Visit document2.tumblr.com.

Note: Pre-existing content will continue to be available on this blog.

The UIQ era started in 2002 with the launch of the P800 which introduced never-before-seen smartphone functionality into a world of cheap and cheerful small-screened cellphones with exchangeable colour covers. For those of you readers not familiar with the Symbian platform, UIQ, just like S60, was a user interface that sat on top of the low-level Symbian OS that was tailored for touchscreen operation as opposed to S60 which was always keypad-driven right up to S60 5th Edition. Of course, this OS/UI split has been essentially nullified after the Symbian Foundation came into existence, taking S60 5th Edition and renaming it to Symbian^1, announcing the next-generation Symbian^3 platform as being feature-complete earlier this year and as they say, the rest is history. The P800 was such a revolutionary device that it was pretty much the iPhone of its time; the one device that changed everything. With this single device, Sony Ericsson had managed to establish itself as an innovator in the mobile space. Subsequently, the P900 and P910 were released, each refining the P800 formula with improved design and upgraded functionality. These class of devices introduced features that truly changed the game although we might not really look upon such functionality as being all that advanced today. For example, the P800 had a built-in VGA camera, Bluetooth, handwriting recognition and an innovative flip form factor. That flip was totally cool – it not only allowed for one-handed usage, the buttons on the flip actually prodded the touchscreen mechanically when pressed instead of relying on electronic circuits as was the norm at the time, and could even be removed entirely. The P900 then adopted a more mature-looking design with a silver exterior rather than the blue-and-white P800, even if nothing had changed much internally. The P910 still ran on the same software platform as its predecessors and looked similar to the P900 but had a full QWERTY keyboard mounted on the underside of the flip, double the RAM of the P900, supported Memory Stick Pro Duo among other improvements. This was 2004.

Sounds impressive? This was probably the height of the UIQ era for it all went downhill afterwards. The much-delayed P990, released in August 2006, was fraught with software issues for much of its lifetime and always suffered from a severe lack of RAM as well as a lack of processing power leading to a really slow, laggy experience. The P990 certainly did not suffer from a lack of improvements – it had a higher-resolution screen, the full keyboard had been shifted under the screen rather than on the underside of the flip, there was WLAN for the first time, the camera was hugely improved with a 2-megapixel module, autofocus and LED flash, full HTML web browser all built on top of the all-new UIQ3 platform which promised greater flexibility and an improved user experience. Yet, on the other side of the coin, the P990′s firmware was filled with both major and minor bugs that simply made the device completely unusable – users reported that the device was constantly freezing and would even reboot itself even when doing absolutely nothing. These bugs were not entirely fixed even by the final firmware release when Sony Ericsson decided it could no longer afford to continue pouring resources into fixing the firmware of the P990, leading to a whole gaggle of disgruntled consumers and developers who were left with deeply-flawed flagship smartphones that they’d paid an arm and a leg for earlier. The P990 was one device that was constantly starving for free RAM – Sony Ericsson had not upgraded the RAM going from the P910 to the P990 despite the increased system requirements of the UIQ3 platform. For the flagship UIQ device to suffer such a fate was appalling and reflected badly on the UIQ platform as a whole.

Sony Ericsson’s attempt to diversify their UIQ portfolio by introducing devices that slotted below the P990 in terms of functionality did not go too well either. Being built on the same basic hardware platform as the P990, the M600 and W950 suffered from the same RAM shortages as the beleaguered flagship and lacked even a built-in camera in addition to other drawbacks such as the unwieldy numeric keypad on the W950. It goes without saying that these two devices were not successful in terms of sales figures despite the marketing effort thrown behind the W950 for instance. Users simply did not want a slow, laggy Walkman phone lacking a camera and an acceptable numeric keypad even if it had 4GB of internal memory and ran a smartphone OS (which was actually judged by most users to be too complicated to use), especially pitted against its immediate predecessor in the range, the feature-phone W900. The M600 simply disappeared from the scene after a few months, and to this day remains the only device in the M-series.

The P990 was eventually succeeded by the P1, which fixed its predecessor’s flaws, looked tons better than its chunky predecessor and for a time was actually rather successful in its own right. However, Sony Ericsson was, by this time, no longer seen as a technological leader and even the P1, packing the same old slow 208MHz processor, paled against the competition. To add insult to injury, it was still a really expensive smartphone that only appealed to a niche audience despite further improvements in the UIQ user interface from the P990 days. Its Walkman brother, the W960, was also launched at around the same time period but had a standard numeric keypad instead of the P1′s pivoting keyboard, a repositioned back button and 8GB of internal memory. Yet, neither of these devices managed to acquire significant mindshare against competing flagship devices like the N95 and N95 8GB from Nokia. In addition, UIQ itself had not received as many improvements as S60 in the same period of time, and it was clear that the P1 and W960 only really appealed to Sony Ericsson fans and not much else.

It was only in 2008 that Sony Ericsson finally realized that UIQ needed some mass-market appeal and thus brought it downmarket in devices like the G700 and G900, built with the same hardware specifications as the P1 and W960 but with many user interface improvements such as a tabbed homescreen, stickies app and a new media suite to match the rest of the feature-phone line. However, these devices still retained the same old slow processor as the 2006 P990 and were considered to already be severely dated at launch. The G900 did have touch autofocus and a 5-megapixel camera as well as WLAN, but the G-series duo failed to capture much attention and simply faded away together with the UIQ platform, which collapsed later that year.

