Nokia trimming the "fat"...?

Well, it's good to know i'm not the only one to hold that opinion. :)

And, you have to realize, that the Symbian cuts made within Nokia are pretty devastating. I know DirectUI/Orbit was a pretty silly political thing, but I've also heard most of the Bluetooth team was let go, and supposedly some of the kernel engineers as well. I know you can't comment on that, but it seems pretty traumatic to me.
 
I happen to like the N8, but I'm very used to it's quirks. I can appreciate that others will view it differently than myself. I wasn't only referring to SW there, but the whole Nokia Symbian platform. Some of the problems mentioned over the last few years have been as a result of decisions made in the years before iPhone. You'd be surprised how long it takes to organise stuff that we ultimately think of as a relatively disposable gadget.

Even android with it's supposed fast development cycles took 5 years to make a first release. That's a luxury no other mobile platform has ever had, except maybe iOS. We don't know how long that was in development before the first iPhone.
 
Nope a meego device was scheduled for end of 2010. Nokia keeps failing at deadlines. Now "hopefully" since they said first half of 2011 expect it
consumers should expect it "realistically" end of 2011.
 
Oh, and if anyone is interested to see what the technology behind the future of mobile from Nokia looks like, the keywords you need are Qt Quick. It's the fastest to develop, easiest to work with development framework I've ever used. Even simpler than Flash, but with native performance.

Seriously, it's the dogs b***ocks.
 
It's certainly traumatic for me personally as well. Some really good people are being let go, but the aim is to focus development both in terms of future direction and development sites. When you're looking at things from an upper management level, you can't afford to think about the people involved otherwise you would be unable to change anything. It's just the real world of business, I don't bear any hard feelings. I'm not certain that all the kinks have been worked out yet, but I certainly agree with the direction and principles that these changes are supposed to bring about.
 
android killed symbian...symbian in now EOL. the problem I see for nokia now is soon customers will realize that symbian is now EOL. meego is a huge gamble especially if nokia is betting on Intel hardware, which is unproven in the mobile space. I think things get worse at Nokia, before they get better. Engadget gave thumbs down to N8 calling it unusable. And most of their reviewers have a longstanding affection for Nokia. qt is lipstick on the Symbian pig. Microsoft missed a cycle in the Mobile space and now are back in the game. It was said that they lost at least a year of progress. I think Nokia will have lost 3 before they even get back in the game with a competitive device.
 
Here's my problem with QT.

I love QT. I stick with QT applications when I can. My desktop is KDE. I think QT rocks.

When someone asks me to develop a GUI application for them, I use Java. If they specifically want Linux but not Java, I use GTK. It's just quicker and easier to develop for.

I'm sure QT Quick is great. I certainly hope it hides the .moc files and protects me from some of the, um, extra stuff QT brings to C++. But my problem with abstraction layers like that is, they invariably fall down when you try to go outside of the box and do anything advanced.



So, based on some of the people who were let go, it sounds like the future direction is a frozen symbian base with more emphasis on Meego. Again, I know you can't comment on that... but it's easy for us on the outside to read between the lines.
 
Yeah, knowing this and what's happened over the last day or two, I can't comfortably buy an N8 (or an E7 or C6). It's obvious it's an EOL device. There are no more future versions of Symbian, just a stagnating platform that'll get tweeks. As of Friday, Symbian became Windows Mobile 6.x

Still, I like Nokia's hardware and design, so I'll always watch for them in the tech news. When they finally get their software together, I'll take another look at what they have to offer.
 
Guess we can only sit back and watch.

Man I just went through this with a server OS (OpenSolaris, though it continues on without Corporate support). I hope Symbian isn't dead, it would be a PITA but Symbian isnt the only fish in the Nokia sea and definitely not in the mobile ocean. We'll all survive.
 
On oct 5 The VP in charge of Nokia's MeeGo Devices had resigned.
(According to a Nokia spokesman his departure does not affect MeeGo's rollout schedule which had called for a first device to be delivered before the end of 2010)

I'm sorry but anything nokia addresses about the state of symbian or meego from this point forward is pure spin/ damage control.

A lot of the board members here feel that it is elop cleaning house, what is more likely is that any executive other than opk is leaving on their own terms. These are die hard fanboys that have essentially formulated the symbian/ meego roadmap. If they are all leaving than it must be somthing quite drastic that elop has in mind for nokia's future.
And the only thing that makes any sense is that he is planning on adopting a new os such as android in lieu of symbian/ meego
 
How exactly do you know there won't be any future version of Symbian? Not saying there necessarily will be, but based on what can one draw such a definitive, unambiguous conclusion?
 
Qt Quick is unlike any Qt development you've done before. It's a declarative UI layer with a Javascript-like scripting language. It can automagically pick up Qt properties, signals and slots and you can put the UI layer on top of any Qt-bound language.

You can, as one of the examples illustrates, write a twitter client in a few pages without touching *any* C++ at all. And it will animate smoothly at 60fps on most supported hardware too. The gesture stuff isn't quite there yet, but it's coming.
 
DriveBy, thanks for clarifying on the role of the Symbian Foundation! I guess the line between the Foundation and Nokia always seemed, and to some extent perhaps really was, elusive.
 
woah, pause....
the N8 is actually an alright device.,..
now if you said they were responsible for the N97 as well, then I think folks would see it as a really good thing from Nokia's standpoint....

hhmmmm.....
perhaps Elop wants some drastic changes done to the Symbian core as well....
the UI was a given to be overhauled..
maybe we should look at it from his perspective...
if I was going to have a high end OS in Meego and a mid to low teir OS in symbian...
I had a development platform in QT that allowed work to be done on both...
wouldn't it benefit my company to have in house developers to work on Meego primarily and
work on symbian as a side project..
well, not a side project, but it's not going to be the primary agenda for the development team...
why keep all those coders whose primary job is no longer a primary platform within the company any more..?
 
What percentage of those teams globally were laid off? Do you know how many were left? E.g. among the 3400 Nokia Symbian developers still left in Finland?

Especially in the light of us now knowing that the code for the core OS was not developed within the Symbian Foundation...
 
I don't.. but I have read ex-SF/Nokia employees who have specifically said where the cuts were made. The BT team was let go. Kernel developers were let go.

Where the code was made is irrelevant. The fact that the people who did the coding were let go is the salient point.
 
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