Nokia Developer News

Thank You very much for the update, This was very much needed. Also, thanks for the sweet info on hardware updates and PR2.0. Great going!
And kindly please continue to communicate like this with people, developers & fans!

Please Purnima Kochikar,

when you talk of the first big update you talk of the PR2.0 ?
If yes, why must we wait so such a long time to have this update !!!!
Now on the web people speak about the PR2.0 since months now and it's really annoying at the end to have to wait more than three months now !!!!

A lot of words, but no news :(

Nokia used a lot of resources to implement Qt in Symbian and now? Will Qt die, for smartphones? A nice solution would be to implement Qt in Windows Phone too.

Personally, I hope that Nokia will sell the same phone with Symbian and WP in 2 years. This is the only way to see if WP is better than Symbian.

Quote from the article:

> In many markets, including markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone
> platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, we will
> continue to make our Symbian portfolio as competitive as possible while we work with
> Microsoft to introduce Windows Phone. . For that reason certain markets will play a more
> significant role in selling the > 150 million Symbian devices than others

Exactly what does this mean?. I really hope you will not forget Europe and Finland where I live. I really hope you will not turn Symbian into just some kind of platform for the develioping 3rd world countries like china, india, russia etc. If that's your plan and if you are going to forget Europe then sorry but I don't see any reason to cpntinue developing for the Nokia devices anymore. I ofcourse want to create local apps too, but it does not make any sence if Symbian's fiocus will be only in countries like china etc

Such a nice way to tell us that Symbian is deader than dead!! managed by a bunch of morons who drove it straight to the ground, I think that my thanks must go to the whole team who, under pretence of competence and vision have simply validated one thing: their utter incompetence and a vast array of wrong decisions at the wrong time!!!

I started at Symbian a long time ago and saw it grow and go from strength to strength. now moribond and on its death bed Symbian is no more.

Who would have thought back then that Symbian was going to die such a horrible and meaningless death.

It just saddens me that it had to come to that. Back in the days there was real competence at Symbian, from CEO to Software Engineers ... it's all gone now. and it is always a sad thing to turn such a page as Symbian had all the potential to do so well...

So Farewell to you Symbian, may you rest in peace!!!

All Symbian devices or Symbian^3 devices?
What 's proportion of old Symbian and new Symbian devices?

I also still think that Nokia's decision to go to WP7 a wery bad decision.

Nokia has used years to develop Qt for the Symbian. Application developers have used lots of time learning Qt and QML because it was supposed to the future on Niokia devices. Qt is a wery good framework, there is good development tools for it, it's really nice and fun to use, it allows easy cossplatform development and has good documentation. And now nokia switching to platform with no Qt :P

Sorry but i don't understand that ecosystem bullshit. I really don't eat the talk about how Qt would be a problem and would fragment the platform or confuse developers. Exactly why would it confuse developers etc? Actually availability of Qt would just make many developers happy. Remember that Symbian has always allowed application development using several technologies like Symbian C++, Qt, WRT, java, Python,etc. So why is it so big problem on WP7 if not all apps are made using silverlight? Why don't you just admit that MicroSoft does niot allow use of Qt? So the real reason is that MicroSoft is telling you what to do and what you are not allowed to do, right?

You have talked about transition time and Symbian, but then you say that Symbian's focus will be just countries like chine, india, russia etc. What about rest of us?

What's worse is that development for the WP7 is possible only by using Windows and MicroSoft tools. I am a long time Linux user and it's great that developemtn of Qt apps for the Symbian is possible on Linux too (using remote compiler). But when Nokia goes to WP7 you have to use Windows and MicroSoft tools. I don't like that at all. I don't currentöy use Windows at all becayuse I can do all my taks on Linux.

Okey, I have to admit my previuous message was a bit harsh. In your open letter there is stuff which do worry me, but there is also stuff which sounds good. I hope you understand that this Symbian + Qt to WP7 shift is just wery frustarting. I love Symbian ^3 and Qt. I do have my quite big worries about all this transition, but I am stiill honestly hoping the best for the Nokia and for the developer community.

frustarting == frustrating

I have worked on Symbian for more than 4 years and used Nokia phones for more than 5 years. I have almost stoped working on Symbian and already started work on Android.