Despite Sony Ericsson’s hardware efforts continually letting UIQ down, UIQ, especially UIQ3, certainly wasn’t an incompetent touchscreen user interface. For all its flaws, UIQ had non-intrusive notifications instead of the constant dialogs in S60. UIQ had automatic access point selection long before Destinations came along in S60. UIQ devices had built-in document editing before S60 devices did. UIQ’s PIM apps (Calendar et al) were worlds ahead of the S60 equivalents, and continue to be so in certain aspects. UIQ had basic app store functionality that was better than Nokia’s Download! equivalent. UIQ devices could connect to BlackBerry servers. UIQ’s messaging client was more capable than S60 Messaging. Some people still consider the UIQ user interface as being better than S60, at least in, say, 2006. For all its flaws, I found UIQ on the P990 to be pretty enjoyable to use and for one thing, UIQ phones were insanely hackable. I’ve since forgotten how many hours I’d spent loading the W950′s Walkman app on the P990, tweaking its sound and camera drivers for better audio output and camera functionality, changing the system font, or just hacking around, but it was great fun. UIQ’s death wasn’t because it was severely lacking in any way, but because Sony Ericsson never leveraged its potential after the P910. Of course, for the Palm OS, it was not only severely lacking in many ways, Palm never leveraged its potential after the Treo 650. But I digress.

Do I miss UIQ? Of course, the entire mobile world is completely different from how it was in 2008 and UIQ now is severely outdated and outclassed in just about every way possible. Yet, I still look upon UIQ as something that could have been so much better than what it managed to achieve in the market. You know, maybe Sony Ericsson just doesn’t know how to build great smartphones. Just take a look at the Satio for ample proof. In a post-Symbian Foundation+Android+iPhone world, UIQ is dead and forgotten and it should be.

Anyone willing to sell me a G900 on the cheap?

It was particularly interesting to take a look at my tutor’s daughter’s Nokia 5800 a week ago and compare her device to mine. I was almost dismayed to find her standby screen bereft of any screen elements. No shortcuts bar. No calendar display. No search button. Nothing but the battery/signal indicators, clock, operator readout, date, a couple of buttons for the dialer and contacts app, and the default wallpaper. When asked why, she merely replied that she only used her 5800 for music, calling and messaging. I couldn’t believe it. After all, an el-cheapo, bargain-basement, ultra-budget Nokia 5130 can handle that perfectly fine.

I opened the menu and was even more surprised to find all the icons in their default positions. She hadn’t even bothered to replace the Download! app with the Ovi Store client. The all-but-useless Help app was still in the root folder. The Applications menu was likewise crammed with a whole bunch of icons for utilities such as the Settings Wizard, just like how it had been out of the box. I’ll be mentioning the Applications menu on the 5800 again later, but rearranging the Applications menu and dumping all the virtually-useless utilities into a single Utilities folder is definitely one of the first things I’d do with a factory-state 5800.

Because of that, as well as because I had to do a complete backup+wipe+restore cycle on my 5800 over this weekend because it was constantly glitching up and the memory card was corrupted, I thought I’d do a little post on my current 5800 setup, which, for me, is as perfect as it gets.

I like to consider myself a pretty geeky smartphone user; I’m definitely not afraid to tinker and fiddle and muck around with the device for hours on end, but at the same time I need things to ‘just work’ instead of screwing up all the time and preventing me from getting things done. I’ve alternated between installing next to no third-party applications and supercharging my device with a whole bunch of third-party apps, games and little enhancements only to have the 5800 slow down like an obese cheetah. I’ve since become not so much of a gamer (not enough time) and given up trying to do work-related stuff with the 5800 (no keyboard+crappy email functionality makes it more trouble than it’s worth) as well as finally realizing that there’s much, much more to a smartphone that apps that I’d realistically only use less than once a month (take that, iPhone apologists!), and all these factors have influenced how I’ve set up my 5800 this time around and is particularly evident in the third-party apps I’ve installed on the 5800.

For instance, I used to have QuickOffice and Adobe PDF installed on the 5800 (it doesn’t have these two apps installed out of the box) but I’ve decided to forgo them and reclaim some precious internal memory this time. Adobe PDF is slow, clunky and scrolling around a page is like swimming in a sea of molasses. QuickOffice may be indispensable to some but the lack of a keyboard on the 5800 makes editing documents and spreadsheets a pain, not to mention that for some reason it is also particularly painfully slow on the 5800. I’m not missing either of these apps one bit, surprisingly. I originally wanted to give Nimbuzz the boot, but decided against it as IM continues to be quite essential for me as a method of communication.

One particular type of app I definitely had no hesitation in not installing was news widgets such as AP Mobile and the Straits Times widget. Why? Basically, these news sites can be accessed just as easily via the web browser, hence these widget-style apps really don’t have that much value to them. On top of that, they are typically really slow and clunky, resulting in my particular distaste for these apps. The only exception is Facebook; despite the app’s many lackings and despite that fact that I don’t really like it, the Facebook widget for Symbian does make the Facebook experience on Symbian substantially better. In any case, it sure beats the mobile site or even the touch-optimized mobile site. I’m definitely holding on for Nokia Messaging for Social Networks though.

