Technology moves too fast
Man, technology sometimes just moves too fast.
A few days ago, the Nokia N95 went on sale world wide and I got mine. Today, I got a newsletter from Nokia Forum with an interesting topic; Widgets go mobile. Apparently it’s a framework to Web driven applications for the S60 platform, much in the same way as Apple’s widgets or Microsoft’s gadgets. Both from a user and developer perspective it totally makes sense. Use technologies you know (html+javascript) to develop connected application rapidly and launch them like they were applications on your mobile. But! I just bought the newest, coolest and most expensive phone multimedia device and WTF! Mobile widget’s wont work on it! Cause mobile widgets come with S60 3rd edition feature pack 2, and my device only has feature pack 1.
God! It only took 4 days to make my shiny new device an old fart.
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Sorry to hear about the widgets. Look at the bright side—you still have the N95 (which some of us casual observers still covet). Best of luck with the widgets issue.
Another view on the matter, maybe it’ll ease your pain.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/16/nokia_analysis/
Haven’t seen such crap (well, mostly) on The Register since… err… don’t know when. I think they are dead wrong. Their biggest concern is security. Now how does installing a Widget differ from installing an application? It doesn’t!
In both cases the end-user must trust the source. S60 applications are rarely signed, and even signing just guarantees they come from he claimed source.
But I don’t want to fight over this. For me, the most interesting point of Widgets is to be able to really quickly create a cool app with technologies I’m proficient at. Since I got my N95 i’ve been pondering on how to create a small app that trasimits my GPS coordinates to a server without having to shoot myself in the face with Symbian programming.
Yeah, The Register write-up is pretty polemic as always, but it does offer some good points.
It’s pretty ironic if the in-built GPS on the N95 can’t be accessed with python or j2me, like almost any external GPS device can be on S60.
As far as the Nokia widgets engine, the balance between secure enough to be trusted and open enough to be interesting can be a tough nut to crack.
I hear your pain. I bought N73 when it was brand new. However browser was missing some features such as tilted screen. These features were advertised in S60.com website. Since I could now find dowload link anywhere I asked Nokia about it. It took several mails before they answered.
“Sorry the new version is only available for 3rd edition feature pack 1 and not available to update N73, which is a 3rd edition phone.”
So, N73 was already old same week it came to shops.