My findings on Android Platform and Phone (HTC):

UI Looks very good
Its very user friendly, For ex. if we want to delete gmail account from the phone, it will factory reset your phone.
Phone sometime hangs and have to force to restart the phone.
Poor power management, battery last for around two days.
Its not fully developed and needs lot of work to do.
It is not fully cooked to use on phones.

With all the drawbacks in Android, it is still first choice for developers (free tools, bigger market etc..), users and phone manufacturers. You people need to find out the reason behind this.

As far as I can see, you need to market your product well. You have fully developed product and you need to polish and re-box and sell it.

In case of Android or iPhone, they have unfinished but fully polished product and they are marketing very well.

Nokia N8 has all the features you can imagine in super or smart phone but its features are not fully marketed.

With Nokia MicroSoft deal, Nokia is taking big risk and you are asking developers and companies to take risk along with you. If Nokia loose the competition they may recover but not developer and small companies.

Its not very late to revert your decision and concentrate fully on Symbian and in parellel work on Windows phoene for only US to test the water.

Please restrict Elop to Nokia US and somebody from Finland take over his other responsibilities.

Note: Eventhough I have switched to Android, I am hopeful of the right decesion from Nokia to come back on Symbian and I will be very happy to switch my development back to Symbian. These days I only checks Forum Nokia for annoucement on Nokia comming back to Symbian.

I wanted to say more but I don't have time to write here but will continue later.

Thanks.

"There are a lot of new things for developers to take advantage of in these soon-to-be-released APIs."

No doubt about that...

"We are continuing to explore Qt for use in other strategic investment areas as well"

This is crucial...its naive to think that the future of Qt is bound with the future of Symbian UI...Qt is THE cross platform framework and can be extended to several new avenues.

Maybe you didn't understand the letter, when he says that Symbian is a good system for China / Russia / India / ...

The main problem is that a lot of people doesn't believe anymore on Nokia in Europe.

See this statistics:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201002-201102

Symbian is No1, worldwide! But if you see the stats for Europe or USA you will notice that Symbian is not anymore the most used phone to browse.

BUT... Purnima? Are you sure that WP will be better than Symbian?
I think symbfan wrote a good observation:
"Its not very late to revert your decision and concentrate fully on Symbian and in parellel work on Windows phoene for only US to test the water."

I totally agree with 'symbfan' . It is the failure of marketing team. It could not market Nokia smartphone features. Just see the diffrence or marketing of iPhone, Samsung, etc. These companies talk about the features carried by thier deivce. However, Nokia does not promote its fantastic features to people.

Symbian with QT is much better than many other OS. Nokia should focus at marketing (what to sell?) rather than OS.

Please let me know some site, where i can discuss about Nokia marketing. I would like to share my ideas with Nokia marketing team.

@ Tiger54

> The main problem is that a lot of people doesn't believe anymore on Nokia in Europe.

Some might not, but Europe istill one of the most strong areas for the Symbian.

> Symbian is No1, worldwide! But if you see the stats for Europe or USA you will notice that
> Symbian is not anymore the most used phone to browse.

That's not really true. Thereb is big differemces between counreies in Europe. Anyway Europe is till one of the strongest areas for the Symbian.

@ Tiger54

> The main problem is that a lot of people doesn't believe anymore on Nokia in Europe.

Some might not, but Europe still is one of the most strong areas for the Symbian.

> Symbian is No1, worldwide! But if you see the stats for Europe or USA you will notice that
> Symbian is not anymore the most used phone to browse.

That's not really true. There is big differemces between counreies in Europe. In some countries Symbian is not no1 anymore, but in many other European vountries it still is Anyway Europe ias a whole still is one of the strongest areas for the Symbian.

> Over the past weeks we have been evaluating our Symbian roadmap and now feel confident we will have a strong portfolio of new products during our transition period – i.e. 2011 and 2012.

And what 2013? My preferred OS is Symbian. If you kill Symbian, my next OS will be Android and not WP7!

"In many markets, including markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, we will continue to make our Symbian portfolio as competitive as possible while we work with Microsoft to introduce Windows Phone."

I hope you fix the Nokia brand management in these countries too, otherwise you won't be able to sell those Symbian devices as you expect.

@ Tiger54

> But if you see the stats for Europe or USA you will notice that Symbian is not anymore the
> most used phone to browse.