I focused on simplicity this time round, and deliberately kept the app load-out as low as I could, only installing what was essential and ditching what wasn’t. Hopefully this will improve the 5800′s performance in the long run as it really does get slower and more bogged-down over time just like any other computer. In addition, I decided against installing any app that has to be kept in the background in order to work such as KeyLockClock, VibrateCall among others – conserving RAM is extremely important with all of Nokia’s Symbian^1 devices thus far. The apps I deemed essential can literally be counted with the fingers on both hands; in an age of app stores offering 100000 apps for download, it is rather surprising to find that one typically considers pretty few apps to be must-haves. It could be that Nokia’s Symbian smartphones usually come loaded with all the functionality an average user would need as opposed to Apple’s policy of allowing third-party developers to fill in the gaps; it could be that most people don’t have the time to pay attention to that many apps. Here’s all the apps I decided were indispensable in my daily work:

1. Gravity (Twitter client)
2. Playlist DJ (automatic playlist generator)
3. ScreenSnap (screenshot app)
4. PhoneTorch (torch app)
5. SPB Weather (weather forecasts delivered in a slick way)
6. YouTube (self-explanatory)
7. Elements Touch (periodic table )
8. Facebook (self-explanatory)
9. Nimbuzz (IM client. The best on Symbian IMO)
10. gReader (Google Reader client)

I might be not much of a gamer, but there’s one game I can;t do without at present, and that’s… Doodle Jump. No, seriously. And that’s all, really. Who said 10 apps and 1 game ain’t enough? In exchange for an app menu that’s substantially less cluttered and packed with icons, the 5800 is noticeably faster, at least for now.

I’ve got a particular set of preferences that pretty much remain the same across devices, apart from all my preferred WLAN networks and Bluetooth settings. I usually stick with the default alert tones, turn off keypress tones (hugely annoying!), and this time I’ve decided to stop using the 5800′s haptic feedback, partly because it isn’t all that consistent and also because it’s a little irritating, to me at least. I’ve got the Contacts Bar homescreen activated but I do turn off the Contacts Bar itself – it takes a longer time to find a favourite contact via the scrolling icons as compared to just opening the Contacts app and narrowing down the list. As a bonus, I can see more of the wallpaper I usually stick with default themes, as they do take up less RAM than third-party themes, but this time I’ve decided to switch to something a little more interesting than white text on a black background and have applied Tehkseven’s Maemo 5 theme on my 5800. My shortcuts bar contains nothing but core apps like Messaging, Calendar, Notes and Calculator; quick access to these apps is very important to me.

Apart from that, my display is set on full brightness – I chose the 5800 with its screen as a primary deciding factor so I might as well enjoy it! Of course, I have the accelerometer turned on with full capabilities enabled, such as screen auto-rotation and flip-to-silent for calls as well as alarms. I’ve never needed to calibrate the 5800′s touchscreen, but I do set headphones as the default accessory on the 5800 so as to avoid having to click through the accessory selection prompt each time something is plugged into the 3.5mm jack. I turn off auto keyguard (more annoying than useful, especially with the easy-to-use keylock slider on the right), and I do keep my notification LED on without enabling the breathing light (it’s irritating, though some like it). Lastly, I turn off 3G without fail each time. Saves battery life immensely.

I hope I’ve given you an insight as to how I like my phones to be setup At least for now, I’ve managed to rebuild my device exactly how I like it, until the airs of discontent set in once again. Now, how do I resist the temptation to install even more apps and mess things up once again? Someone?

I’ve been pretty harsh on the iPhone ever since it was launched due to the ultimately limited platform, which continues to lack features such as full multitasking, filesystem access, Mass Storage Mode, replacement of default apps, sideloading of apps (anyone notice a pattern here?) and even Flash support. In my opinion, for a smartphone to even be considered ‘smart’, the above capabilities have to be present in addition to being able to run native apps – otherwise, leaving apps aside, how would these platforms be any different from a typical featurephone OS like Nokia’s Series 40? A lowly Nokia 5130 can only run its music player and radio in the background. Its filesystem is not directly accessible by the user. Its default apps cannot be replaced completely by third-party apps i.e. you can’t set Opera Mini as its default web browser. But all these limitations are present simply because it’s not a smartphone; the 5130 is just an average featurephone. Yet, you can sideload Java apps and games, it does have Mass Storage Mode, and it definitely supports microSD cards. So are we about to call Series 40 a more capable platform than Windows Phone 7 Series or the iPhone OS? Obviously not – but no one can deny that it is downright appalling to have such a serious lack of basic system-level functionality in what’s considered a ‘modern’ smartphone platform. I’m not even asking for much. All I want is to be able to switch between multiple running apps, and it is now painfully obvious that iPhone OS and Windows Phone 7 Series currently lack that rather basic bit of functionality that *every* smartphone platform should have. Before all you iPhone apologists scream “BUT THERE IS MULTITASKING!” or “JAILBREAK YOUR IPHONE, MORON!” at me, I’m referring to user-accessible multitasking right out of the box. If even a platform like Symbian (which is often considered clunky and old and outdated, by the way) can provide that, why not the iPhone? Why not Windows Phone 7 Series?

