S60 5th vs 3.1 Compatibility - the great (customer unfriendly) divide

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Discussion for Nokia Beta Labs

geoffg.ovi Tue, 2009-06-09 01:00

S60 5th vs 3.1 Compatibility - the great (customer unfriendly) divide

Hi Ilkka and Tommi,

As you know, I've been a keen supported of the Beta Labs project, concept and website for some time now, but I've found myself being more and more alienated over the past 9 months or so, because so many of the new Betas and for 5th Ed phones only, and I still have my venerable 95-1, and so have no way to take part.

Now that the N97 is about to be launched, and I'm considering buying it (even though it doesn't seem to be as much of a technical and hardware innovation as the N95-1 was), I realise that the situation is even more fragmented and problematic, as many of my favourite betas, which have become "must-have" applications for me, such as Nokia Audiobooks, Nokia Conversations, and Nokia Sportstracker (to name just 3), are NOT available in 5th edition.

I know that there are caveats with beta projects, but, for example I have a big investment of time and interest into creating for myself a large library of audiobooks in Nokia Audiobooks format.

Furthermore, this doesn't just apply to betalabs apps, but also to people's favourite 3rd party apps too. If they can't be sure that their suppliers will rewrite their favourite app for 5th, or what the timescale might be, what does that do for their desire to upgrade or their brand loyalty?

Of course I understand that this is a situation wich is well beyond your control within the Beta Labs project, but in my view it does have significant and serious implications for the project, and for Nokia's image and success as a brand.

Capturing users'; imagination, and retaining brand loyalty for Nokia is obviously FAR more important now than it ever has been, with the iPhone (wash my mouth out with soap!) and Android having grabbed such a huge profile in the Smartphone and associated add-on applications arena that S60's big head-start in ths respect has been (almost?) completely lost, in terms of public perception, and is seen as the poor relation, or ignored altogether ( c/f Opera Mobile!).

[A slight digression, but definitely relevant is that the new OVI store is an opportunity for Nokia to influence developers to revise their prices downwards for S60 apps, which have been a bone of contention with users for some time now, and which are I am told, much higher than those in Apple's Iphone app store.]

So some serious thought is needed by Nokia top management to get the initiative and the glamour back into Nokia's bit of the world and into Symbian S60, so that these grab back their place in the public's imagination back from the iPhone which has grabbed the star billing away from Nokia. The N97's ability to achieve this risks being hampered by the great divide - the lack of backwards compatibility with apps written for earlier OS versions, which has the potential to be a significant source of frustration and alienation in the customer base.

Beta Labs is an important part of this, and for Beta Labs to continue, develop and posper (and avoid alientating substantial parts of its community), we need a technical solution to overcome this great divide - i.e. we need a combination of:
a. More effort put into creating multiple versions (i.e. 3.1, 3.2 possibly and 5th ed versions) for apps with an obvious future and appeal like Sportstracker (and to other non-betalabs Nokia S60 3.1 and 3.2 apps and features too)
b. If they don't already esist, easy to use conversion facilities in the SDKs provided for developers to convert older apps to 5th Ed, and some sort of publicity campaign, or incentive scheme to encourage developers to convert and provide versions for the new OS)
c. Emulators written, so that 3.1 apps can be run (at smaller screen size etc), in 5th Ed.

I look forward to hearing your views, and if possible, those of Nokia more generally on this.

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mbrett Tue, 2009-06-09 08:49

I agree in part

I agree in part with what you are saying and feel the pain when new and interesting apps release on betalabs that are not 3.1 compatible (as I use and love my N95 8Gb). I too am contemplating the switch to the N97 as there is no other phone that tweaks my interest as much as it. I have been looking at touch screen phone for a long while now. In fact my last phone, dare I say it, was my sole venture away from nokia in the past 13 years and was a Sony Erricson M600i as it had a touch screen and half-qwerty keyboard (rocker keys with two letters per key). Anyway I degress.