Browser stats really do not tell the truth because not everyone uses browser on smartphone Browser stats tell more about how people use the differemt smartphones. Those stats do not really tell which OS is the most popular or most used.

For some users browser is the most important feature, but for many iit is not and apps are more important. Some users use browser more some less and some don't use it at all. Not everyone browses the same web pages or even spaeks the same language. So it's really impossible to make any reliable stats. And who knows how many cheats by setting the browser user agent to something else than what browser really is.

E.g for me the browser has never been tyje most important feature of smartphone. I use lots of apps. I also do browse using smart phone, but I mostly leave browsing to desktop computer which has a big display..

@vivekg79 - You ask is there is a Nokia Marketing blog ... Well, not exactly, but we do want to listen & exchange ideas with you. You can always contact me directly - send me a message via my user name here on Forum Nokia, and I can send you my e-mail address to get started. Also, there is always the Nokia Conversations website/blog, where there is on-going discussion about new ideas - and people working for Nokia are regularly responding to feedback received. Let's talk! Thanks - Jason

@patrick.regnouf - very sorry to read that you feel this way based on the letter from Purnima.

Personally, I read it just the opposite way, and I am not just saying that because I work for Forum Nokia. :-)

As Purnima notes in the letter: "What I can promise you is that we will not just abandon Symbian users or developers." I believe it when she says this, and I hope you can trust Nokia is working hard to ensure that we can/will continue to support the hard work of the developer community around the world, now and in the years ahead. Thanks.

nokia lost personality .. symbian is the soul pf nokia phone... use wp7 is be other one from the market... nokia need nes and very good software on symbian and betalabs is good road... QT is powerfull for symbian .. a dontknownokia makes this move with microsoft...???

Please update the Ovi Store client app and web with better UX. Regrading to Qt-based app, please remove that scary 13MB message. The app could pre-detect the installed runtime though!

We have updated the above letter to remove "flexible widgets" as they will not be part of the next software update. Flexible widgets are in our plan and will be in a future update.

That's not the first time Nokia betrays both developers and users.
1. S90 was the first Nokia's touch platform. A lot of developers started to develop for it, but... Only 2 devices appeared on the market, then it was buried. Investments of the developers burned. Instead of continue to develop and promote the platform on the market, Nokia just gave up. That was the first Nokia's epic fail.
2. S80 was the best mobile platform ever. It had most of the virtues of EPOC32. Even most of preinstalled apps were looking like in EPOC32. Most of the businessmen I saw were using S80 devices. And the only devices they planned to switch to is the next S80 device. The only weak point of S80 against EPOC32 was the lack of touch screen. Once again, a lot of software were developed, a lot of money invested, but instead of developing and promoting the platform Nokia just buried it. The second Nokia's epic fail.
3. Trying to unify platforms and SDKs Nokia produced E90, as successor of Nokia 9500/9300. It was not so popular as its ancestors, however powerful hardware it has, 'cause S60 is not a platform for business devices. Just for multimedia toys. It's software was really awful looking. But it was the last Nokia's device with full QWERTY keyboard. Devices with 2 screens full QWERTY keyboard and keypad were not developed by Nokia anymore.
4. Maemo... only 3 devices for 6 years! Promises to release MeeGo, as an improved version of Maemo... Once again... Fail.
5. Once again, Nokia decided to produce touch devices. They could be in the lead of touch devices market, if continued to develop S90, but it's already buried. S60v5 is on the way! Unfortunately, S60, which was not designed for touch screens, being adapted to touch is looking awful. Also, compatibility with most legacy applications was lost. Especially, 'cause left and right soft keys were removed along with Navi key. So, the platform's failure was predictable.
6. Symbian^3. It is the last attempt of agonizing Nokia to sell the same S60v5 as something new. Failure is predictabale.
7. Qt4. A really nice framework but... You know. It seems some smart guys in Nokia decided to bury it as well.
9. And now WP7. Nokia, which has such powerful technologies, as full-featured multitask mobile OS Symbian, based on EPOC32,inux-based Maemo, Qt4 developers framework... Just decided to sacrifice it all to that singletask WP7 bullshit from Microsoft! Why? No answer. Once again, a lot of efforts and investments of developers is lost. But both developers and users got used to Nokis's betrays, so it's OKAY...

