Nah.. it was too late for Symbian.. Nokia messed up big time with that project, and now they are paying the price. The really unfortunate thing is that the whole OS is going to go in the can for no good reason. They did try, but at the same time too many mistakes were made.
I mean.. they had a touch screen UX concept way back in 2005, and personally I believe that this is when they made their one biggest mistake.. they didn't think the public was ready for a fully touchscreen device, but we all know what happened 2-3 years later.
Nokia 7700-7710
Symbian OS, Series 90 UI, v.2.0
Nokia 7700 - Full phone specifications
The kernel is very elegant, and it has tons of potential, but.. it needs a lot of work, and we seem to live in a world driven by commercial success and money, so.. there is no room for such projects. I firmly believe that in the right hands, Symbian can still be on top of all of them.. it was made for mobile communicators from the get go (Psion, etc.)
Getting a bit nostalgic
Here are some memorable milestones in the Symbian history.. just looking at all these reminds me that everything we have today, is pretty much based on all of these pioneering devices.. one way or another.
A bit of history for all of you new Nokia fans out there
1991-1995 Psion Series 3 ... pretty much the first mobile computer running on something that will later be renamed to Symbian.
This is the Psion 5mx (1996-1997) next to a Nokia E7. This is based on EPOC32, which will later become the base for Symbian 6.0
This is basically the first smartphone with a touch screen..
Ericsson R380 (2000)
2001 .. the first communicator by Nokia. And what do we have here.. omg.. a file manager ?
Then this classic.. the Siemens SX1 (2003), which was the first with the new S60 UI .. I believe
Same year, another classic .. Nokia 6600
2002.. the SE P800
2003 .. the P900
2007 ... Nokia E90
2007.. the highest point in Nokia's mobile history.
N95
In the same year Motorola tried with the Z8
In 2008 we had this beauty.
E71
Sammy with the GT i8510 (2008)
Towards the end of 2008 they went into panic mode.. tried to port/adopt the S60 UX for touchscreen use, and that was a disaster
5800.. still sold a bunch tho
And of course the infamous N97... all in all.. the nail in the coffin
Even Anssi admitted it..
Samsung had Symbian running on a Cortex A8 with the Omnia HD i8910 towards the end of 2009
SE with the Satio.. their last proper camera phone.. waiting for the Homani now
After 3 years of agony, Nokia finally updated the UX for touch screens. It wasn't perfect.. but way better than that hack job called S60v5
This is what they launched with
N8, E7, C7,C6-01
Then Symbian 10.0 came along and.. this is what we have today. Much better in terms of UX ..
700, 603, 701
And then Symbian 10.1 ... which came along with the 808 in 2012
Nokia 808 PureView - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia