From what I've seen Symbian has no equivalent to Cocoa Touch, Core Video, Core Audio, Core Image, or Core Animation.
It was never intended to. It is not what Symbian is about. It is a mobile phone platform, not a desktop extension/replacement OS.
Quote:
Yes but listing features and applications tells you little about how Symbian works or its development platform.
Who cares? Do you need to know about Cocoa Touch, Core Video, etc.... to operate your iPhone? I don't. This is a very, very weak argument put forth on your part. You are arguing vaper here.
Quote:
Its unreasonable to be disappointed with Apple for not including features that were never listed. The iPhone version 1 was not developed as a business device. I seriously doubt many consumers are making common use of OBEX or SyncML.
It is not unreasonable to expect a device marketed as a phone to fullfill even the most basic phone features. The iPhone simply does not do this. Surely you can see that the software is lacking here Tenobell.
Who cares? Do you need to know about Cocoa Touch, Core Video, etc.... to operate your iPhone? I don't. This is a very, very weak argument put forth on your part. You are arguing vaper here.
I think his point is that Mobile OS X foundation has the ability to grow faster and farther than other mobile platforms by allowing greater expandability with less limitations therein.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Did you know that most Finns, arguably some of the smartest people on the planet had no idea that their phones were 3G capable and that they were using 3G connections when checking email and surfing the web? Reason being: IT JUST WORKS. They had no idea how it worked just that it does. Of course the techies knew. But basic things like email using 3G was so ubiqutous (no spell checker but you understand) that they had no idea they were using it, and many simply answered no that they weren't.
As for the features, does the fact that not everyone is using make them any less valuable? I do not use vid conferencing daily but when I use it, it is because of a need. I do use VoIP almost daily but does the lack of it in an iPhone mean I should find other means until Apple deems it important enough to include?
I do use VoIP almost daily but does the lack of it in an iPhone mean I should find other means until Apple deems it important enough to include?
Apple won't be including VoIP, but according to the SDK rules 3rd-party developers can create them so long as it only works over WiFi. This will probably be altered as soon as Apple no longer has profit-sharing partners with the carriers.
I think his point is that Mobile OS X foundation has the ability to grow faster and farther than other mobile platforms by allowing greater expandability with less limitations therein.
Thanks for explaining this, and to this end he is correct, I guess. I am not a developer so I would not know how fast Symbian or OS X can scale. For me, it comes down to which one works. Right now, at this moment in time, today, heute, paiva, my combination of N82 and iPhone meet my needs. Maybe Nokia or Apple will develop the device that I need and for sure it will reside in my pocket.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Not used much by consumers... sure. But how about business users? Hmm...
Again, is Apple just not going to take on RIM or any of the other business-oriented smartphone makers anymore, is that the plan?
Or is much of that stuff going to show up in June with the 2.0 software, in which case, citing consumer surveys (only) as a way to judge what Apple deems important in their feature set may seem a tad silly, in retrospect? Guess we'll know in a few weeks.
Nokia haven't had any real competition for some time, they've produced mediocre products that excite only people who get excited by specifications (what's the point of 7.2Mbps per second if your browser experience sucks?) and now Apple is giving them a run for their money.
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
Apple won't be including VoIP, but according to the SDK rules 3rd-party developers can create them so long as it only works over WiFi. This will probably be altered as soon as Apple no longer has profit-sharing partners with the carriers.
I'm not sure how that will work though if you can't have 3rd party applications running in the background.
I've a Pirelli DLP-10 dual mode phone now (it was dirt cheap on sipgate.co.uk - £59 unlocked) which is dual GSM and VoIP over wifi. It works great too - I rang my parents in Spain (from the UK) at the weekend on it using VoIP and it was as clear as a mobile and no delay. 12+ minutes cost me 22p. It's a pretty terrible mobile phone - not Motorola kind of terrible but certainly about as averagely terrible as a cheap Nokia.
In order for VoIP to work for incoming calls on the iPhone, there would need to be a daemon running to receive the call. Since the SDK bans that kind of thing, it's only going to happen if Apple adds a VoIP client or relaxes that rule. I suspect they will relax that rule when the next iPhone lands and it's got a decent amount of RAM available in it, unlike the current one.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Are those American surveys?
I'd be very surprised if more people used email on phones than SMS in Europe and after SMS and Voice, the most used feature on my two kids' phones are taking videos of their friends and "bluetoothing" it to their friends phones. When I told them they couldn't do that on an iPhone, they were just not interested in it. Not that they're getting one - too fragile and too expensive.
It does puzzle me somewhat that you can't even bluetooth a contact on an iPhone to another phone. Come on Apple - that's basic!
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
Man this was nice. Great post. Actually I went to Nokia simply because SE said they had no intention of supporting Mac OS in anyway, while Nokia did. S60 can be a bit complicated in the UI but it works quite well. As you said, and I had previoulsy mentioned, what that iPhond does, it does well, as long at it has nothing to do with telephony.
Need to run to Thai food for lunch. I will expand when I get back.
I have been saying this since the beginning of this thread and in a few other places. Sad to say, some people simply dismiss what they do not have. The iPhone is clearly missing some of the most basic features, but there are many here that will defend this as smart on Apples part and then these same people will critisize Nokia or another manufacturer has having too many features.
Uhhhhh... Failed how exactly? As much as I detest all things M$, they are right now the on top but their market share is declining. So which decade are you talking about where M$ failed to catch Apple?
Are you saying that neither Nokia nor SE has the skills to deliver, and if so to deliver what? Right now, it appears that Nokia has the technological advantage over Apple in terms of specifications. Apple has the software high ground. Which do you think will be easier to overcome with a few million thrown around here and there? Nokia has made no attempt, at least that I know of, to put a desktop on their phones as they didn't need to. They did however make the conduits and links to those desktops. This suited their biz model and bottom line. I have visited Nokia's R&D facilities, and spoken with their engineers. They are not worried in the least about what the iPhone has to offer technically as they can match it and in many cases deliver better performance. What is of no interest to them is putting a desktop OS on their phones.
If you can't tell the difference between the quality of Apple's OS and Microsoft's OS then I can't help you. But to everyone else MS's is mediocre at best. It's of poor quality.
The technological advantage that Nokia has is not that significant. Most of it is in the chips produced by third parties, though there is quite a bit of work in doing the RF design in each model. But the point is that that is not an enduring competitive advantage. At some point Apple will gather together enough RF engineers and beat Nokia at its own game, all the while being in front on the software side. Nokia engineers should be very worried. It's exactly that engineering mindset that is their weakness: "Oh we can create it just tell us what the specs are". But the real difficult problems cannot be specified and require things other than plain technical understanding. The fact people find gadgets so hard to use, and increasingly so speaks to this. Nokia doesn't even understand or see the problem, let alone being able to solve it.
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable. Tethering is besides the point, why have a "smart" phone if you need a laptop to use it. Obviously the question is how usable is the browser stand alone.
I think criticising the iphone for features is pretty premature. Nokia's first versions were missing things and still do. I still can't work out why you can't charge a Nokia phone from USB without an adaptor when it has a USB plug. But yes there are huge holes in the feature set. The one that bothers me the most is the lack of a modem interface (ie "tethering") which due to Apple's pandering to phone companies looks like will not surface for a while.
I'd be very surprised if more people used email on phones than SMS in Europe and after SMS and Voice.
I saw a survey from Nokia a few months ago. I cannot find it anymore. It didn't specify what countries were surveyed. The survey asked the most used and most requested features. Email was the top feature, followed by SMS/MMS, and social networking.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable.
Quite.
Nokia uses Webkit, which renders the page identically to Mobile Safari.
But then they run it through their "MakeItLookLikeAssTM" technology. Which screws with all the fonts and spacing and produces something which hurts your eyes.
It is certainly true that two years ago Sony and Nokia had phones with more features than the iPhone.
For one half of us, that single fact makes the iPhone look dated and under-powered.
But the other half has a different opinion; Having hundreds of features which are badly-implemented and practically unusable is utterly without value.
It's easy to licence a GPS chip and cram it into your phone.
It's much harder to create an application which allows you to locate the nearest dry cleaners, and do it in such an elegant way that your mother could use it.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable. Tethering is besides the point, why have a "smart" phone if you need a laptop to use it. Obviously the question is how usable is the browser stand alone.
Have you used an E90, or any of the N-Series phones? If not, you can not make a valid judgment and your "facts" become moot. I have used both, and an iPhone and can say that in terms of rendering the images/sites/data. etc....they are about the same. the iPhone has a larger viewing area and the easier zooming function but I am comfortable browsing for the info that I need on both. You again, make the invalid assumption that the iPhone is a "smartphone" which it is not. Until it can store and forward documents, provide more than basic telephony functions, allows OBEX file transfers, allows data manipulation, it will remain an iPod that has a phone.
