Feature
The Best of 2003
2003 has seen Symbian lay strong foundations for the creation of a mass market for the smartphone in 2004 and beyond. There has been a healthy growth in the number of device shipments, a steady stream of new phone announcements and increased interest from the broader mobile developer community in creating applications for Symbian OS. Picking out the most significant products for the year is no easy task as there are many players in the Symbian ecosystem that deserve recognition, but after much deliberation here is our pick of the year's best.
Most innovative application
There have been many good applications released this year, both original works for Symbian OS as well as ports of a number of popular Palm and Pocket PC applications. As applications have ranged from games through personal information management to business and security applications, finding the most innovative is somewhat daunting, however, for us DreamScribe from DreamSpring software get the accolade this year.
DreamScribe provides a method for creating PIM records, contacts, tasks, calendar items, using the joystick to select most of the features of the record and minimizes the need to enter text. DreamScribe cleverly builds on the key features of the Series 60 interface, the PIM application and joystick, in a way that integrates them in a powerful and easy to use manner.
Most innovative Device
We have restricted ourselves to those phones which actually made it to market in 2003, and our top choice is the Siemens SX1, not so much for the sheer technology, after all the Nokia 6600 has a more advanced version of the Series 60 platform and similar specifications. Rather the SX1 is our choice because the physical design of the phone has thought through the paradigm shift that a rich user interface on a small device creates. The SX1 focuses its design around the joystick (do you note a theme here?) as the key interaction component in Series 60. By moving the number keys to the side of the screen the SX1 also creates a number of new control options for application shortcuts and game control which should offer developers new and exciting possibilities.
Most innovative Development tool
Although Borland's C++BuilderX and the Open Source OPL were significant news items during the year it is AppForge's MobileVB which takes our accolade for most innovative development tool.
MobileVB uses the capabilities of Microsoft's Visual Basic to create controls which a developer can use to build applications which closely mimic the native interfaces of a range of mobile platforms including Palm, Pocket PC, Series 60, Series 80 and UIQ. MobileVB not only provides a cross platform development tool but the accessibility of Visual Basic to a broader community of developers means it also brings mobile development to a wider audience, including those developers with domain expertise but minimal programming experience.
AppForge are also promising to deliver Crossfire in early 2004 an updated version of MobileVB which supports Visual Basic .NET, and provides the ability to deploy applications which utilize Microsoft's .NET framework. This will open up the option for using Symbian based devices in environments which otherwise could have been a monopoly for Microsoft.
Most Innovative Market Initiative
One of the problems with Series 60 is that it is so phone like that many users do not fully appreciate that they can install sophisticated application on their phone. This is a significant challenge to Nokia as Series 60 appears to lag behind UIQ in its ability to add after market applications. In many ways this is because Series 60 phones appeal to buyers who are not as confident with technology as the typical tech savvy UIQ buyer. While this is a testament to the design of Series 60 it does not help build a third party developer community.
Enter Nokia's Try and Buy program that is now running with the Nokia 6600 and Nokia 3660 phones. It is the most serious effort to date to educate the broader consumer community about the abilities of their phones. Try and Buy delivers a selection of applications on the phones MMC card which the owner can try three times. After their three tries the user can buy a key to permanently unlock the application if they want to keep it.
What makes Try and Buy clever is that the keys to unlock the applications can be purchased through the same retail channel that the owner used to buy the phone. Rights Management software also means that any key in the retail channel can be used to unlock any application on any Try and Buy phone, keeping it simple for the retailer. This makes the program very accessible and breaks down the technology barriers which may have been an impediment to software sales amongst a significant portion of Series 60 owners.
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