In the next few weeks, I will be having a meeting with two members of Symbian, their marketing Manger and their head of Developer Relations.

Now this is nominally about FreEPOC, but the discussion will also involve talking about the end users, the little people, the hobby developers, OPL, and a host of other areas. But to be fair on them, and to prove I'm not just being evangelical, I thought I would make this offer to everyone here.

What questions would you like Symbian to answer? Also, would you like to say something to them? Any comments or questions posted under this topic I will take with me and try to find out for you. I'll also leave hard copies with them so they can be taken away, read, and hopefully replied to in more detail.

Please be constructive, and give depth if you can.

This should be interesting.

Maybe this has been addressed in a document somewhere that I haven't read, but do Symbian have a minimum specification for the hardware that run their OS? And by minimum, I don't mean the minimum that is required to run, but a minimum that is required for innovative use.

I know that Microsoft, with the PocketPC, have said to manufacturers; "right, you can licence this, but you need xMB of RAM, xMB ROM, xMhz processor and these connections". This means that most PocketPC products, although dull as a duck, are of a very high specification because they have met the minimum requirements set by Microsoft.

As a (happy) owner of a 9210 and a 7650, I still wonder how these products (especially the 7650) were ever allowed past the design stage with such a low amount of RAM. While RAM is only one aspect of such complex devices, don't Symbian get a say in what devices can run their OS?

M$ sets those minimum specs so that windoze for PDAs looks good, hence why they all have a faster CPU than one of my desktops and one of my laptops put together. No doubts M$ choice in RAM CPU etc are all designed to fill Bill's friends pockets so they get bigger and better christmas presents.

I'd be interested, as to what screen formats/resolutions (post Psion devices)Symbian intend to support. We used to have some interesting Hi res. devices around, but with variants being aligned into very specific variants, I think we could loose this.

Also, on the development front, are we likely to see a more cohesive/consistent stratagy for multi platform software. It would be nice to be able to use essentially the same dev. tools, be it for a SonyEricsson device, or a Nokia device etc. This would make development more attractive for the platform.

Zuber

1)
I absolutely agree with TANKERx about Symbian setting down 'recommendations' (at least) to hardware manufacturers. It's such a classic situation where the hardware manufacturer skimps on CPU power and memory to save on the components cost, BUT it leads to a poor performing device which is inherantly flawed. Such a thing nearly destroyed WinCE, but credit to MS they said: this software needs a specific minimum spec. Because, for PDA use somthing like the Nokia 9210 for example, really should have had a better performance.

2)
Please. How come users' can't 'Save to CSV' or TXT or 'Backuo Contacts to CSV' on the Nokia 9210 in the Contacts app? Am I expected to use and sync with MS Outlook? I don't use it. If my 9210 is smashed or broken and I loose all the data - what use is a Symbian Contacts file backed up to my notebook going to do without a device to reinstall to? I don't have anything which can "rescue" the data for me. Sorry, but this for me is reason enough for me not to use Symbian OS again.

1)
I absolutely agree with TANKERx about Symbian setting down 'recommendations' (at least) to hardware manufacturers. It's such a classic situation where the hardware manufacturer skimps on CPU power and memory to save on the components cost, BUT it leads to a poor performing device which is inherantly flawed. Such a thing nearly destroyed WinCE, but credit to MS they said: this software needs a specific minimum spec. Because, for PDA use somthing like the Nokia 9210 for example, really should have had a better performance.


Side note here, there was no cost saving on the 9210's CPU and memory, the official line was that the CPU is the same 206MHz ARM chip as used by M$ PDAs (running at 1/4 of the normal speed) and there were apparently issues Nokia had getting it to address any more RAM at the time.

Another thing...... that Data application!!!!!! Is there any chance that maybe, perhaps, even for a fee, Symbian would release that for ER6?

- how do they see the war between palm os, pocketpc and symbian ? who will be the winner, how and why ?
- will they make some standardizations on symbian os to exchange data between different symbian powered devices and also other devices ?
- how will symbian os be change in the future, what will it offer ?
- what do you plan to improve it ?

It looks like this meeting will be going ahead in the second week of September, so hoepfully we can have a lot of informed opinions for them to think about before then.

Forgot to request OPL support on all symbian devices. Just incase you didn't think of it Ewan :D

More seriously though, it was to be made availabe across all symbian platforms (accepting the need for adaptation per device), I think it/symbian would get a massive boost in tems of people looking into possible software development. I think many C++ developers would probably want to dabble a little before considering C++ based apps.

Zuber

I'll just bring this back to the top. THis meeting is going to go ahead sometime next week. To start wih it wil be a gentle informa meet to work out what Symbina thinks of Hobby Developers and vice versa.

I'm regarding this not as a FreEPOC opportunity, but one for the whole community, and have stressed that to them.

Any issues not detailed above, please let me know.

get simpler c++ sdk's, which work with 2 or 3 files and not 20 files of code ... which then still won't compile ...