It seems, unlike other successful companies, which are going their own way to control market, Nokia's now trying to chase others. I think it's a way to nowhere. Soon, Nokia which is still has leading position will loose them and will become "one among others". We will never see Nokia we knew again. RIP, Nokia.

@jasonblack, My mail id is vivek.garg@wipro.com Please send me test mail. I would like to discuss many idea to improve Nokia Product & Marketing.

1) Add new rupee symbol in Nokia device.
2) Advertisment of robust device design.

I loved programming for EPOC on the Psion palmtops when I was a teenager, so I feel like I've loved this platform forever. It's the main reason I even own a Nokia phone at this point.

I'm also a GNU/Linux fan, so I was excited by Maemo too - and only a little worried that it might be the end of Symbian from my perspective since at least it would have been trading one great platform for another (and conveniently for me, one I had more real development experience on). I was delighted when I heard Symbian was going Open Source, even looking forward to the possibility of running it on a desktop machine in the future (call me crazy, but I think this would work really nicely - especially on my netbook but even on bigger machines if the hardware support was good enough).

Windows Phone 7? What!? It's way too late, it offers nothing new, and it's from Microsoft. Remember Kin, anyone? Or Zune?

I still like Nokia so I hope you know what you're doing and it all goes well, but it looks like I'll be drifting over to Android.

From a business perspective, this post does have some good points, such as telling us what markets Nokia is really big in.

But most of the post isn't convincing at all. Obviously, we will keep selling existing Symbian apps, just as Nokia keeps selling Symbian devices. There is however no business reason to start significant new Symbian projects, as the change that it will make good it's money are close to zero. Those resources are much better spent on projects for competing platforms. There will be 150 million devices for two years and that is it. The competition will sell much more devices in many more years.

And Qt for mobile is dead. Qt on Symbian is gone in two years. Qt on MeeGo is a tiny minority platform with just a single device planned. Qt on iOS and WP is forbidden. Qt on Android is not in Nokia's strategics interest. Consider: Symbian/Qt apps can be run on Android. This adds apps to the Android platform, increasing Android's strength compared to WP. But WP is now Nokia's new platform, and Nokia would be mad to strengthen the competition.

Qt might be alive on the desktop, but what's the point of that when you are a mobile developer? Should Symbian developers move to the desktop and abandon mobile?

It is high time Nokia starts talking about the business reasons to stay with Nokia, to engage the developers in that discussion, and to stop talking about coding. How to keep current Nokia smartphone users interested in buying apps? How to migrate them from Ovi? How to move existing codebases to WP, to protect current investments?

Cheap feature phones-series 40
smartphone -windows 7.

As u said u will develop series 40 platform and will use w7 for smart phone.........then i think i must either buy those c3s or must wait for 2012 w7 smartphone,because there is no scope for s30 and s60 in future.

Means is it still worth if i go and buy the nokia e7 or nokia n8
OR i hav to wait for w7 phones??

FIRST is, dismiss all DESIGNERS, FOR STILL LIVE IN THE AGE OF NOKIA N95.

WHAT ELSE IS THE ANGRY MICROSCOPIC ICONS ON THE SCREEN AS THE IDIOT BAR SIGNAL AND SIGNAL LEVEL.

ICONE Bluetoot NOTICE THAT IS NOT BLUE, BUT THE SCREEN A white dot.
WHITETOOTH

BATTERY LEVEL MUST BE AS INDICATED BY COLOR NOKIA BATTERY.
CHARGE FULL COLOR GREEN, HALF LOAD LARAJA, AND LOAD THE END RED.

DAMN THOSE RISKS AND NOT WHITE.

TIMING IS THE WORST OF ALL, FOR PERHAPS NEVER SAW HOW DID HP WEB'OS 2, THE CALENDAR IS BEAUTIFUL, BUT NOT A LOT OF NOKIA IN LINE, SO IF YOU BUY AN ATARI OR AN AGENDA PAPER.

WHERE CREATIVITY?

IT SEEMS THAT ALL HAS A DESIGN FOR SYMBIAN TRAITS AND NOT BY PRETTY PICTURES.

MUSIC PLAYER IS A DUNG I HAVE A NOKIA C6-00, HAS NO FUNDS, WHY NOT mirrors the ZUNE?