Quote:
I think criticising the iphone for features is pretty premature. Nokia's first versions were missing things and still do. I still can't work out why you can't charge a Nokia phone from USB without an adaptor when it has a USB plug. But yes there are huge holes in the feature set. The one that bothers me the most is the lack of a modem interface (ie "tethering") which due to Apple's pandering to phone companies looks like will not surface for a while.
Premature? If Apple had marketed it as an iPod with phone, I do not think anyone would have complained, but they came out with this revolutionary smartphone that for the most part is crippled. If you are wondering about things, why doesn't that iPhone support A2DP? Most SE and Nokia's do.
Nokia uses Webkit, which renders the page identically to Mobile Safari.
But then they run it through their "MakeItLookLikeAssTM" technology. Which screws with all the fonts and spacing and produces something which hurts your eyes.
It is certainly true that two years ago Sony and Nokia had phones with more features than the iPhone.
For one half of us, that single fact makes the iPhone look dated and under-powered.
But the other half has a different opinion; Having hundreds of features which are badly-implemented and practically unusable is utterly without value.
It's easy to licence a GPS chip and cram it into your phone.
It's much harder to create an application which allows you to locate the nearest dry cleaners, and do it in such an elegant way that your mother could use it.
C.
The web browser on Nokia's use SVG to render. Of course it will scale the fonts and graphos. This is what SVG does.
I saw a survey from Nokia a few months ago. I cannot find it anymore. It didn't specify what countries were surveyed. The survey asked the most used and most requested features. Email was the top feature, followed by SMS/MMS, and social networking.
To use your standards of proof. If you can not produce proof of this study, then it becomes your opinion.
Comments
From what I've seen Symbian has no equivalent to Cocoa Touch, Core Video, Core Audio, Core Image, or Core Animation.
It was never intended to. It is not what Symbian is about. It is a mobile phone platform, not a desktop extension/replacement OS.
Yes but listing features and applications tells you little about how Symbian works or its development platform.
Who cares? Do you need to know about Cocoa Touch, Core Video, etc.... to operate your iPhone? I don't. This is a very, very weak argument put forth on your part. You are arguing vaper here.
Its unreasonable to be disappointed with Apple for not including features that were never listed. The iPhone version 1 was not developed as a business device. I seriously doubt many consumers are making common use of OBEX or SyncML.
It is not unreasonable to expect a device marketed as a phone to fullfill even the most basic phone features. The iPhone simply does not do this. Surely you can see that the software is lacking here Tenobell.
Who cares? Do you need to know about Cocoa Touch, Core Video, etc.... to operate your iPhone? I don't. This is a very, very weak argument put forth on your part. You are arguing vaper here.
I think his point is that Mobile OS X foundation has the ability to grow faster and farther than other mobile platforms by allowing greater expandability with less limitations therein.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Did you know that most Finns, arguably some of the smartest people on the planet had no idea that their phones were 3G capable and that they were using 3G connections when checking email and surfing the web? Reason being: IT JUST WORKS. They had no idea how it worked just that it does. Of course the techies knew. But basic things like email using 3G was so ubiqutous (no spell checker but you understand) that they had no idea they were using it, and many simply answered no that they weren't.
As for the features, does the fact that not everyone is using make them any less valuable? I do not use vid conferencing daily but when I use it, it is because of a need. I do use VoIP almost daily but does the lack of it in an iPhone mean I should find other means until Apple deems it important enough to include?
I do use VoIP almost daily but does the lack of it in an iPhone mean I should find other means until Apple deems it important enough to include?
Apple won't be including VoIP, but according to the SDK rules 3rd-party developers can create them so long as it only works over WiFi. This will probably be altered as soon as Apple no longer has profit-sharing partners with the carriers.
I think his point is that Mobile OS X foundation has the ability to grow faster and farther than other mobile platforms by allowing greater expandability with less limitations therein.
Thanks for explaining this, and to this end he is correct, I guess. I am not a developer so I would not know how fast Symbian or OS X can scale. For me, it comes down to which one works. Right now, at this moment in time, today, heute, paiva, my combination of N82 and iPhone meet my needs. Maybe Nokia or Apple will develop the device that I need and for sure it will reside in my pocket.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Not used much by consumers... sure. But how about business users? Hmm...
Again, is Apple just not going to take on RIM or any of the other business-oriented smartphone makers anymore, is that the plan?
Or is much of that stuff going to show up in June with the 2.0 software, in which case, citing consumer surveys (only) as a way to judge what Apple deems important in their feature set may seem a tad silly, in retrospect? Guess we'll know in a few weeks.
.
.
