About few months ago I switched from using Symbian to Android. The transition is still in progress, but I can say this much: probably I would never go back to Symbian. And well, Symbian is more or less dead with the Nokia announcement that they would rather be shifting to Windows Phone OS.
As much as this is about moving from one mobile OS to another, it is also about moving from one handset to another. The Symbian phone is a Nokia E51 while the Android phone is a Samsung Galaxy 5.
These are just notes on what I find good and not so good with the switch.
Daily Usage:
My basic requirement from a Phone call is just that it makes and receives phone calls. For this both Android and Symbian seem just OK.
Another requirement from my phone is calender management. In this case Android just wins, mostly because of its seamless integration with Google calender.
Finally battery life: My Symbian phone used to last much longer on a charge than my Android phone. Generally, I feel Symbian is still better in power management. But this may also vary depending on the phone model.
Always Connected:
With Symbian phone I never felt like being always connected. Simply because there were no great apps that needed online update, like no good chat clients.
System stability:
As far as I can say, Android on my phone has not really be stable. With Symbian, my phone worked with a reboot for months ... this has reduced to a few days! This in no way is an advancement. I should really checkout iOS and Windows Phone OS stability to see how other modern OSes fair.
Usability:
I generally find Android to be much more easy to use and navigate than Symbian. Making phone calls, browsing Internet, accessing e-mail, playing music, watching YouTube is all much more enjoying and smoother experience with the Android interface than it has ever been with any version of Symbian.
Did I program?
Not much. Basically, didn't get much time to play around with Android programming as yet. But I did easily manage to port some of the core parts of MeTA Studio project. This initial port is available at: http://cid-76d41f4618b0b6af.office.live.com/self.aspx/metastudio/MeTADroid.tar.gz
May be somewhere down the lane there will be UI Android port for MeTA Studio.
That said, programming on Android is definitely much more enjoying than Symbian C++. I am not sure about the new Qt support for Symbian. But then I always find it enjoying to program in Java than with C++ (i dislike hunting for segfaults in someone elses code ;)).
As much as this is about moving from one mobile OS to another, it is also about moving from one handset to another. The Symbian phone is a Nokia E51 while the Android phone is a Samsung Galaxy 5.
These are just notes on what I find good and not so good with the switch.
Daily Usage:
My basic requirement from a Phone call is just that it makes and receives phone calls. For this both Android and Symbian seem just OK.
Another requirement from my phone is calender management. In this case Android just wins, mostly because of its seamless integration with Google calender.
Finally battery life: My Symbian phone used to last much longer on a charge than my Android phone. Generally, I feel Symbian is still better in power management. But this may also vary depending on the phone model.
Always Connected:
With Symbian phone I never felt like being always connected. Simply because there were no great apps that needed online update, like no good chat clients.
System stability:
As far as I can say, Android on my phone has not really be stable. With Symbian, my phone worked with a reboot for months ... this has reduced to a few days! This in no way is an advancement. I should really checkout iOS and Windows Phone OS stability to see how other modern OSes fair.
Usability:
I generally find Android to be much more easy to use and navigate than Symbian. Making phone calls, browsing Internet, accessing e-mail, playing music, watching YouTube is all much more enjoying and smoother experience with the Android interface than it has ever been with any version of Symbian.
Did I program?
Not much. Basically, didn't get much time to play around with Android programming as yet. But I did easily manage to port some of the core parts of MeTA Studio project. This initial port is available at: http://cid-76d41f4618b0b6af.office.live.com/self.aspx/metastudio/MeTADroid.tar.gz
May be somewhere down the lane there will be UI Android port for MeTA Studio.
That said, programming on Android is definitely much more enjoying than Symbian C++. I am not sure about the new Qt support for Symbian. But then I always find it enjoying to program in Java than with C++ (i dislike hunting for segfaults in someone elses code ;)).
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