TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

AllAboutSymbian’s Steve Litchfield has been a very reasonable and generally good analyst so far(I really enjoyed talking to him in London) - but he just shot the ball way out of the court.

While talking about the E71, he posted the following statement:
Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, there are still big cost penalties in using VGA. The physical displays cost a lot more, are more fragile, then there’s the cost of rejigging the rest of the device’s electronics to match, the extra cost of providing extra chips to support the display, the cost of having to rewrite large parts of the operating system to cope with all the pixel doubling/scaling and font reworking needed, and so on. At the end of the day, these costs will be passed on to you and you’ll pay a lot more for your phones.

Unfortunately, Steve has his facts totally wrong here. Nowadays, the prices for VGA displays are more-less on par with the prices for QVGA screens(according to a manager at Symbol’s). Furthermore, at least one Asus device contains a VGA screen, but runs it in QVGA “compatibility mode”.

In case you feel like chiming into a discussion(Steve it notably absent), use the link below:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/The_argument_for_QVGA-more_is_not_necessarily_better.php

Nokia has bought Symbian a few hours ago(via Reuters), and plans to release a “Symbian mashup” as open source in the next two years(via AllAboutSymbian).

As the two links above contain all that there is to say about the topic, I will rather look into the consequences and motivations surrounding this affair - bear with me…

TamsS60 has identified Linux as a threat to Symbian-based phones a few months ago. Unlike most other platforms, most Symbian phone purchases don’t happen because the user wants an S60 phone. Instead, he just buys what’s hip - and this may incidentally run S60.

This has huge implications: while a Palm OS or Windows Mobile user will be reluctant to accept a Linux phone (due to his HUGE library of applications that can easily be worth 500$ or more), the average S60 user (who definitely won’t be reading this) couldn’t care less.

Manufacturers know this, and will enjoy the opportunity to save a few dollars per shipped device…which could be bad for Symbian. Opensourcing the platform will definitely help here…even though it likely is a fatal blow for UIQ(which has just begun to lay off employees).

The real issue IMHO is something else: Symbian is now fully owned by Nokia. Palm originally spun off its OS division(PalmSource) in order to make the platform more interesting for third parties - after buying it up again, all remaining licensees jumped ship quickly(even GSPDA gave up a few weeks ago).

As of now, the folks that should really be concerned are UIQ users - for them, starting the porting process is an absolute must. Seeing that S60 licensees have never been too important, S60 developers can expect at least two more years of peace(if things go like they did at Palm’s)…

What do you think?

So far, Nokia hasn’t proven itself prone to making idiotic moves. However, this seems to have changed today - a critter called Charlie posted a long rant to the official Nokia Conversations blog. His problem: leaks.

Indeed, Nokia’s IP security has come to resemble Swiss cheese recently(loads of holes) - but I feel that the damages caused are minuscule compared to what would have happened without the leaks seen lately.

IMHO, our friend charlie doesn’t quite grasp that the game has changed for big N. They are no longer the number one manufacturer that everyone thinks about first: this is now Apple. Nokia can now announce a device and nobody cares: Apple is the new headline poster boy.

And this is where leaks come in. As the Cupertino inhabitants announced their latest brickphone, someone with a few brain cells leaked a few snapshots of a few upcoming devices. The effect of this was simple: Nokia got front line space along with Apple, and didn’t get pushed out of the “mind” of the market.

BenQ Siemens did something similar a few years ago, and didn’t fare too bad with this stunt.

Of course, grasping all of this requires deep understanding of the market - something that is easier to attain while watching the market from the outside…

What do you think?

AllAboutSymbian’s Attila Katona recently posted an article about how games do not support his E90’s wide screen. Even though I can understand his frustration, I feel that he is hitting our poor developers unfairly.

The reason for this is simple: supporting higher screen resolution requires more processing time. The bigger the draw area, the more processing power is needed. Double the screen size: your game’s CPU power demand is to be multiplied by 4.

Unfortunately, the E90’s processor is not much faster than the N95’s. Seeing that developers try to make their games look as good as possible on the N95 - how much CPU reserve do they have for supporting bigger screens? Not much!

Even though I understand Sir Katona’s frustration, I feel that he is not seeing the full picture. Developers definitely can do full screen games on the E90(and will do so given sufficient demand) - however, the quality of visuals definitely will be a lot lower than on the N95…

Apparently, the skills of an electrical engineer are in demand in the current news situation - after having looked at the S60 calculator, its now time to look at what Freescale’s recent announcement actually means.

Essentially, Freescale announces a so-called development board that can run S60 right out of the box. A development board is a piece of hardware(or schematics) that allows you to evaluate the features of a new processor or chip.

