It’s the first of many articles for the end of the year, but Tech Radar’s look forward into 2011 covers both familiar ground (more Android devices, iPhone 5, Windows Mobile 7 getting a bit of stability) but the comments on Nokia and Symbian at the close of the article are interesting. “Whether Nokia will come up with a true competitor to the iPhone or a high-end Android handset remains to be seen, but deep down, we kind of hope it does.” How many more end of year posts will crack open the media door for a Symbian success in 2011?

Yes, there’s always the scope to argue about whether Nokia need to have a high-end competitor when they’re “not that kind of company” but given the coverage online since the launch of Symbian^3, mainstream acknowledgment of any kind is nice to see, especially given the 2011 plans that we already know of.

To be fair they still managed to damn Symbian with faint praise (“The main difficulty for Nokia has been its insistence on using Symbian to drive its hardware”) and you could argue this is a smart editor covering the bases so in 2012 they can say “we told you so” no matter what happens – there’s a lot of that in end of year lists, but they’ve spotted the trend of updates to the OS and new hardware that could open the door for Nokia.

Time will tell, although I think they’re on the right track!

Tech Radar’s thoughts can be found here.