Ironically, Windows Mobile 6.x had all the capabilities that Windows Phone 7 Series now lacks, which makes it all the more ridiculous that Microsoft should choose to remove functionality that already exists, and may I add, actually works fine. Any Windows Mobile user knows that despite all the clunkiness and cobwebs surrounding the stylus-oriented user interface, Windows Mobile 6.x does have full multitasking out of the box, filesystem access, support for microSD cards, Mass Storage Mode, replacement of default apps, sideloading of apps, and one more thing: Windows Mobile 6.x is insanely hackable. Just ask anyone from xda-developers. Why, Microsoft? In your desire to ape the iPhone, functionality that used to exist in your old platform has now been removed completely. For all your wonderful user interfaces and beautiful graphics, Windows Phone 7 Series users cannot run multiple apps at once and switch between them.  Even more ironically, multitasking is rumoured to make its debut in iPhone OS 4.0.

Look – dumping a clunky, old user interface is definitely a good thing, but certainly not at the expense of functionality. In fact, Android is a perfect example of a smartphone platform that manages to strike a balance between pretty, shiny graphics and smooth transitions and core smartphone functionality. This ‘trend’ of dumbing down a smartphone platform in the process of bringing the UI up to speed with its competitors does make the platform easier to use and understand and more user-friendly on the whole, but also severely limits what can be achieved with these devices and allows little room for tinkering, not to mention that many potential smartphone users do actually want features such as multitasking and Mass Storage Mode in their devices instead of being arbitrarily limited in what they can do. Say what you like about Symbian’s UI, but it is a fact that it is the most mature and feature-rich smartphone OS out there. With two major smartphone platforms now really no better than a featurephone OS that runs native apps, I guess we’ll have to go Symbian, Android, Maemo(Meego) or even BlackBerry in order to get “real” smartphone functionality. As it is, I’m terribly disappointed with Windows Phone 7 Series. Colour me uninterested.

Windows Phone 7 Series

What can I say about this except WOW. Microsoft finally did something daring and gutsy and completely reinvented the tired old Windows Mobile platform and gave it an entirely new form, and it actually looks really good! Of course, we have yet to know about most of the nitty-gritty details about Windows Phone 7 Series, especially regarding stuff like apps, filesystem access and multitasking (it probably doesn’t have any way to switch between several running apps), but what we know right now is definitely a fine start to the complete rejuvenation of the Windows Phone, and Microsoft’s tighter control over their ecosystem will ensure a continuous stream of devices that don’t suck instead of a truckload of Windows Mobile devices that work like crap. Windows Phone 7 Series will get on devices nearing the end of 2010, and I’m really excited to see how this pans out for Microsoft and the platform, especially since this represents a complete break from Windows Mobile and its legacy; no apps written for Windows Mobile 6.5.x and below will be compatible with Windows Phone 7 Series, for example, and no current Windows Mobile devices will be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series according to Microsoft, not even the mighty HTC HD2. Just one immediate complaint right now: Why the stupid, clumsy name, Microsoft?

HTC Desire/Legend/HD Mini

HTC held a press conference at MWC to announce several new devices. The Desire, as we all know, is HTC’s rebadged version of the Nexus One but with the added Sense UI and Flash support, the Legend is the direct successor to the well-received Hero with an absolutely-gorgeous unibody aluminum shell while the HD Mini is a shrunken version of the HD2 and runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 with Sense UI. I’m personally liking the Legend a lot – its design and aesthetics are simply beautiful and a definite step up from the Hero, and its middle-of-the-road specifications are actually rather acceptable for most people. We can definitely expect more from HTC as we go deeper into 2010; who knows, my next device of choice might actually be a HTC Android smartphone.

Symbian^3 unveiling

At long last, Symbian^3 is feature-complete and has been officially unveiled by the Symbian Foundation with a pretty slick and snazzy UI video. Really interested to see how the Symbian platform evolves from its S60v5 legacy and whether it can still manage to capture mindshare in what is already a very crowded marketplace. Symbian^3 is definitely a huge step towards repairing Symbian’s unhealthy reputation for tired user interfaces and rubbish apps – I can’t wait to see the new platform on devices, which is probably going to happen by the second half of 2010. From the video, the Symbian^3 UI doesn’t look that much different from Symbian^1 on the surface, but it definitely appears to be a whole lot slicker and smoother with much prettier visuals, which would definitely attract many consumers to the Symbian platform. Here’s hoping the UI video actually represents how Symbian^3 would work in real life, unlike the now-infamous original N97 promotional video which promised more than was delivered. Here’s hoping.

MeeGo

Nokia and Intel announced that they would be merging their Maemo and Moblin Linux-based OSes to form MeeGo, aimed at all sorts of connected devices from smartphones to full-fledged computers. While I don’t yet understand the full implications of this merger that well, what it means to the consumer is that the N900 has become an end-of-the-road device, Maemo shall no longer exist in its current form and MeeGo shall be the OS running on Nokia’s high-end N900-style Nseries tablets going forward. The question is: does MeeGo have a chance at succeeding, and couldn’t Nokia just commit to Maemo and improve it, especially in light of just-how-darned-incomplete Maemo 5 is? We’ll have to wait for more insight on this one – even I am still unsure what exactly this merger is aimed to achieve. One thing I’m certain of, however, is that the tech industry is gradually descending into a sea of stupid names. We had iPad. JooJoo. Bada. Bing. Windows fricking Phone 7 Series. Now MeeGo. To think I was under the impression that Yahoo was bad.