Nokia haven't had any real competition for some time, they've produced mediocre products that excite only people who get excited by specifications (what's the point of 7.2Mbps per second if your browser experience sucks?) and now Apple is giving them a run for their money.
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
Apple won't be including VoIP, but according to the SDK rules 3rd-party developers can create them so long as it only works over WiFi. This will probably be altered as soon as Apple no longer has profit-sharing partners with the carriers.
I'm not sure how that will work though if you can't have 3rd party applications running in the background.
I've a Pirelli DLP-10 dual mode phone now (it was dirt cheap on sipgate.co.uk - £59 unlocked) which is dual GSM and VoIP over wifi. It works great too - I rang my parents in Spain (from the UK) at the weekend on it using VoIP and it was as clear as a mobile and no delay. 12+ minutes cost me 22p. It's a pretty terrible mobile phone - not Motorola kind of terrible but certainly about as averagely terrible as a cheap Nokia.
In order for VoIP to work for incoming calls on the iPhone, there would need to be a daemon running to receive the call. Since the SDK bans that kind of thing, it's only going to happen if Apple adds a VoIP client or relaxes that rule. I suspect they will relax that rule when the next iPhone lands and it's got a decent amount of RAM available in it, unlike the current one.
This is from your perspective of what you want. Most consumers don't use the functions you have listed.
Surveys of phone users have found email to be the most used features, generally followed by SMS and internet. Watching video and listening to music are generally pretty far down the list.
Word processing, VoiP calling, video conferencing, OBEX - none of these are even on any survey list of most used features.
Are those American surveys?
I'd be very surprised if more people used email on phones than SMS in Europe and after SMS and Voice, the most used feature on my two kids' phones are taking videos of their friends and "bluetoothing" it to their friends phones. When I told them they couldn't do that on an iPhone, they were just not interested in it. Not that they're getting one - too fragile and too expensive.
It does puzzle me somewhat that you can't even bluetooth a contact on an iPhone to another phone. Come on Apple - that's basic!
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
Man this was nice. Great post. Actually I went to Nokia simply because SE said they had no intention of supporting Mac OS in anyway, while Nokia did. S60 can be a bit complicated in the UI but it works quite well. As you said, and I had previoulsy mentioned, what that iPhond does, it does well, as long at it has nothing to do with telephony.
Need to run to Thai food for lunch. I will expand when I get back.
It does puzzle me somewhat that you can't even bluetooth a contact on an iPhone to another phone. Come on Apple - that's basic!
I discovered the other day that you can't receive contacts sent via SMS. I just got the source code of a vcard.
I discovered the other day that you can't receive contacts sent via SMS. I just got the source code of a vcard.
@aegisdesign and Amorya,
I have been saying this since the beginning of this thread and in a few other places. Sad to say, some people simply dismiss what they do not have. The iPhone is clearly missing some of the most basic features, but there are many here that will defend this as smart on Apples part and then these same people will critisize Nokia or another manufacturer has having too many features.
Unbelievable.
Uhhhhh... Failed how exactly? As much as I detest all things M$, they are right now the on top but their market share is declining. So which decade are you talking about where M$ failed to catch Apple?
Are you saying that neither Nokia nor SE has the skills to deliver, and if so to deliver what? Right now, it appears that Nokia has the technological advantage over Apple in terms of specifications. Apple has the software high ground. Which do you think will be easier to overcome with a few million thrown around here and there? Nokia has made no attempt, at least that I know of, to put a desktop on their phones as they didn't need to. They did however make the conduits and links to those desktops. This suited their biz model and bottom line. I have visited Nokia's R&D facilities, and spoken with their engineers. They are not worried in the least about what the iPhone has to offer technically as they can match it and in many cases deliver better performance. What is of no interest to them is putting a desktop OS on their phones.
If you can't tell the difference between the quality of Apple's OS and Microsoft's OS then I can't help you. But to everyone else MS's is mediocre at best. It's of poor quality.
The technological advantage that Nokia has is not that significant. Most of it is in the chips produced by third parties, though there is quite a bit of work in doing the RF design in each model. But the point is that that is not an enduring competitive advantage. At some point Apple will gather together enough RF engineers and beat Nokia at its own game, all the while being in front on the software side. Nokia engineers should be very worried. It's exactly that engineering mindset that is their weakness: "Oh we can create it just tell us what the specs are". But the real difficult problems cannot be specified and require things other than plain technical understanding. The fact people find gadgets so hard to use, and increasingly so speaks to this. Nokia doesn't even understand or see the problem, let alone being able to solve it.