Although I feel yor pain with regard to your 3.1 phone I do not wish Nokia to divert too much time and resource away from development for the future to make compatible apps for, let's admit it OLD, all be it excellent phones. All things must come to an end at some point, and the ethos of betalabs is about "Shaping a better future" and not shaping a better past.

With regard to Sports Tracker there is a 5th ed version out there as I have seen it working on colleagues' 5800 touch screen phones.

I do agree that emulators would be nice. The kind of thing that Microsoft did with the Xbox 360, enabling older xbox games to play on it [EDIT: Although reading Tommi's response below I suddenly remembered all of those non-transferable game saves. Bummer!!]. The issue as you point uot is going to be creating soft keyboard compatability for soley touch phones and tidying up screen size/resolution issues, along with the major issue of writing the code in the first place.

When it comes to application prices, I am more inclined to accept that it depends on teh application. If it is something more like Quick Office then I do not beleive the iPhone ( there I've said it) has the capability to make best use of these sorts of apps due to its soft keyboard. Probably wrong, but I have always classed the iPhone as a pretty phone, whereas I have classed my N95 8Gb as more of a mini computer and class the N97 as a further development of this capability. In this way more business centric apps could justify their present pricing. I do agree that the simpler clock, alarm, profile switching, etc. are over priced in places. Especially the Epoc ware apps as you could spend more than the cost of your phone off-contract on Epocware apps and still not have them all.

These are my numble opinions,for what they are worth.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

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tommivilkamo Tue, 2009-06-09 08:32

Hi Geoff, good to hear from

Hi Geoff, good to hear from you again!

I got a strange deja-vu feeling, almost like living 2006 again::
http://blogs.s60.com/2006/07/time_to_start_taking_good_care

Yes, we are once again living a transition phase, that is causing a disruption in add-on app compatibility. What happened last time, was that there was a huge cry in blogosphere for a couple of months, and then it quietened down. And S60 3rd Edition was quite a success in the marketplace. (note: if you think about PC operating systems or game consoles, the platform transitions have often been much more painful)

Once again, I'm quite optimistic: there are vastly better development platforms and business platforms (such as Ovi Store) for 3rd parties than ever. And even in strategic level, Nokia is publicly admitting that a thriving 3rd party ecosystem is more important than ever: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1308959.

Maybe that's just me, but 1 year from now, I don't think we will miss the old S60 3rd apps (= the ones that won't get ported to S60 5th) as much as we now might think.

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geoffg.ovi Wed, 2009-06-10 00:07

Hi MBrett. Thanks for your

Hi MBrett.

Thanks for your interesting reply. I take your point that Nokia's resources may be best focussed on new developments, although I guess their resources depend on sales, and part of my concern is a possible risk of their losing customers. I have an "N95 buddy" at work with whom I chat about the latest developments and who is a great enthusiast for the N95-1. However, he is now seriously tempted by all the other offerings such as those in the Android world.

I suppose that a parallel issue is keeping the Betlabs community loyal and active, and maintaining their interest, while significant numbers of them can't test either the newer or the older apps, depending on what kind of device they have. But I guess the membership will probably be self-renewing.

I agree with what you say about app pricing too, and about the limitations of that other device whose name we disdain to mention again(!)

Good news about a 5th ed version of Sport Tracker. I was basing my comment on what the Beta Labs page says - which is only that it is compatible with 3.1 devices. See http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/sports-tracker.

Hi Tommi,

I like your optimisim and I hope it is borne out by the way things develop.

Thanks for the links - both interesting, especially the second. Nokia never seems complacent, and always keeps moving forward. I look forward to Nokia putting the fruit-related Johny-come-latelys of the mobile market firmly in their place!

P.S. The "Forward Looking Statements" Caveat in the press release amused me by being longer than the press release itself.

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mbrett Wed, 2009-06-10 08:40

Must say the revelations over at SymbianGuru have me a little .

Must say the revelations over at SymbianGuru have me a little worried though.

http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2009/06/what-does-the-iphone-3g-s-me...

All I can assume is that the more discerning of us that note the difference between a true smart phone and a phone whose name I shall not mention will stick to the smart choice.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

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