Nokia

Nokia certainly did not have much activity during MWC apart from the MeeGo announcement and a short update on their (apparently rather successful) service strategy that meant anything to the general consumer but Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review has just painted a glowing picture of Nokia’s future in his latest weekly newsletter and it honestly has made me all sparky and optimistic about Nokia in the year ahead – he’s definitely not a person who showers praise unless there are at least a few great reasons for it! We’ll definitely see much, much more from Nokia during their self-hosted events later in the year such as Nokia World, but reading Ewan’s account of Nokia during MWC has left me all hopeful once again. Let’s see Nokia fully back in the game for 2010 and beyond!

Sony Ericsson

We definitely saw a raft of devices from Sony Ericsson this MWC, with the X10 mini, X10 mini pro and Vivaz pro mentioned for the first time as well as the Vivaz and X10 in the pipeline – these devices are collectively referred to as the ‘Fab Five’. The X10 mini is basically a watered-down X10 with a tiny, tiny touchscreen and no keyboard while the X10 mini pro adds a sliding QWERTY keyboard to the X10 mini. The Vivaz pro is a Symbian^1 device that has a downgraded camera from the original Vivaz but adds a sliding QWERTY keyboard to the Vivaz. And to be honest I don’t like any of these devices, and Sony Ericsson’s platform strategy is as muddled as ever, and goes like this: A200+Symbian+Android+Windows Mobile. The X10 mini/mini pro are particularly lame. Sorry.

That’s all for my MWC thoughts. At least, that’s all I can remember. Once again, sorry for my relative lack of updates on this blog but I’m afraid I’m 10x more active on Twitter (follow me at www.twitter.com/eckoplasm) than on this blog right now, so if you want my latest impromptu thoughts and musings in 140 characters or less, do get yourself a Twitter account (it’s free!) and you’ll soon be firing off your own latest impromptu thoughts and musings in 140 characters or less before you know it. Cheers!

Excuse me. I digress. This week, I’ve got an open letter for the amazing dudes whom I get together and work with in order to make the Drama Society a better place for everyone. If you are one of those amazing dudes who work with me, please don’t hit Alt-F4 upon reading the above – I’ve been too harsh on all of you already.

So let’s begin, shall we?

Hey guys,

I guess all of you must have felt rather discouraged after all that ranting on my part this last week. You will probably not be able to read this till the CNY rush is over but I know I got really, really frustrated in the past few days. To be honest, I don’t even know if I should regret all that ranting because on one hand, I was indeed pretty harsh and really acted like a pain in the neck, but on the other hand the main complaints that shone through all that ranting are actually perfectly valid concerns which I felt, at that point, that I should raise up. Hence, I don’t mean to say that I’m taking back everything I said – I’m just saying that I hope I won’t be reduced to an annoying, demanding prick in times to come. There will definitely be much more stress and tension just up ahead.

In case you weren’t aware, I really love working with you guys and I’ll be the first guy to declare that I totally treasure the bonds that we, and even among the CORE10, have managed to build up. If we felt the need to plan an overnight camp in order to get the rest of the members to feel more attached and involved with each other and even the Drama Society, I guess we haven’t done too badly by managing to forge strong friendships even without having to participate in activities that are specifically tailored to achieve such an objective. I am aware that at times I really do become really uptight and begin ranting at everyone, and sometimes I do wish I could be a lot less impatient than I am now. All I want is for things to work out, you see? That’s all. It’s definitely not a case whereby I’m deliberately out to create unhappiness in the team – my only hope is for us to fulfill the duties and responsibilities that have been placed upon us without the inefficiency and procrastination that currently plagues us. I’m very sure none of us would agree that taking 3 whole days of discussion to schedule a meeting is by any means the epitome of efficiency and it is even rather appalling to realize that even these simple tasks take so much time to get done. The notification process of our new Sec 1 members is another example of inefficiency, bogged down by the absence of name-lists and general reluctance to get that task finished in time for next week so that we do not piss them off right from the start.

Am I asking for too much? Is it really that difficult for us to get things done without drifting off or getting the entire process bogged down in endless discussion, arguments and counter-arguments? I definitely believe it is entirely possible for us to hold dialogue that actually manages to achieve results – a perfect example of the level of efficiency we could potentially achieve would be our meeting on Thursday, and even that can be easily surpassed with a tad more focus. I think we have to accept that engaging in petty discussions about nothing but trivialities will only ensure that we continue being a really inefficient and incapable team because concentrating on trivialities such as say, whether we should have our meeting in school or outside of school will only serve to distract us from our main agenda – what we actually want to accomplish during the meeting itself. It is unacceptable to me for us to be going back and forth about nitty-gritty details that consumes valuable time and detracts from our focus, which is to lay the groundwork, not only for the programme that the Sec 1s will be going through at the beginning, but also for our upcoming overnight camp that we are all so excited about. So despite the level of enjoyment and satisfaction I get out of working with all of you, I still feel that we have much to improve as leaders of the Drama Society even almost 3 months since we assumed active leadership. Yeah, even I continue to have many areas in which I have certainly got to work on in order to serve my time in a better way.

