Comments on: Symbian, Nokia and Java

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:42:32 +0000

“On a side note, this is one area I think Apple is brilliant in. Have you noticed that their mobile phones have had the same LCD size for a few generations?”

But they managed to achieve that only by choosing an impressive resolution at the time they launched two and a half years ago. What happens when that fixed resolution starts making their phone look primitive? Droid already has almost twice the resolution, so it probably won’t be too long now. Will they ever be able to bump it up, or are they held captive by their 100,000 applications that have all been designed down to the pixel?

Sometimes avoiding a problem is a good strategy, but it can also make things much more difficult when you finally have no choice but to solve it.

By: Chris Aniszczyk

Chris Aniszczyk — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:47:37 +0000

I didn’t mean to directly compare Apple and Nokia mobile application development, I was more stating the problem of developing user interfaces for mobile devices, whether they are phones or not. In the past, I had to target Windows Mobile devices, Nokia Communicators, Motorola and portable devices. One problem was UI layout but that wasn’t the only problem. There was the “clam-shell dual ui” issue like I mentioned, the other was something I’ll call device normalization. Some devices have different input mechanisms… from a pointer, a touch screen to smart buttons. Should you display your user interface differently based on the input? Buttons may be OK if the device has a touch screen, but not if there’s just smart buttons. That’s part of the challenge.

Thanks for responding by the way.

By: a_car_lover

a_car_lover — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:42:51 +0000

I don’t want to start a debate on Nokia vs Apple, but the blog is comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended) and even there, the orange is described as a lemon.

First of all, Nokia has a few dozen smart phones in the market compared to essentially one product (and its three variants) by Apple. The business model and markets addressed by either company is different and hence, the strategy with respect to different screen sizes cannot be compared directly.

Secondly, even though there are different screen sizes for Nokia’s smart phones, over the last 3 years or so, they have been coming in the same resolution – QVGA (320×240 pixels) in either landscape or portrait modes. The recent touch screens (S60 5th edition) are 640×360 pixels and again, the resolution is consistent, though the screen size differs according to the target demography. So as a developer, UI layout is not as difficult as the blog makes it out to be.

By: Zviki

Zviki — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:22:58 +0000

I’ve been (and still) using Symbian S60 since the very first phone Nokia came up with, the 7650. I love it and its’ market share is impressive. Yet, it never did fulfill its’ promise to bring a plethora of applications. Possibly because it failed to attract developers. It seems that Nokia will shift to Maemo eventually.