Symbian^4 Screenshots Revealed, Lacking Oomph

Sym­bian 4 Screen Shots

The screen shots for Symbian^4 just leaked, they’ve since been taken down from the offi­cial site but I got them via Daily Mobile(thanks @Snizzl3)

I’m a big fan of Sym­bian but it has let me down lately. Nick Jones from Gart­ner said it per­fectly, it’s like Sym­bian is “re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titatic”. The Sym­bian ship is sail­ing towards its inevitable demise. The foun­da­tion is focus­ing on the wrong issues, they need to focus on the UI and the user expe­ri­ence. While the mobile UIs are about the same(as high­lighted by Ewan Spence), there are some dis­tin­guish­ing and inno­v­a­tive ele­ments that set them apart. Apple, with iOS, has gone for an ele­gant and sim­ple UI which con­sists of a grid of scrol­lable icons that lead to apps. Win­dows, with Win­dows Phone 7, has gone for an equally sim­ple design with ‘hubs’ form­ing the cen­ter of the expe­ri­ence. Sym­bian con­tin­ues to focus on expand­ing fea­tures — sup­port for HDMI, higher res cam­eras, ele­gant archi­tec­ture, open­ness, engag­ing devel­op­ers etc.

All that may not be a bad thing, but they are con­cen­trat­ing on things that do not directly affect the con­sumer, neglect­ing the things that do. At this point in time, it’s all about the expe­ri­ence. If it wasn’t about the expe­ri­ence and more about fea­tures, devices like the iPhone never would have suc­ceeded. What com­pa­nies like Apple and Google did, was focus on the expe­ri­ence first — get peo­ple to fall in love with the prod­uct, buy it, and fall in love with it all over again — then beef up the fea­tures later. As it stands, Symbian/Nokia are behind in both the fea­tures and the expe­ri­ence. They are play­ing catch up now — the tables have turned. Just a few years ago, it was Apple try­ing to catch up to the Sym­bian soft­ware and Nokia hard­ware, Android devices and Android were no match for Sym­bian devices (Google G1 + Android 1.o any­one?). Every­thing has changed and Nokia and Sym­bian are locked in a down­ward spi­ral. The days of Nokia being the mobile supreme are num­bered. Sym­bian was so weak in the smart­phone arena that the iPhone and Android devices took over almost as soon as they stepped into the game. It was like tak­ing candy from a baby.

There could be light at the end of the tun­nel though. I remem­ber Palm was on the way out when they released WebOS and the Palm Pre. Then again, they are gone now any­way, but it goes to show that with some mas­sive inno­va­tion and re-thinking every­thing from the ground up, Nokia/Symbian can make a come­back. Until it does, it’s safe to say that the Sam­sung i8910 is the last Sym­bian device for me. I never say never though. Never ;-P.