Back when I took over the reins, I was determined to instill a system where we could apply ourselves in a comfortable, non-hierarchical, informal and relaxed environment. I have never been a person who likes working as part of a hierarchy and holding on to a rank – I feel that an environment where more time is spent on active discussion, getting things done and understanding each other better at the same time in a non-oppressive atmosphere definitely has increased benefits to the entire team of leaders and the Drama Society at large instead of creating dissatisfaction and ill feelings through struggling against a rigid bureaucracy which will open the floodgates for politics and infighting to affect what we do and what we stand for. Furthermore, I hoped that by reducing the distinction between our team and the rest of the members, we could instill in them a sense of increased responsibility towards the Drama Society, boost their level of engagement with everything we do and even reduce the amount of apprehension that they have towards interacting with us – after all, we were a part of them once.

Implementing all these measures to form a Drama Society where our members would feel highly motivated to attend trainings and participate in our activities due to the maintenance of a welcoming, friendly atmosphere calls for the adoption of democracy in going about our tasks as opposed to totalitarian leadership where everyone is subservient to the guy at the top of the organizational chart. Yet, our adoption of a democratic system where everyone has an equal right to express his views means that we have got to be very careful not to let an over-emphasis on democracy affect our ability to function as an efficient team that reacts fast to differing situations. History teaches us that the one of the main flaws of the post-WW1 Weimar government in Germany was that it aimed to be the most democratic government in the world and this resulted in a grossly incapable government that was unable to resolve Germany’s many post-war issues and was eventually overthrown by Hitler and the Nazis – we know how that ended up. In a way, we are treading a narrow path here – exactly how democratic do we want to be? The question we should be asking ourselves is: Do we necessarily need to seek others’ opinions for everything (and I mean everything!) that we plan and carry out? Or is it perfectly fine for us to make decisions, especially the insanely trivial ones, on our own?

Do think about that. I’m off to write that amusing proposal we talked about.

Your (really tired) friend,

Alvin

Despite what those tech blogs tell you, Symbian is far from dead. In fact, the Symbian platform has been in a state of reinvention for a while now, ever since the Symbian Foundation was formed in mid-2008 with the goal of shipping a totally-rebuilt, open-source Symbian platform known as Symbian^4 by 2012. Since then, almost 2 years later, the Symbian OS has since gone free and fully open-source in the hope of attracting more developer talent and manufacturer support, thereby increasing the level of innovation on the Symbian platform and spurring the development of Symbian devices from companies other than Nokia due to the entire OS being essentially free to use, both in terms of cost as well as from a legal point of view. This is essentially the first step towards sustained Symbian dominance in the future and places itself in direct competition with the also open-source Android platform. However, a key difference, as Lee Williams, chief executive of the Symbian Foundation, notes, is that only a third of the Android codebase is open-source as opposed to the now 100% open-source Symbian platform, thus giving developers and hardware makers even more freedom.

In my opinion, Symbian market-share is likely to remain steady in the next few years and perhaps even increase with the release of new versions of the Symbian OS and an even greater variety of devices to choose from. There are two main types of mobile device platforms available today. Firstly, we have the platforms that are specially designed to be used on devices aimed at specific segments of the market (usually the high-end), and in technical speak we call such platforms “vertical” platforms. These platforms have a relatively narrow target audience and the devices that run on these platforms are usually concentrated at the high-end of the market – a ready example that comes to mind would be the iPhone OS. There is only one high-end smartphone that runs the iPhone OS and it is called the iPhone. Despite Apple selling tons and tons of iPhones in the U.S. and elsewhere, the iPhone is no match for the behemoths like Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the mobile industry – we have to keep in mind that the mobile industry very much spans the entire globe and these expensive iPhones are simply priced out of range for many people around the world. Another example of a “vertical” platform would be Windows Mobile. Again, Windows Mobile devices are usually concentrated at the high-end of the market although there are exceptions to the rule such as the HTC Touch 2. Nokia’s “other” platform, Maemo, is also a “vertical” platform in its current state and will probably remain “vertical” for a long time to come.

We also have the platforms that are designed to be used on a wide range of devices that span across the entire market and appeal to many target audiences, and these platforms are known as “horizontal” platforms. To date, Symbian is the only smartphone platform available on the market that has truly accomplished its goal of being a “horizontal” platform and the significance of this fact should never be underestimated. Not only does Symbian run on the widest array of devices on the market today spanning different price-points and specification levels, it also has the advantage of being backed by the largest mobile device company in the world (no, the largest mobile device company in the world is NOT Apple) which ensures its long-term relevance and survival. One cannot deny the vast reach of Symbian and the wide variety of Symbian smartphones available today. Nokia recently slashed the prices of its Symbian devices such as the low-end 5230 down to GBP 99 sim-free in the UK, and this further exemplifies the fact that the Symbian platform is moving downmarket and enabling more people to own smartphones, in turn spurring the growth of their own Ovi services like the Ovi Store and Ovi Maps. Credit should go to Symbian (and Nokia) for commoditizing the smartphone and making the technology more accessible in terms of price-points for an even wider group of people. Nokia has repeatedly made clear the fact that Symbian devices will gradually become mass-market products at the same time as Nokia’s flagship devices gradually drop Symbian in favour of Maemo, and this can only be an added advantage for Symbian on the whole.

