Hi everyone, my name is Joe Neale and I’m Head of End User Programmes for the Symbian Foundation, which involves striving to find the most entertaining applications, ideas and engagement events for our community.
I have a passion for the development of online communities, mobile and technology so please feel free to say hi and tell me what you are working on or passionate about at one of the many networking events or conferences I attend, I won’t bite. I am also an avid tweeter and am always up for meeting interesting and innovative people with great ideas, so send me a message to @Joe if you are that way inclined!
With all the different Symbian devices available on the market and exciting new ones such as the Sony Satio being released all the time, questions are bound to pop up from time to time about how to do certain things on your phone. To help gather all of the questions from within our community in one “official” place we have set up a support area on the ever popular Get Satisfaction site.
Expect Symbian enthusiasts, volunteers and employees alike to help you find solutions to problems you may be experiencing with your handsets in a friendly and courteous fashion. I for one would love to see those people out there who are keen to help our support community grow and prosper, so anyone keen to help us answer questions would be more than welcome to. If you feel you have extensive knowledge and passion for our platform or one of our devices and would like play a more active and official role in the site as it grows, so please feel free to send us a tweet to our @symbian account and we will be in touch.
Thanks a lot and we hope the service is of use to you!
Hi,
I currently have a Samsung i8910HD and I have to say that I am very dissatisfied with it. It is a great piece of hardware but I feel that the software is letting it down. Trying to find good apps for it is such a pain that it’s not even worth the effort. There aren’t a lot apps out there to begin and the few that exists are scattered around the internet. Don’t get me started on Symbian Signed.
Firmware upgrades is also another problem. Features and fixes are only released when the manufacturer can be bothered. I believe Nokia recently released an update for their phones which enables kinetic scrolling but I don’t have any hopes of that ever being available for my phone. Symbian seems to be to be very disjointed and fragmented. All this had led to a disillusionment with Symbian.
There seems to be a some movement in the Symbian community recently but I feel it’s too little too late. Just read some news that Samsung will drop Symbian OS in 2010. It is very difficult for me to see myself ever buying another Symbian device again because of the current state of affairs.
I8910, hello!
Your concern(s) have actually been discussed many times and they could be great additions to the “Consumer Satisfaction” service of Symbian Foundation. But please keep in mind something…
When you purchase a Symbian device you get a smartphone which does certain things according to the version of OS its sports and the wishes of the respective manufacturer. I don’t believe there is a technical reason why Samsung shouldn’t or wouldn’t update the firmware of its flagship Symbian smartphone, as Nokia does with the N97 every now and then.
That said, please don’t shoot the pianist. Its not Symbian’s fault that manufacturers develop devices and then leave much to be desired as far as support goes. As for the apps, there are many many applications that are Symbian-compatible. What have you been searching exactly?
Last but not least, the i8910 might have its shortcomings but it is still one hell of a device as far as the whole packet goes. Enjoy the fabulous screen and the high-quality camera and play with the Symbian^1 OS which is very stable and battery-friendly.
Hello again,
I agree it is partly the manufacturers fault but it also makes Symbian look like a lion without any teeth. The manufacturers might as well start saying they use a custom OS because it seems different for every phone and there’s no need for ‘Symbian’ label.
Most of these issues didn’t matter so much before because there wasn’t android or the iphone and people just accepted that things are the way they are. The appearance of these platforms has led to an explosion in activity, not only in app development but also in excitement which I feel Symbian hasn’t managed to achieve in its entire lifetime. All this flashy graphics about at the moment isn’t helping, rather it’s a bit confusing as to what message is being portrayed. I’m not a programmer but I’m wondering if it is more difficult to develop for Symbian than it is for the others. Horizon is a great idea but it is a little late in the game considering how long Symbian has been around.
As for finding apps, I used Nokias ovi store for a brief period to download a few apps but I think they are now blocking non Nokia phones. And, Samsungs new app store only supports Windows mobile phones at the moment.
The main reason I got the i8910 is the camera which is amazing for a phone. It’s a shame that android doesn’t have any decent camera phones at the moment but I think that is starting to change with some of the latest Samsung phones and the upcoming Sony Ericsson X10.
As I understand the upcoming Symbian^2 will make Symbian^1 a little obsolete since it won’t be compatible with the current phones.
Finally, I just want to say that I’ve always felt that Symbian has been too distant from the end user, there’s this big firewall that are the manufacturers between the user and Symbian.