Comment Re:Android (Score 1) 92
As much as I like Linux, and in time it may shoehorn nicely into portable devices it's hard to beat an OS designed for the task.
The advantages for Symbian are:
1. It was designed for portable/mobile devices
2. Made for resource limited hardware
3. Robustness
4. Single CPU operation
5. History/maturity
Now you can argue most of these points are derive from point #1. But what's the typical complaint about the G1? Battery life so short the device isn't use to many people. This is a major problem in a portable device, it has to last an entire day with moderate usage. If you cell phone dies at 4pm you haven't only lost your music player you've lost your email, phone, etc.
Symbian does very well in running on small device. It gives the program features to keep their application using small amounts of systems resources and tries to keep them robust.
Developing Symbian C++ apps isn't for everybody, the UI is problematic and writing isn't for most people. Java is available and Nokia has been working on Python for S60, Qt for S60, and they have the start of a "Web Runtime". It's too bad such a large company can't push there forward more quickly.