Fundamentally, the Symbian platform and the iPhone OS do share more differences than similarities and are designed for different purposes, which makes most comparisons between these two platforms unfair as Symbian is designed to run on every class of smartphone from low-end to high-end, which makes it impossible for the Symbian user interface and level of performance to be on par with the iPhone’s, simply because these two platforms are aimed at different market segments and do not directly compete with each other. This is why the presence of Maemo at the high-end will certainly help to alleviate much of the bad rap that Symbian has been subjected to – the Maemo platform is in essence the true competitor to the iPhone OS instead of Symbian, and we are already seeing some great work being done with Maemo even as it is just beginning to take off as a smartphone platform.

But what would the future bring? As we continue to survive with our Symbian^1 smartphones that continue to suffer from a relative lack of free RAM, the first devices running on the first release of the next-generation Symbian platform, Symbian^3, will start appearing on the market in the second half of this year. Some mock-ups of the Symbian^4 user interface have already been released, and the Symbian Foundation has been making great efforts to engage users and developers in a variety of ways such as holding regular user meet-ups in various parts of the world as well as the Symbian Ideas website at ideas.symbian.org which encourages the community to contribute and vote for features to be implemented in Symbian^3 and Symbian^4. It is definitely refreshing to observe the level of transparency and open-ness that the Symbian Foundation puts forth in comparison to other companies such as Apple, which on the other hand insists on keeping all information on upcoming products tightly under wraps and makes next to no effort to engage their community of users to play a part in their products. On top of that, we can certainly expect a lot more good news from the Symbian Foundation in the year ahead and beyond. Having the entire platform go free and open-source is merely the first step.

I don’t usually discuss desktop operating systems and full-blown computers – I consider myself a proficient Mac/Windows user and I do know enough about computers to tinker around with them on a daily basis, but this has never been a field in which I dabble in too much. However, in line with my current stay on the ‘dark side’, I thought I’d do a little essay on whether traditional operating systems (OSes) are as important today as they were in the past for actually getting work done.

Most computer users can easily be divided into three camps; Windows users, Mac users and Linux users. Each of these camps are comprised of people with very different workflows, abilities and needs and it would be rather unfair to state which OS is better than the other because these three main operating systems all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Much has been said about the advantages of one system over the other and what OS should one choose, but at the end of the day is the OS on your computer all that important anymore? Does the OS really matter to the average user anymore? Do note, for the geeks who are reading, that most non-technical types don’t even have any idea of what OS they are using – they, more often than not, simply use “what came in the box with the computer”. Fundamentally, aren’t the tasks that one can get accomplished with a desktop or notebook computer largely similar across the three main platforms that exist on mainstream consumer machines today?

I’m sure there are many geeks who will scoff at my computer usage and chastise me for not being a ‘real’ geek as I hardly have any need to use applications such as Final Cut, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or even Adobe Flash CS4. Honestly, looking at how I use a computer from a macro perspective, my needs appear to be very basic indeed. In some ways, I could probably get along just fine using a netbook such as the Nokia Booklet 3G as my main computer. I hear you laughing? Netbooks are in no way suited for being used as primary machines? Here’s what I typically do with my computer:

1. Keep up with everything that’s going on in Facebook
2. Skim through my RSS feeds with Google Reader
3. Read through all those news articles that manage to catch my interest
4. Grab my email through the Gmail web client
5. Write posts and manage this blog through WordPress
6. IM others using Windows Live Messenger (Adium on the Mac)
7. Watch and post to Twitter via TweetDeck
8. Listen to music and sync tracks to my Nokia 5800 with Windows Media Player (iTunes on the Mac)
9. Watch the occasional feature film using either Windows Media Player or VLC
10. Write reports and design presentations with Microsoft Office (iWork on the Mac)

Yep, that’s it. Of course, I occasionally fire up Photoshop CS4 as and when needed as well as screw around with photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery or iPhoto on the Mac. Perhaps more astonishingly, a good half of these ‘common tasks’ are done with nothing but the web browser (Google Chrome on both PC and Mac) which perhaps signifies the decreased reliance on the OS and the apps that run on it for getting things done in our everyday lives. Little by little, Web 2.0 apps are taking over the traditional role of desktop applications for many less-demanding tasks – I guess it would not be long before we see the idea of an ‘application’ confined to expensive, pro-level software packages that we will probably continue to rely on for a long time for particular niches of users. Yet, the insurgence of web apps, as well as even platform-agnostic apps built on Adobe’s AIR such as TweetDeck and the bulk of desktop Twitter clients available today, cannot help but encroach on the territory that platform-specific applications used to stand on – after all, it definitely was not too long ago when cross-platform compatibility for many apps was rather weak and we still relied very much on desktop applications to add to our computers’ functionality.

