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Re: [LUG] OT: Smartphone recommendations?

 

On 16/02/10 21:53, Shaun Orchard wrote:
On 16 February 2010 21:40, Rob Beard<rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:

Yep, I've found that, there seems to be quite a few versions of Symbian too,
IIRC my phone is running Symbian S60 release 3 or something.  I've pretty
much avoided adding apps to the phone (although I do have Putty and the
Opera browser).

Putty was literally the only piece of quality software I ever got working on my E90. Opera was pretty good, but the buttons were the wrong way round on the E90, and I never got to using it properly (how this happened I don't know- it's not like the built in browser was adequate).

Just about every application that claims support for "S60v3" or S60
3rd Edition will work. Not exactly difficult, considering that has
been the version in use for many years now (you won't find much that
hasn't been recompiled to work) and all of Nokia's modern
non-touchscreen smartphones run it.

Sorry. This is simply not true. I was thinking this should be the case as well, until I actually tried to install some apps. 70% of apps complained that my phone was incompatible, and the remaining 29.9% just didn't work.

Symbian is now fully open source. But I still think it's dead. It will never work unless they can get mobile manufacturers to open their firmware, or at the very least keep it up to date, or at the very very least follow the main tree instead of going off on one and allowing Networks to brand them. Unfortunately I consider none of this likely.

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