Symbian is a big pain. So if Nokia wants to compete with Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony-Ericsson which have Symbian devices (and WinMo devices) and Android devices, then Nokia might need to try Linux on some of its devices.

I am sure without a huge facelift of usability and inter-device compatibility Symbian^2 and Symbian^x is lost...

I want to ask you about Maemo backward compatibility and upgrades and to make a parallel between these 2 OSs here.

Yesterday I updated my n95 8G (Symbian s60) with the latest firmware using Nokia Updater (PC) and i lost all my contacts, java apps, paid n-gage games, paid ovi apps, only few s60 apps were re-installed.

Why iPhone users can install a new OS version without pain of loosing contacts and apps and Symbian cannot preserve contacts and apps during a simple patch update?!!?

Symbian has secret device APIs and this means INCOMPATIBILITY of the APPS between devices (and OS sub-versions). This is because of improper OS design - Symbian is lost.

Symbian has big compatibility and upgrade issues: Why s60 v3.2 is not compatible with s60 v3.1??!?... Even Nokia developed applications are different apps for v3.1, v3.2 and v5 - why it is not possible to have one application for all these versions? Because the Symbian OS versions are so, so different, a nightmare for any developers including Nokia's. They have different APIs, and different device APIs...
Poor design, lack of strategy...

Why then Nokia now still sells phones with s60 3.1 which is incompatible with latest version of s60 for non-touch instead of selling N95x with s60 v3.2? Or even sell N95x with s60 v5 and make the one of the best T9 smartphone to be touch-based?

s60 v3.0 is 2005
s60 v3.1 is 2006
s60 v3.2 is 2007
s60 v5 is Oct 2008
They are not backward compatible... applications which run on s60 v3.1 won't necessarly run on s60 v3.2

Why Nokia sells now devices with an OS released in 2006? Instead of seeling the hardware with the latest OS? Because the s60 OS is not backward compatible. The only exception is E71x runnig s60 v3.2 where the initial E71 runs s60 v3.1. But very wierd, E71 is still selling in parallel with E71x, why this mess for developers which have to juggle between these APIs?

Developers are complaining how hard is to develop for Symbian (native). Most of the applications for Symbian are Java based, even big titles in N-Gage gaming platform like "Age of Empires".

Can it be harder than this? Secret device APIs, incompatibility of APIs between OS subversions, nothing unified, nothing backward compatible...

Symbian^2 will be based on s60 v5.1 (early next year), Symbian^3 will include UIQ support (why?) and will be available later next year, and Symbian^4 will be based on QT (will be redesigned) and available Q1 2011 - basically isn't this too late? iPhone OS will be by then version 5 with very good backward compatibility, good upgrades and very good API and AppStore, the same Google Android...

How do you consider the Maemo strategy at Nokia now that Maemo 4 was based on GTK+, Maemo 5 is still based on GTK+ (hildon) but with QT supported "by the community" and Maemo 6 (to be released next year?) will drop official GTK+ support and it will be based on QT 4.6?