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Symbian: The forgotten FOSS phone OS

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  • Oh, maan... I still remember my 5800, I loved that phone to pieces... Excellent speaker system for the time (it was genuinely stereo and had a bit of meat on the sound, too!), my first touchscreen (which was a bit frustrating due to my thick logs, but worked perfectly with the stylus), and it was also my very first experience with multiplayer on a phone! Used to play that default racing game with a year mate in Uni, and it was very fun! And the OS was as an OS should be: so smooth as to not even register with the user!

    Edit: oh, and the full QWERTY was very nice, although I was fresh off the keypad, so it was a bit awkward.

    My Nokia 701 also has Stereo:
    Nokia 701
    And the sound isn't too shabby either.

  • My Nokia 701 also has Stereo:
    Nokia 701
    And the sound isn't too shabby either.

    Well, I can't speak for that one as I've never used it (nice though, looks like a proper Nokia should, gone through war and still running fine!), but the 5800 was a completely new experience for me in terms of phone-mounted speakers. Like, this was like a miniaturised sound system. The levels were unexpectedly balanced, the speakers were mounted well apart (at either end of the phone lengthwise), the stereo definition was very clear and dynamic, and it was loud and crisp enough to use as background music generator for a light social gathering, like a dorm room mini-party, setting the mood for... other activities, etc. without sounding like frying bacon.

    Edit: I'm not a "play stuff through phone speakers" kinda' person, but the 5800, the Nexus 6, and the Zenfone 10 are the only phones with speakers so good, that they determined me to make an exception:))

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    Have a look at what came before Symbian : Psion series 5

    In the end, when the Series 5 finally shipped, it was like being transported into the future, only through a very murky tunnel.

    Gretton’s hardware clocked in at a meagre-sounding 18Mhz — but performed like a desktop Intel PC from just two years previously — and it could still maintain 30 hours use on two AA batteries. Once the circuitry was complete, the Series 5 performed the same tasks as its Windows CE rivals but used only a quarter of the power.

    I still have two working Psion 5MX palmtops and love them to death.

  • To be fair, Nokia flodded the market every year with a ton of different phones

    Which, honestly, was another thing I've come to love about the old Nokia! They weren't just phones, they were accessories as well! Every model had a clear personality and a target audience! I remember my mum had a thing for changing her phone often, especially with models only found in other countries (she would find THE weirdest salespeople, who brought in phones from friggin' Spain and such, and they were way cheaper than retail), and... while I don't agree with her somewhat rampant consumerism, I gotta say, every single model had a Vibe!

    Besides my 5800, my other favourite from Nokia was my steel 6303 Classic. That was a downright sexy phone, and rugged to boot!

    Edit: as opposed to the contemporary "my glass slab of phone from Asus has more personality than Samsung's glass slab of phone because they set the cameras differently..." I made myself sad...

    Edit 2: Smartphone Banana phone (I'm talkin' the Matrix kind, with foldable screen, turns into AR glasses, and watch/wristlet-type thing when retracted!

  • Oh, maan... I still remember my 5800, I loved that phone to pieces... Excellent speaker system for the time (it was genuinely stereo and had a bit of meat on the sound, too!), my first touchscreen (which was a bit frustrating due to my thick logs, but worked perfectly with the stylus), and it was also my very first experience with multiplayer on a phone! Used to play that default racing game with a year mate in Uni, and it was very fun! And the OS was as an OS should be: so smooth as to not even register with the user!

    Edit: oh, and the full QWERTY was very nice, although I was fresh off the keypad, so it was a bit awkward.

    The 5800 was a nice phone, but for me the king of Symbian phones was the E7, I am still pissed mine got stolen 😞

    Loved the fold out keyboard, it made the phone absolutely amazing, I remember running Putty Touch on my E7, sshing into a friend's server to access irssi and go on IRC.

    Looked like such a hacker, and felt badass.

  • The 5800 was a nice phone, but for me the king of Symbian phones was the E7, I am still pissed mine got stolen 😞

    Loved the fold out keyboard, it made the phone absolutely amazing, I remember running Putty Touch on my E7, sshing into a friend's server to access irssi and go on IRC.

    Looked like such a hacker, and felt badass.

    That was my Goal Phone, yes! Either that, or the N8, but the 5800 was the only thing I could afford at the time:))

    They were really nice phones, properly into "smartphones" by that point - the 5800 was more like a... clever phone:))

    Oh, nooo!:( I'm so sorry, that's how I lost my 5800, too! Got mugged at night, ffs..

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    I really liked my Nokia 5800. I just checked online and see that it retailed for almost half the price of an iPhone. No wonder it was popular where I'm from. It seems if you loose in USA market you loose everywhere.

