Blackberry or Iphone for Wharton Student?

ilovebagels
Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:44:26 +0000

When I say not optimized for touch, I mean the OS (Symbian S60) was NOT designed from the ground up as a finger-based multi-touch operating system. There are only 2 operating systems that are: iPhone OS and Palm webOS (and it shows).

S60 was designed for conventional smartphones with a numeric keypad, d-pad navigation, and no touchscreen whatsoever. It was also designed on much more primitive, 2001-era hardware, with slower processors, less RAM, and no 2D composite graphics engines.

Like Windows Mobile, S60 feels dated because it IS dated. You can’t just bolt on a touch screen (well you can, and that’s what Nokia did, with predictably bad results). A finger is different from a stylus (one must incorporate the possibility of multitouch, of gestures (swiping, scrolling, pinch-zoom, and of course the fact that the interface needs to be redesigned for larger buttons as a finger is fatter than a stylus). Even MORE different is the non-touch d-pad navigation for which S60 was designed.

Nokia could easily stop its hemorrhage of smartphone market share if it would adopt Google’s Android, as that is a wonderful OS and Nokia still makes the best hardware out there. But it’s never going to happen thanks to Nokia’s own stubbornness.