From a UIQ enthusiast's perspective

[slitchfield]

It was fascinating to read Malcolm Lithgow's very detailed real-world head to head between some budget Symbian smartphones, the Nokia 6220 Classic and the Sony Ericsson G700 and G900. Mainly because Malcolm has been (and still is) a big fan of UIQ 3, which gives him a novel perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the two platforms (and individual devices). Some good points in here, even though most of us would have wanted to see a higher spec S60 device used for the comparison. (via Carnival of the Mobilists 135)

Read on in the full article.

[ares]

He used a s60 device that is similar in size, weight, price, like it should be done for a proper comparation.

[slitchfield]

I didn't mean that the comparison was unfair - I was referring to using higher-spec, less limited, devices on both sides. I'd have liked to see his take on the N82 (for example) against something from the UIQ 3 world.

[Tzer2]

I wonder what aspects of UIQ will be used on the unified Symbian platform.

It'll be mostly based on S60 for obvious reasons of market share, but they did talk about UIQ playing at least some part.

[lithgow]

I do quite like the 6220c, it's a very appealing little phone in many ways.

Some insight into why it was in the comparo, other than the obvious (price and size): this was the first S60FP2 phone we could get our hands on easily.

Why were we so interested in Feature Pack 2? Simply because some of the core Symbian APIs we use in DreamLife are only present on FP2, for some bizarre reason (bizarre because those API's were in Symbian 9.0, which the original S60 3rd Ed is based on), and we didn't want to back port just yet (although obviously we'll have to eventually).

On a personal note, I also wanted to give S60 the best chance, thus using the latest version. It does have some handy features. One which I appreciate quite a bit is the "application is currently running" indicator shown in the menu.

I guess the biggest take-home lesson to me is not just the difference between S60 and UIQ 3, but the way that Nokia's philosophy of design makes their phones so different from SE's.

I fully expect to see this difference carry through to the Symbian Foundation based phones, and that's a part of what I was trying to capture.

In terms of comparing the G900 to, say, an N96, from what I've read I would say that I'd be able to live with an N96, because it has everything the 6220c had, plus WiFi and a bigger battery (oh, and the motion sensors would be useful to me, too). The price difference would kill the deal, though, so the venerable N95 original is a more likely real-world winner (but I'm not sure how much worse its version of S60 is in terms of usability).

[Tzer2]

Lithgow, I'm currently reviewing the 5320, Nokia's lowest priced S60 so far, and according to the specs it has 85 megabytes of free RAM which is probably more than any previous Nokia.

[hargs48]

Originally Posted by Tzer2

Lithgow, I'm currently reviewing the 5320, Nokia's lowest priced S60 so far, and according to the specs it has 85 megabytes of free RAM which is probably more than any previous Nokia.

The N95 8GB & N82 boots-up with around 90MB free RAM...