THE SAME WILL HAPPEN ALREADY BORN DEAD MeeGo INTEL AND DIED TOO.

The name says ME AND GO - TO OUT, ​​TO LEAVING.

ANOTHER THING IF IT IS TO UPDATE THAT THEY ARE FAST AND NOT GET 2 YEARS winded.

Android is FASTER UPDATES AND NOKIA IN A TURTLE.

WHERE SYMBIAN OS 2

WHY SYMBIAN OS 1 UPGRADE TO SYMBIAN OS 3 AND CELL WHIT SYMBIAN OS 1 DONT HAVE TO UPDATE SOS3.

WHERE THE SYMBIAN OS 2 ??????????????????????

PEOPLE WITH SYMBIAN OS 1 WANT PR2

AND THE NEW NAME TO SYMBIAN OS 2 PR2 SIMPLE.

NOKIA IS IDIOT, NO EXECUTIVES FROM NOKIA IS ALL IDIOTS

My first developing experience was on WP6.5 , and I moved to Symbian 12 months ago - Because Nokia is number one device in my country, and I use Nokia devices since 2002 - and I spent the last whole year - Day and Night - studing symbian S60 platform, I learned PyS60 as a start and I moved to SymbianC++ to have full control on my designs, I started to dream and write a few ideas about my coming applications for Symbian on Nokia devices, and I got confused when Nokia announced that QT is the future for developing applications for Symbian a few months ago, and now, and out of the blue ... Nokia announce that neither SymbianC++ nor QT have a future because there is no future for Symbian platform.

A few questions to Nokia:

1- For developers who spent years of their life learning different Symbian programing languages, how can they stand against developers who already designs for WP on Microsoft MarketPlace ?

2- What is Nokia expectations about its developers future ? Are we going to learn new language and buy Microsoft developing tools and learning its techniques and testing tools and T&Q of Microsoft MarketPlace and wasting a whole year again knowing that Nokia at any time may consider walking away from WP to another platform as it did with MeeGo ?

My advice to Noika is to save its developers efforts and appreciate that the greatness of Nokia devices doesn't come just from its great devices, but also from great applications developed by Symbian developers, So take a deep breath and stop jumping from supporting developing language to another , and jumping from platform to another, And as a last question , What WP platform can give to Nokia devices more than Symbian can give ?

The coming modification/update for Symbian^3 related to web browsing and UI is more than enough to the users who use Nokia devices not to feel less than other users who use other platforms, and rather than adding a paid platform as WP that gonna raise your devices price, consider developing Symbian platform which is free.

And also please consider all this comments and suggestions above from your great developers.

Best Regards
MrAlshahawy

I am a huge fan of Symbian devices...
I have used the E51, 5800 and the N95..

Symbian has great potential to be an outstanding Mobile Plarform. There is no need to abandon Symbian.

What about all the developers native to symbian? won't they be alienated if Nokia moves on to WP. They will be left behind and have no access to a platform they hardly know. Thay may stand no chance against the professional developers already in the WP sector.
It all had to happen just when I was about to enter the world of Symbian development.

Since the decision has already been taken, I suggest that Nokia continue with WP and also develop Symbian under the hood, parallely...
Nokia can unleash Symbian on the world once again, when its development becomes superior to iOS and Android. I don't like the way Android is taking the world by storm, and how it is affecting Symbian...

Guys, please keep Symbian alive. It can once again be the ruling OS.

Plea From A DieHard Nokia Fan

> In many markets, including markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone
> platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, we will
> continue to make our Symbian portfolio as competitive as possible while we work with

i'm from China.
i think Symbian devices were very popular before 2009.
And most of these people using Symbian devices don't know their phones are symbian devices or want to download apps. They just know that they are using Nokia devices.
When Iphone and Android devices come to China, people know their devices are very good and there are many apps can be downloaded.
so i don't think more and more people want to use symbian devices in China.

I have tried the Article ID: CS000976 for sending SMS. I am using Nokia N76. It works fine but i am unable to send SMS to the specific port number only like "6070". In other Device like Micromax Mobile it works fine but i am getting problem in Nokia N76 and the error message is IOException "SymbianOS error=-4554:Text message:Unable to send text message" . Can you help me to solve this problem?