• Symbian Still Holds the Multitasking Crown

    Symbian Still Holds the Multitasking Crown

    Techtree News Staff, Apr 12, 2010 1519 hrs IST

    Omnia HD seen running 62 applications - simultaneously

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While most iPhone users are happy after news that OS 4.0 would endow their phones with true multitasking, there's another bunch of users who're laughing hysterically at the iPhones' new found abilities. They have been multitasking effortlessly since time immemorial - thanks to Symbian. While Symbian S60 isn't known for phones with powerful hardware - which partially crippled the OS' multitasking abilities, things changed when the Omnia HD arrived in 2009.

The year old Samsung Omnia HD, which was first seen at the Mobile World Congress 2009 and launched a few months later, still manages to outshine phones with newer and better hardware. Armed with a modded firmware, the phone was recently seen running 62 - yes 62 applications - all at once, simultaneously. This is good enough to put any self respecting, three-year old computer to shame - much less, phones.

The modded Omnia HD has also shown the proverbial middle finger to the Palm Pre which, not long ago, boasted of running 50 applications simultaneously - however, it managed the feat with double the RAM. The Samsung Omnia HD uses the same arm Cortex A8 processor as the iPhone 3GS and the Palm PRE and comes with 256 MB of RAM. It was also the first phone on the planet to capture videos in HD and at that time boasted of the world's largest AMOLED screen.

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Discussion Board
(7) Comments
Amit K
,Mumbai, on Apr 12, 2010 09:29 PM
People please tell me if Nokia offered so many apps but for the same or equivalent cost that the apple store offered, then how many of you are actually going to buy them? Lets face a fact how many of you guys actually own a legal copy of MS Office? Very little as far as general public is concerned. Nokia works for country like India 100 times better than Apple because we people take software as free stuff with hardware.....don't we?
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Anuj
,Mumbai, on Apr 13, 2010 04:45 PM
All are right in some way or other .. but the fact is Symbian needs to evolve it need to adapt to new breed of mobile OS. See the exapmle of samsung how they had beat sony and nokia in their own game. they are creating phones with much better usability than iphone and for common people .
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Kaustav Bhattac
,London, UK, on Apr 12, 2010 04:37 PM
I used to say exactly the same things about my old Nokia N82 which I thought was a great phone - and it was. It had radio, multi-tasking, 5MP digital camera and loads more besides. Ultimately, I ditched Nokia as a brand of phones I use, after 8 years of faithful use, as it eventually boiled down to choice in apps and the fact that Symbian OS is simply becoming clunky and long in the took compared to the latest bread of smart phones. Most iPhone users don't know, don't care, don't give a damn that the iPhone cannot multi-task (although it soon will be able to with OS 4.0). What matters to 99% of users are the apps, the quality and variety of them. As of April 2010 there are over 180,000 apps on the iPhone. How many are available for the Nokia? Less than 3000? Even Android, relatively late to market, now has over 15,000 apps. Nokia should realise that it's not just about going broad with features but it's ultimately about creating a great user experience. Apple realised that in the 1990s when it acquired NeXT which eventually lead to the Darwin operating system and Mac OS-X. That user experience permeated through to the iPhone. People get what they want out of the iPhone.
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Vishal
,Mumbai, on Apr 12, 2010 06:30 PM
@Kaustav, just like most users iPhone don't care if the iPhone multi tasks or not, Symbian users don't give a hoot if there are over 100000 apps available for the iPhone. Besides, no one has an actual estimate of the number of Symbian apps out there mainly because it supports various kinds of apps (Java, C++, PYTHON, Qt). Sure, Apple made a great UI with the iPhone - but for some, just looking pretty isn't enough. Power users would agree with me.
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Nokia lover
,London, on Apr 12, 2010 07:29 PM
Kya fayyda itne saare application ka jab multitasking na kar paye. U r wrong mr. Kaustav sudar ja nahi toh kastav mukherjee bana doonga . HiHiya hihiya hihiya.......
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raj kumar
,coimbatore, on Apr 12, 2010 09:10 PM
you are correct kaustav.............. need apps apps apps.............
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SID
,Bhubaneswar, on Apr 13, 2010 10:45 AM
Kaustav, All American products are based on hyped marketing and they never talk about stable hardware,service,support and fuctionality. Symbian OS is a very functinal system with all the essential apps in place. It even works well on a US$150 phone such as NOKIA 5233. Apple phones cost more than US$700 in India and if you really think in a techie's way, SYMBIAN is way ahead in terms of innovation and VFM.
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