From AAS's department of the bleedin' obvious come comments from me after looking into data from the last ten years in the Symbian world, looking at screen sizes across a range of form factors and interfaces (including Series 80 and UIQ). Yes, form factors are gradually converging, and yes, screens are getting larger. No real surprise there then, but I thought you might be interested in the charts themselves below...
In leaps and bounds, the term 'smartphone' is being bandied about by manufacturers, analysts, journalists, developers and end users across the world. Which would normally be a good thing, except that there are many definitions, all totally different. What exactly defines a smartphone in 2010? What did it used to mean in 2007? Or 2003? With reports regularly quoting the word, it would be good to all agree what the word means, surely?
Playing devil's advocate, but only to a degree, Steve Litchfield turns the entire smartphone world on its head by rejecting its latest darling - large touchscreens. Ask any pundit in the mobile world about smartphones and you'll get the answer that it's all about touch. About large displays that can be caressed and programmed and manipulated with your fingers. Except that traditional, non-touch form factors have these 2010 'flagships' well and truly beat in many ways - here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck.
Starting with a throwaway line from a US podcast, Steve Litchfield works up a head of steam over the ever-slipping battery life standard in our smartphones. How long is long enough when it comes to keeping a modern smartphone going on a single charge? Are we destined to need to carry around mobile chargers in our pocket in 2011 or is there a better way to go? Surely making it through the day is a fundamental that should never be compromised?
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, here are the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
No, not a cheap attempt at Google search traffic on male enhancements, but another serious look at the ever changing, ever growing statistic that is phone screen size. Steve Litchfield looks at devices and use cases past and present, from Psion Series 5 to Apple Newton to Dell Axim to Nokia 7710 and through to the Samsung i8910 HD in the current day. Initially cautious over whether phones might get too big, Steve points out that a 4" display is more a 1995 phenomenon than a 2010 one....
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
The single biggest form factor for true smartphones in Western Europe in the last five years has arguably been that of the 'Communicator', a term coined by Nokia for its 9000 series, initially running on GeOS and then on Symbian OS 6 and (later) Symbian OS 7 with the likes of the 9500 and (here) the 9300i. Then came the oddball E90 and a slightly more mainstream E75, while Nokia's Nseries picked up some similar action in the shape of the N97. But how do they compare, head to head? Is there a true modern day successor to the Psions and Nokia 9210s of old?
Three years ago I wrote an article comparing text input speeds using various devices and form factors from the PDA and smartphone world. Here's the update, with some modern devices (including the iPhone 3G, HTC Touch Pro 2 and Nokia N97) included and tabled, plus a rogue's gallery showing Communicator keyboards through the ages. Am I obsessing too much? Is raw text input speed that important to you? Comments welcomed.
Hopefully pulling no punches, I've been mulling over all the different form factors seen in the smartphone world in the last half dozen years. Is there a common consensus 'perfect' form factor? No. Could there be one in the future? Yes, I argue in The Quest for the Perfect Form Factor. And, to the point, at least one of 2009's smartphone contenders is achingly close, at least in terms of hardware, to the ideal. This being something of a contentious subject, your comments more than welcome of course!