad operated phones they should use the S60 platform.

I have no firm loyalty to Symbian, nor do I have the loyalty to the Nseries phones that I had while I used the N95. My current plan is to use the N97 (which is passably usable with the v. 20 firmware update) for about a year, and see how the n900 does. I am interested in it, but I am gun-shy after the fiasco with the N97.

First off, this is a different Ravi than the one above. :)

All I have to say is, I’m amazed that people would actually buy the N900 after being fully aware of the N97 fiasco. The problem with the N97 was NEVER that it was Symbian based. The problem was Nokia’s support of their own “flagship” product that used a brand new interface. OK, so they replace it with another flagship product that uses a brand new interface, and you think everything is gonna be suddenly better?

Nokia has a great strategy for the year 2015 with their “The Way We Live Next” expo. However, they have no strategy for all the years until then. So ok, if that’s how they want to play it, their customers will go ahead and buy smartphones of other platforms (ie Android) until 2015. Let’s see how well Nokia does selling only entry-level phones for the next 5 years.

I’m done with nokia. I’m quitting symbian. From crappy updates that break functionality (think e71/e63′s broken equaliser in the music player) to crappy expensive software, I frankly don’t see how nokia can even be a relevant choice anymore

Mind you, i’m not trolling around. I’m still stuck on my nokia for now. But whenever I look at my friends using a 1st gen iphone that got free massive updates 2 years running, or this other guy who just got sense UI on his HTC magic, I start wondering if I’ve been played like a chump by nokia.

If nokia has no interest in me as an after-sales customer, I’ll take that message. I’ve had enough.

I can’t belive what I read.
I can’t belive that Nokia will completely abandon Symbian since
Symbian is an active project and not a dead one.

[...] un sistema operativo ben più prestante e più adatto alle piattaforme più nuove. Dunque, come spiega anche Symbian Guru nel tentativo di rassicurare gli appassionati, avverranno dei prevedibili e più [...]

Where’s option “3: Other”? I said earlier I wanted Android and I still mean it. Nokia can fragment their product line into oblivion. It doesn’t matter.

nokia have dropped the ball and maemo on the N900 (and whatever devices they release after xmas) will not get it back … they have absolutely terrible software for PC’s (nothing for macs and linux) that makes you wish you hadn’t bothered

i still cannot update the firmware on my N86 using Windows 7 because the software keeps crapping out

the N810 still does not have a usable email client

they release far too soon before the firmware is remotely ready and then move on to the next launch to generate some more short term profits

they are sliding into irrelevance and i for one think they deserve it … my next handset will be an android device because whilst it isn’t perfect it is getting better and it is getting regular updates

after $2000+ on nokia in the last 3yrs i say no more and bye bye

Hi Folks,

Just to reaffirm what my Maemo colleague said that slowly Nokia will move N-series to Maemo. We need to remember that N-Series was always targetted at true mobile computing. Symbian OS within Symbian Devices at Nokia is aiming squarely at the smartphone market (which is moving down towards feature phone space too). The future for Symbian within Nokia looks very positive and as Symbian Devices we are tasked with contributing to the Symbian Foundation. So hopefully others in Symbian ecosystem can also benefit.

I can only apologies for some of the mistakes we have made in Nokia with Symbian OS. However, I can honestly say we do have a very clear strategy, and know where we need to go. Everything we are doing is heavily tied to consumer experience.

Many of the points raised here we are painfully aware of, and we feel them very much within the organisation. We are doing all we can to address them, some of those things will become very visible in 2010.

I am really excited about what we are doing and hopefully when you see them you will be too! So the message is don’t give up on Symbian and Nokia.

Cheers,

Kevin

A case of left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_answers_back_symbian_stays_so_does_maemo-news-1271.php