Recently Nokia announced that they intended to buy the rest of Symbian, and then open up the platform. This should lead to some sort of consolidation of the platform. Nokia has done its part by merging the Series90 and Series80 platforms into Series60, but then there is also the question of UIQ and MOAP(S).

One of the reasons I went with Symbian originally (with the original SonyEricsson P800) was the promise of Over-the-air updates! Before my P800, I had used a number of feature phones, including the Ericsson T28w, and the Nokia 8890. I liked those phones, but in order to get another language pack, or to get a firmware upgrade that fixed problems with the phone’s existing firmware, I need to send the phone off to a professional (or service center) that flashed the new firmware to the phone, and sent it back to me. This cost me $50 each time I did it.
With the P800, I expected to be able to upgrade my OS from my desktop computer. I would just plug in my phone to my computer with USB, a downloader would download the new firmware and flash it to my phone. NOPE! It wasn’t like that! I still needed to send it into a service center. It didn’t really matter to me that much because I had the time to mess with my phone and reinstall all my apps.

Fast forward to the Nokia N80. I thought I was able to do OTA! NOPE! I got the ability to download and flash firmware on my desktop, so I did not have to send it out and pay money for the flash, but that still meant that all my data got whipped, so I needed to resync my PIM data and reinstall all my apps because installing on an SD card was not always dependable.

Now, all other smartphones are the same, palm, blackberry, windows mobile, and the iphone. You want new firmware? Erase and Install! Should I be bothered that symbian is the same way? Yes! I should be, because OTA and user upgradable firmware was something that was promised quite a while ago. While some features have trickled down, it’s taken a long time! I hope the new Symbian Foundation makes a batter OS and a better upgrade procedure.