  • That was my Goal Phone, yes! Either that, or the N8, but the 5800 was the only thing I could afford at the time:))

    They were really nice phones, properly into "smartphones" by that point - the 5800 was more like a... clever phone:))

    Oh, nooo!:( I'm so sorry, that's how I lost my 5800, too! Got mugged at night, ffs..

    I used my first paycheck to buy myself an E7, less than a year later it was stolen 😞

    It was a gorgeous phone but DAMN slippery!

  • I used my first paycheck to buy myself an E7, less than a year later it was stolen 😞

    It was a gorgeous phone but DAMN slippery!

    Jeesus, that genuinely sounds painful!:( I'm very sorry I honestly don't know what to say... I mean, I understand it's just A Thing™, but some things are more than just "things"...

  • Maemo => Meego => Sailfish OS 👍

    Nothing ever replaced the N900. And there's a difference between a large corp developing a true Linux OS, as opposed to a tiny company. But still: it's not dead.

    My N810 was my single favorite piece of industrial design in a mobile device. Not perfect, and use cases moved on (to say nothing of the internals), but it was so unique and thoughtful and intricate without feeling overly fragile.

  • Which, honestly, was another thing I've come to love about the old Nokia! They weren't just phones, they were accessories as well! Every model had a clear personality and a target audience! I remember my mum had a thing for changing her phone often, especially with models only found in other countries (she would find THE weirdest salespeople, who brought in phones from friggin' Spain and such, and they were way cheaper than retail), and... while I don't agree with her somewhat rampant consumerism, I gotta say, every single model had a Vibe!

    Besides my 5800, my other favourite from Nokia was my steel 6303 Classic. That was a downright sexy phone, and rugged to boot!

    Edit: as opposed to the contemporary "my glass slab of phone from Asus has more personality than Samsung's glass slab of phone because they set the cameras differently..." I made myself sad...

    Edit 2: Smartphone Banana phone (I'm talkin' the Matrix kind, with foldable screen, turns into AR glasses, and watch/wristlet-type thing when retracted!

    The banana was the shit. Sooo cool. So expensive.

    Have you watched the Blackberry movie? Its a great insight into how Apple just crushed all of that market with the iPhone.

    I wish Nokia had opened their system for third Party developers. They already had the capabilities for an app store on the devices, my E62 had a "store". But it was just so empty and horrible

  • Jeesus, that genuinely sounds painful!:( I'm very sorry I honestly don't know what to say... I mean, I understand it's just A Thing™, but some things are more than just "things"...

    Hehe, I was really sad when it happened, but it was more than a decade ago 🙂

    I then ran a Nokia 300/Nokia E72 combo doe a while, and then a Nokia E72 for a few years untill I got an iPhone 5S

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    i still have a 808 Pureview. needs a new battery but otherwise I could flash a CFW for it to keep using it as a point and shoot camera lol

  • The banana was the shit. Sooo cool. So expensive.

    Have you watched the Blackberry movie? Its a great insight into how Apple just crushed all of that market with the iPhone.

    I wish Nokia had opened their system for third Party developers. They already had the capabilities for an app store on the devices, my E62 had a "store". But it was just so empty and horrible

    Yeah, I remember the closed nature of their system was the main thing which killed any planned OS updates for the 5800 - they were planning on adding more video support, but nothing through which to deliver it, so they just kinda' dropped the whole thing. I was left with Symbian 60, I believe:-?

    And by the time they did start opening it up, with the Es, it was already too late, because the Marketing Wars began.

    I haven't seen the Blackberry movie, thanks for recommending it! I remember those being a big thing, too, mum always wanted one (and a PT Cruiser, so take it with a grain of salt) and I seem to remember pretty much everyone giving a Blackberry-like a shot. Nokia certainly had a full physical QWERTY model, one of my exes had one. But I remember it being, like... no different than the standard keypad Nokia at the time, except with a wider screen and a keyboard.

  • Hehe, I was really sad when it happened, but it was more than a decade ago 🙂

    I then ran a Nokia 300/Nokia E72 combo doe a while, and then a Nokia E72 for a few years untill I got an iPhone 5S

    Ooh, nice! That was the point when I jumped on the Android bandwagon, the death throes for Nokia were kinda' showing by that point...

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    Not easy but not hard actually really simple if you had the right energy. Just ignore this so I don't scare you.
  • Programming languages

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  • My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

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    J
    I did read it, and my comment is exactly referencing the attitude of the author which is "It's good enough, so you should use it". I disagree, and say it's another dumbass shortcut to cash grab on a less than stellar ecosystem and product. It's training wheels for failure.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
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  • Google Shared My Phone Number!

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    Italy, and all of Europe, have always had a greater respect for personal and a lesser respect for business' profits than the U.S.
  • A Presence-sensing Drive For Securely Storing Secrets

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    Isn't that arguably the nature of encryption, though? If you lose the key, you're SOL by design.