While I agree about Nokia's mediocre products (I prefer Sony Ericsson's UIQ touch screen interface to Nokia's button and menu infested S60), I don't think your point about speed or the browser is right.
Nokia's latest phones have a Webkit based browser that renders almost identically to the iPhone and you can use the 7.2Mbps tethered to a laptop, which you can't do with an iPhone at all at any speed.
Nokia suck at user interfaces - Apple rule. Once you're past the user interface though you realise there's lots of things missing in the iPhone. Teno said it earlier - what the iPhone does do, it does well. Unfortunately for many people, it's what it doesn't do that rules it out and it's frustrating that some of the things it doesn't do at all are very simple features you expect on even cheap phones these days.
I also wonder how Apple will add features without complicating the interface for people who bought the thing because it was so simple.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable. Tethering is besides the point, why have a "smart" phone if you need a laptop to use it. Obviously the question is how usable is the browser stand alone.
I think criticising the iphone for features is pretty premature. Nokia's first versions were missing things and still do. I still can't work out why you can't charge a Nokia phone from USB without an adaptor when it has a USB plug. But yes there are huge holes in the feature set. The one that bothers me the most is the lack of a modem interface (ie "tethering") which due to Apple's pandering to phone companies looks like will not surface for a while.
Are those American surveys?
I'd be very surprised if more people used email on phones than SMS in Europe and after SMS and Voice.
I saw a survey from Nokia a few months ago. I cannot find it anymore. It didn't specify what countries were surveyed. The survey asked the most used and most requested features. Email was the top feature, followed by SMS/MMS, and social networking.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable.
Quite.
Nokia uses Webkit, which renders the page identically to Mobile Safari.
But then they run it through their "MakeItLookLikeAssTM" technology. Which screws with all the fonts and spacing and produces something which hurts your eyes.
It is certainly true that two years ago Sony and Nokia had phones with more features than the iPhone.
For one half of us, that single fact makes the iPhone look dated and under-powered.
But the other half has a different opinion; Having hundreds of features which are badly-implemented and practically unusable is utterly without value.
It's easy to licence a GPS chip and cram it into your phone.
It's much harder to create an application which allows you to locate the nearest dry cleaners, and do it in such an elegant way that your mother could use it.
C.
They might have the same rendering engine, but the user interface is very different and the Nokia one is quite unusable. Tethering is besides the point, why have a "smart" phone if you need a laptop to use it. Obviously the question is how usable is the browser stand alone.
Have you used an E90, or any of the N-Series phones? If not, you can not make a valid judgment and your "facts" become moot. I have used both, and an iPhone and can say that in terms of rendering the images/sites/data. etc....they are about the same. the iPhone has a larger viewing area and the easier zooming function but I am comfortable browsing for the info that I need on both. You again, make the invalid assumption that the iPhone is a "smartphone" which it is not. Until it can store and forward documents, provide more than basic telephony functions, allows OBEX file transfers, allows data manipulation, it will remain an iPod that has a phone.
I think criticising the iphone for features is pretty premature. Nokia's first versions were missing things and still do. I still can't work out why you can't charge a Nokia phone from USB without an adaptor when it has a USB plug. But yes there are huge holes in the feature set. The one that bothers me the most is the lack of a modem interface (ie "tethering") which due to Apple's pandering to phone companies looks like will not surface for a while.
Premature? If Apple had marketed it as an iPod with phone, I do not think anyone would have complained, but they came out with this revolutionary smartphone that for the most part is crippled. If you are wondering about things, why doesn't that iPhone support A2DP? Most SE and Nokia's do.
Quite.
Nokia uses Webkit, which renders the page identically to Mobile Safari.
But then they run it through their "MakeItLookLikeAssTM" technology. Which screws with all the fonts and spacing and produces something which hurts your eyes.
It is certainly true that two years ago Sony and Nokia had phones with more features than the iPhone.
For one half of us, that single fact makes the iPhone look dated and under-powered.
But the other half has a different opinion; Having hundreds of features which are badly-implemented and practically unusable is utterly without value.
It's easy to licence a GPS chip and cram it into your phone.
It's much harder to create an application which allows you to locate the nearest dry cleaners, and do it in such an elegant way that your mother could use it.
C.
The web browser on Nokia's use SVG to render. Of course it will scale the fonts and graphos. This is what SVG does.
I saw a survey from Nokia a few months ago. I cannot find it anymore. It didn't specify what countries were surveyed. The survey asked the most used and most requested features. Email was the top feature, followed by SMS/MMS, and social networking.
To use your standards of proof. If you can not produce proof of this study, then it becomes your opinion.