With QT bridging the gap between MeeGo and Symbian, a two-OS approach should give Nokia the breadth they need to tackle the high-end whilst still catering for their other market sectors. Symbian is still an amazingly light, mature and stable piece of software - and MeeGo is a beautiful example of Open Source gone right (with a rich heritage). With their in-depth knowledge and far-reaching links in the mobile hardware space, that adds up to a pretty hot set of cards for Nokia.
Of course, none of this precludes success - we'll have to wait and see I guess..
@darkshine All correct but that was true 2 years ago too and Nokia still dozed off the TS-boom. And with Meego still far from being ready that will drive many more to Android&Co. The N900 was great but the only one of its kind and the N8 will be about the same kind of thing. That's driving away people who look for some kind of long term vision.
@Geozec Untrue. Two years ago Nokia didn't have anything to compete on the high-end - particularly touchscreen devices, where they just didn't have an interface. Until they bought Trolltech they didn't have the technology to effectively develop two interfaces with application cross-compatibility, and it took Maemo to teach Nokia about the virtues of Open Source.
@nk The UIs will probably be similar (like Symbian S60 and Nokia S40 resemble each other, even though they're not the same OS), but you can't just slap an X11 Desktop Environment onto another OS - it doesn't work like that.
@darkshine I didnt mean that they do good old copy/paste, just to make it look alike, cuz UI that Symbian has atm is its bigest problem, its just 2 ugly even the new Symbian^3 and you just cant ignore the design today its what sells the device most of the time, not many ppl care about Symbian being the most mature OS of today, they just want a good looking device/UI so by making it soo everybody wins, consumers get nice looking product -> Nokia sells more devices -> more developers start making apps more it -> advanced users get more spread platforme, its easy as that
@nk No, pretty UIs are what the gadget obsessed 'power users' want. Everyone else wants a solid OS, because it's a phone - and people like their phones to 'just work' ;)
You must remember that what you call an ugly OS, most of my non-techie friends just call 'functional'. It makes calls, sends texts, handles email and you can download the occasional fart app, and that's all they want from a phone ;)
@darkshine I just don't see a 2 OS approach working at all. Right now the 3rd party apps make or break the success of the mobile device. We have active growth in iOS and Android. Likely MS will be able to get some initial support for WP7 and HP will try and resuscitate WebOS as well. Now your saying trying to push 2 more from a single company is a good approach? It seems to me like that method will never attract 3rd party developers to either OS and both would fail. Nokia needs to go back to basics and understand they are first and foremost a hardware company and pick an OS based on success in that core business.
@darkshine I know what you're saying but they are not giving these away for free, keep that in mind as well, so being functional is not the only thing that this things need to be in order for ppl to spill out 500$+ sms, calls, email and some apps are the things that every today phone has (exept iPhone 4 that cant make calls or keep them anyways) so aesthetics plays a great rolle in all this
Thanks to Qt the same applications run on both OS's so developers only need to write a app once, and reach 47% of all smartphones. And because Symbian is so much lighter than MeeGo it will run on low to mid end devices as well, meaning that there will be even more devices that are able to run said apps. If anything, thanks to this the two OS's will make developement in Qt even more attractive.
@JonE I'm hoping that it works out that way for everyone involved - and I'd love to see QT take off in the mobile realm and bring some of that back to the desktop/KDE. This could be great IF Nokia has a solid longterm vision and is willing to go the distance. Unfortunately, we've watched as they've dumped various forms of Maemo and Symbian - one reason why it doesn't seem likely that the two platform model is going to work. I dig nokia hardware and parts of their approach to open source. I'd be really happy if they proved me wrong.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1, much like its Limited Edition sibling that we reviewed last month, is ever-so-slightly thinner than the iPad 2, a slate that most sane individuals (and competitors, for that matter) would confess is the market leader today.
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With QT bridging the gap between MeeGo and Symbian, a two-OS approach should give Nokia the breadth they need to tackle the high-end whilst still catering for their other market sectors. Symbian is still an amazingly light, mature and stable piece of software - and MeeGo is a beautiful example of Open Source gone right (with a rich heritage). With their in-depth knowledge and far-reaching links in the mobile hardware space, that adds up to a pretty hot set of cards for Nokia.
Of course, none of this precludes success - we'll have to wait and see I guess..
@darkshine
All correct but that was true 2 years ago too and Nokia still dozed off the TS-boom. And with Meego still far from being ready that will drive many more to Android&Co.
The N900 was great but the only one of its kind and the N8 will be about the same kind of thing. That's driving away people who look for some kind of long term vision.
@Geozec Untrue. Two years ago Nokia didn't have anything to compete on the high-end - particularly touchscreen devices, where they just didn't have an interface. Until they bought Trolltech they didn't have the technology to effectively develop two interfaces with application cross-compatibility, and it took Maemo to teach Nokia about the virtues of Open Source.
@darkshine
Personaly I think that they need to put MeeGo UI on Symbian3 and call it a day.
@nk The UIs will probably be similar (like Symbian S60 and Nokia S40 resemble each other, even though they're not the same OS), but you can't just slap an X11 Desktop Environment onto another OS - it doesn't work like that.
@darkshine I didnt mean that they do good old copy/paste, just to make it look alike, cuz UI that Symbian has atm is its bigest problem, its just 2 ugly even the new Symbian^3 and you just cant ignore the design today its what sells the device most of the time, not many ppl care about Symbian being the most mature OS of today, they just want a good looking device/UI so by making it soo everybody wins, consumers get nice looking product -> Nokia sells more devices -> more developers start making apps more it -> advanced users get more spread platforme, its easy as that
@nk No, pretty UIs are what the gadget obsessed 'power users' want. Everyone else wants a solid OS, because it's a phone - and people like their phones to 'just work' ;)
You must remember that what you call an ugly OS, most of my non-techie friends just call 'functional'. It makes calls, sends texts, handles email and you can download the occasional fart app, and that's all they want from a phone ;)
@darkshine I just don't see a 2 OS approach working at all. Right now the 3rd party apps make or break the success of the mobile device. We have active growth in iOS and Android. Likely MS will be able to get some initial support for WP7 and HP will try and resuscitate WebOS as well. Now your saying trying to push 2 more from a single company is a good approach? It seems to me like that method will never attract 3rd party developers to either OS and both would fail. Nokia needs to go back to basics and understand they are first and foremost a hardware company and pick an OS based on success in that core business.
@darkshine I know what you're saying but they are not giving these away for free, keep that in mind as well, so being functional is not the only thing that this things need to be in order for ppl to spill out 500$+
sms, calls, email and some apps are the things that every today phone has (exept iPhone 4 that cant make calls or keep them anyways)
so aesthetics plays a great rolle in all this
@Geozec since u guys change phone every 6month im not sure long term vision is in order to be honest
@keith524 Dood. It's one development platform. That's the whole point of QT.
@keith524
Thanks to Qt the same applications run on both OS's so developers only need to write a app once, and reach 47% of all smartphones. And because Symbian is so much lighter than MeeGo it will run on low to mid end devices as well, meaning that there will be even more devices that are able to run said apps. If anything, thanks to this the two OS's will make developement in Qt even more attractive.
@JonE I'm hoping that it works out that way for everyone involved - and I'd love to see QT take off in the mobile realm and bring some of that back to the desktop/KDE. This could be great IF Nokia has a solid longterm vision and is willing to go the distance. Unfortunately, we've watched as they've dumped various forms of Maemo and Symbian - one reason why it doesn't seem likely that the two platform model is going to work. I dig nokia hardware and parts of their approach to open source. I'd be really happy if they proved me wrong.