Sometimes, chip manufacturers work together with OS vendors to create OS images that can run on these boards out of the box - and this is what Freescale has done IMHO. Similar things have happened in the past(e.g. for PalmSource’s Cobalt OS), but have not led to finished devices hitting the market. Also, individuals can NOT build a complete system themselves…

The really interesting tidbit of news is that Freescale is negotiating with a manufacturer about a handset based on this board. The Inquirer claims that the partner could be Motorola(as FS is a spinoff from Moto) - however, I believe that this is not true as we all know that Motorola has its own touchscreen-less UIQ handsets.

Nevertheless, it remains interesting…we’ll all know more by Q4!

Nokia recently released a bunch of firmware updates in an attempt to stop people from hacking the S60v3 security system(in an incredibly complicated process). Even though this worked for a short time, the good boys at symbian-freak’s have already managed to find another way in.

Will the game go on(like at Apple’s)? Or will it end here and now? Read on to find out how I feel…

Before looking at the current situation, we should look back a few years. We’re seeing the first stage of explosive growth in the S60 business. Loads of S60 phones come together in a Stadium in Helsinki. One of them has Cabir…you probably know the rest of the story…

This forced Nokia to implement stringent security into S60v3 - the common user obviously is not capable to keep himself safe(anyone remember the iloveyou-worm?), and thus needs to be protected at all cost. So far so good - unfortunately, the system failed to address a key issue of the S60 platform: piracy.

Users are currently safe from harm, and developers need to pay a nice bit of cash to get their apps signed(Tapwave did so for free)..all was good - until the folk at symbian-freak’s decided to crack their way in and get themselves the full control that they so much desired.

OK - the security is now broken. But does this endanger the average user? IMHO, it doesn’t…

The reason for this is that the patch is very difficult to do - yes, I can do it, and so can you. However, I can see my girlfriend struggling to get it done(she is a Palm OS nut) - and the rest of my family has absolutely no chance to get past step 2 of their instructions.

Thus, this patch is limited to people who KNOW what they do - and these never were endangered by S60 virii in the first place. As long as the unlocking process doesn’t become any easier, developers will not see any benefit in creating unsigned apps. The average user will remain safe, while power users get what they so desire. Developers don’t get any extra protection from piracy(as they never got one in the first place) - nobody gets hurt.

Everyone is happy - and Nokia IMHO can be, too. There IMHO is no need for another round of updates - what do you think?

Apparently, the folks at Nokia’s have not yet understood that their N-Gage systems are not dedicated gaming consoles like the Sony PSP or Nintendo DS. How else can the following policy be explained:

N-gage games are locked to an IMEI forever. People upgrading their phones can NOT move their games to the new device(unlike with a PSP/DS - you can use a purchased Game Pak oin any device, world-wide).

For me, this is a major foot bullet on Nokia’s side - think of the following scenarios:

• Phone stolen
• Device upgrade
• Device breakdown where repair is uneconomical

In each of the cases above, the user is punished by having to repurchase all N-Gage games he has ever owned - embarrassingly, significantly smaller companies(e.g. Resco; Paragon) manage to create much better systems that actually assist their customers.

Basically, it all comes back to the topic of investment security(I already covered this back in 2006). As long as user’s investment is not secure, power users will not buy stuff.

And this is the critical point: like most other Nokia products, N-Gage is not aimed at power users(as hard as this may sound). Instead, it is targeted at the soccer mom/gamer teen audience - and these folks usually do not care much about investment security. For them, instant gratification is what counts…and Nokia definitely has that one sorted!

P.S. All Snake SubSonic fans out there: this policy also applies to that game…

Michael Mace has been on my radar for a long time - being a former PalmSource employee and running a nice blog definitely qualifies you to be on my watchlist(as I also run a Palm OS site). He recently posted an article about why Nokia’s S60 platform will fall behind the iPhone eventually - he claims that it all has to do with marketing. And - unfortunately - I happen to disagree(*).

For me, S60 sucks because of a variety of different reasons:

Rampant piracy AND signage crap
S60v§ introduced the need for application signing. If your app wanted to do certain things, you needed to get it signed(which cost you 180 Euros or more). No signage, no workie.

This is similar to the concept Tapwave used with its Palm OS-based game console - but there’s one major difference here. Tapwave’s Zodiac checked if a signed app was modified, and refused to run modified apps.

Crackers had to either break the entire DRM system(which they couldn’t do) or had to resign the app(which would have forced them to give up their address and real name).

The two factors above made the Zodiac a piracy-free platform; and thus made developers accept the burden of application signing. Nokia, on the other hand, insists on signing but does not offer any benefits in exchange…

Stupid development mantra
I have developed applications for Palm OS, Windows Mobile and a variety of other systems(including even 14bit PIC MCU’s). Each system definitely has its own oddities - but Nokia’s S60 is full of weird crap.

