Hi,
Ian Mansfield wrote:
> Personal Opinion....
Respected - here is my Personal Experince.
> One of the huge advantages of Symbian is that it is backed by several
> major handset vendors. While Linux does have a vast number of
> developers working on it - they are volunteers, and have no
> commercial obligations to offer support when it is needed.
>
> What guarantee can you offer the network operator and content
> providers that a Linux bug will receive the necessary priority from
> its developers ?
>
> None.
In the consumer market, when there is a serious Symbian bug which makes
the mobile phone basically useless in certain cases, what actions do the
backing major handset vendors perform?
Most of the time nothing at all. A fix may be available in a future
firmware (months away) or perhaps in the next model. Upgrading the
existing phones in the consumer market doesn't happen much - those who
complain violently will have some kind of replacement instead.
So where is the difference?
> Now that may be acceptable to a programming geek on a backend server
> platform - but it is not acceptable in the consumer market.
>
> If a mass market handset has a software bug - then it needs to be
> fixed, and fixed NOW.
"Needs", yes, but does it happen within reasonable time (or at all) in
reality? Not in my personal experience.
> If the handset vendor lacks the ability to compel the volunteer
> developers to provide a bug fix (because there might be something
> better on TV that night, or they have all run off to Burning Man for
> a party), then they run the risk of damaging their reputation and
> market share.
These kind of fixes certainly do not become available (or installed)
overnight even for a platform backed by major handset vendors. In fact,
I'd almost be willing to bet that a fix may be out significantly quicker
on an open platform.
> The cost of that damage could easily outstrip the cost of licensing
> an OS that is backed up with commercial SLA's and service agreements.
Doubtful, IMHO.
> For that reason, I personally believe that for the consumer market -
> it is far safer to stick to using OS's that are backed by commercial
> service agreements and leave the geeky OS's to the smartphones where
> the users are more familiar with the flakyness (?) of complicated
> operating systems and are more forgiving when their handset crashes
> (after all, their PC probably crashes more often!).
I'm not saying that you are wrong in that the consumer market perhaps
will do best in sticking to Symbian or similar, but I don't think the
reasons you provide are correct.
Actually, if you are after a very safe and reliable phone for the
consumer, perhaps you should consider less frills (like basically no OS
at all) and a phone that just does voice? Shock, horror!
/ Jonas
--
Jonas Petersson | XMS Penvision | mailto:Jonas.Petersson@xms.se
Box 3294, Västgötegatan 13, S-600 03 Norrköping | http://www.xms.se/
Tel: +46 11 400 13 00 | Dir: +46 11 400 13 05 | Fax: +46 11 10 30 50
Received on Tue Sep 14 17:55:42 2004