How much have web apps taken over from desktop applications in the eyes of the average user? Microsoft Outlook used to be the de-facto email/PIM client on the Windows platform, but today unless one absolutely needs to access an Exchange server in a business or enterprise setting, most of us now rely on a combination of Gmail and Google Calendar for all our email and scheduling needs because these two services are not only easy to understand and use, but are also mostly free of glitches, do not need user maintenance and remain in the same state across multiple machines, which is an important factor to the rise of web apps as most of us now use more than one computer in our daily lives. Another prime example would be desktop RSS readers such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon – online alternatives such as Google Reader has pretty much removed the need for a desktop feed reader especially since it is much more convenient to have the same feeds appear across multiple computers rather than have to struggle to keep everything in sync, which is always a pain for the average user and a hassle for the geek. If I were to cite one more example, it would be Google Docs – this web-based office suite has become a legitimate threat to Microsoft Office as the capabilities of Google Docs are often just enough for everything that an average user would like to do, and furthermore Google throws in a dead-simple method of having multiple users collaborate on a single document which further increases its appeal. And as HTML5 goes mainstream and web apps become increasingly capable, the appeal of consumer-oriented desktop apps will further decrease, eventually being limited to consumer media creation suites such as iLife and Windows Live and other applications that simply do not translate well to the web, such as media front-ends like Windows Media Centre.

Which brings me back to the original point – is the OS that runs on the computer you are using right now all that important in terms of your overall experience? It really depends on how you use your computer, but at least for me, a student and part-time blogger, my overall experience of getting work done is, to a large extent, not affected by my choice of operating system. After all, when half of the things I do on an average day is done primarily in a browser window, what does it matter? In the end, for most of what we would normally do on a computer, we continue to use the same applications and access the same websites irregardless of whether we do it via a PC or a Mac. Are we nearing a point where the OS serves no other purpose other than to run a web browser? If you asked me, Windows 7 comes mighty close. Not even a built-in email client!

Some of you might be aware of the fact that I’ve been a diehard Mac user since 2006 and have never intended to pay any more attention to Microsoft’s dominant OS, Windows, and the PCs that run this OS, especially with regards to the complete trainwreck that was Windows Vista. However, with the release of Windows 7, I have decided to cease being such a Mac bigot. I’m sure you would have read at some point in time about PC users switching to Macs and being a whole lot happier than they were before. You might be a little shocked to hear that I have decided to switch back from a Mac to a similarly-specced PC for some time in a bid to form an unbiased opinion on the two platforms instead of succumbing to biased views like certain Apple- and Mac-oriented websites on the great interwebs.

When I originally announced my plans on that social networking website known as Facebook, I received a comment almost instantaneously that stated that my action would represent an ‘ultimate betrayal’. Well, it’s really not as bad as that sounds because I feel that unbiased views on the age-old Mac-or-PC debate need to be based off extensive usage of both platforms and I’m sure I should give Windows 7 a chance to be my ‘daily driver’ and to impress me with unparalleled freedom, competent reliability and its slick eye-candy Aero UI. Furthermore, I won’t be entirely abandoning my Mac – during this time period it shall be serving as a media server, responsible for delivering music and video content over the wireless network to my Dell notebook which I shall be basing my experiences upon because I can’t be arsed to copy 35GB of media to the notebook’s relatively small 80GB hard disk.

But everything else that I could ever do with a computer shall be done in a Windows environment within this period of time – browsing the web, grabbing email, skimming through my RSS feeds in Google Reader, audio and video playback, instant messaging, Twitter, creating documents and presentations, editing photos… even updating this blog each week. As I’m typing this, the switch has been in effect for almost 4 hours and it has actually not been too bad. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off to say that Windows 7 as it is today does manage to provide a good user experience overall and I’m not feeling too constrained by the perceived lackings and limitations of Windows. Stability might have to be assessed over a longer period of time but so far everything has been humming along smoothly and fluidly and I’ve never been faced with many slowdowns which is saying quite a bit for the overall performance of a rather-dated notebook that was originally intended to run XP.

So far, I must admit that the only applications I’m really missing from the Mac platform is the iLife suite of media creation apps – the Windows Live equivalents are not a patch on apps like iPhoto and iMovie and this is clearly an area which Microsoft really has to continue working on – iLife continues to be a major selling point for Macs and rightly so. I can’t say I’m really missing iWork because Microsoft Office might be a little less user-friendly but has a much richer set of features anyway. Most of the other apps I use on the Mac are cross-platform such as Google Chrome, TweetDeck, VLC, QuickTime Pro and Photoshop CS4. In addition I also have the PC-only Nokia PC Suite installed (not really willing to make the jump to Ovi Suite just yet) as well as the absolutely-necessary Adobe Reader 9. Malware protection is taken care of by the built-in Windows Firewall and Microsoft’s free Security Essentials, a free antivirus and antispyware solution.

It wouldn’t be too unreasonable to state that my initial impressions are rather positive, especially after all my bad experiences with Windows Vista (though it must be said that some people I’ve talked to in the past have absolutely no problems with their Vista-running PCs). The user interface, while definitely not as sleek as Mac OS X, still manages to look attractive and modern and Aero works as smooth as butter even on a relatively-limited PC like mine in terms of specifications. Windows Media Player 12 is fast and rather straightforward to use even if its library interface wastes copious amounts of screen real estate and the general feel of this app is definitely not up there with the high standards of iTunes. Heck, it doesn’t even look as good as its predecessor, but it more than makes up for it with media synchronization to any Media Transfer Protocol device and automatic library updating and its instant streaming capability to any other PC running Windows Media Player. Windows Media Center is worlds ahead of the simplistic Front Row media interface in OS X. And my Xerox printer does not require alternative drivers to work on Windows unlike on the Mac.

This could turn out really good after all.