Leaving functions? A cleanup stack? The four-object base model? Views? Loads of concepts that are unique to the S60/UIQ world.

This makes developer training expensive and development hard - and reduces the motivation for the development of S60 apps.

Carbide.c++ costs a LOT of cash
Finally, Carbide.c++ costs a load of money. For me, this is the straw that lays the camel flat - have a totally fuxated development model AND charge big bucks for the IDE. If Nokia wants to grow its followership, give away Carbide Pro with a book for 100€. Restrict it to single-developer shacks. But do it…

Cutting a long story short: for me, the reason for Nokia’s problems lays in the operating system’s architecture. Sure, S60 is a great, stable and well-usable OS - but developing for it is a huge pain in the butt. Eliminating piracy would put Nokia into a unique position on the marketplace - but the opportunity apparently has not been realized by anyone in the S60 camp so far…

*unlicensed parody of DJ Food

Sometimes strange things happen to strange people - yours truly is very strange(and so is his girlfriend) - and we thus got a very strange call a few nights ago. The caller has authenticated himself as being from TrollTech, and has asked us to check our email accounts for an email interview about the future of Nokia’s operating systems.

Here goes:

What will happen to TrollTech
Trolltech will continue to operate as it has been operating. It will be an independent division inside Nokia. Nokia has stated publicly (and to us) that they fully intend to keep Trolltech’s business running. Certainly parts of the Qt/Qtopia ecosystem would not survive if Nokia were to interfere. Nokia seems to be aware of this and keen to keep the ecosystem going.

I see the purchase as a way to prevent someone else from “stealing”
their supplier, like they just did to Motorola

What will happen to apps using the S60 API once Nokia switches to QT as the main phone API…will the S60 API be phased out?
No. It has to remain for compatibility with existing apps. No doubt Qt will be using chunks of it though. Future devices may not use Symbian/S60 and it’s conceivable that Qt is the only API available on those devices (similar to how GTK is the only API available on the Nokia internet tablets today).

Nokia doesn’t believe in throwing away good tech to make way for new stuff. They still sell S30 devices and S40 is still an actively maintained platform. Qt is not a replacement for S60, it’s a way for Nokia (and others) to write one app that runs on S40/S60/ Linux/Desktop/Next Gen. It’s similar to what Java promised though I’d argue that Java failed (witness the extreme fragmentation of the J2ME market).

So you say that it is as it is for now, but not forever…aka that the S60 API could be phased out someday?
I’d be really surprised if some next gen system that hasn’t even been made yet will totally replace something like Symbian/S60 in less than 5 years. Sure hardware advances quickly but older, slower hardware is always cheaper and older software is always faster. S60 hasn’t managed to replace S40 yet and it’s been out for years now.

For a new, high-end device, you can’t really have the old system. Imagine the iPhone experience from S60… just not going to happen.

So certainly high end stuff will move onto whatever next-gen system they’re doing but the mid/low range will take years.

If there’s a large library of software built on Symbian/S60 that Nokia wants to see running on their next-gen system they’ll just build some compatibility VM or whatever, like Cobalt/ALP have for the Garnet API.

Keep in mind too that Qt on S60 hasn’t even been started yet. It’ll be a year or two before you’ll even see Nokia handsets with Qt on them.

After that, he apparently deleted the email account that he used - I can no longer reach him… . anyways, I thank him for the news - it’s always great to hear from insiders!

P.S. This blog is hosted in Austria - a country with intact press freedom for tech journalists. All attempts to get he sources identity are futile!

The folks over at MSMobile’s have recently begun to peddle rumors about Nokia planning to launch a E61 running Windows Mobile Standard(aka a Treo 500 knockoff). I think that this is utter bullshit(and linkbait) - read on to find out why:

Nokia has invested a lot into its own OS
Nokia has recently purchased TrollTech, the maker of QT. The future of S60 definitely lays in this direction(more on this another day in the future, I have an insider information here).

Why in God’s name should Nokia invest loads of money into getting QT if they plan to become a Windows Mobile licencee eventually. S60 is definitely here to stay - and will probably also remain the platform deployed on most(if not all) of Nokia’s phones(for licensing reasons…I think that a Symbian license is cheaper than a full WMS license).

Also, the picture looks very weird - take an E61, fire up Resco Explorer and show a WM screenshot from a Treo - and the party is set up.

Last but not least, the folks at MSMobile’s have had a long history of publishing controversial stuff that brings them masses of backlinks(that’s why I am not linking to them here) - and April’s fools day provides them with an excellent way to get links with a fake story without risking to burn their hands…

What do you think?

P.S. If Nokia ships such a device…stay calm. Today, the hardware found in S60 devices is so similar to WMS devices…the R&D cost for this probably was minimal…