Thanks for that gem, that really lightened my day!
In other news... people are swapping push-bikes for a space shuttle for easier parking.

I actually just bought an e71 with symbian. I like it.

The OS on the phone comes with more options than other platforms with about $300 of added apps. Things like SIP stack, syncml client, printing support, doc xls ppt reading and editing, and on and on.

It also supports lots of connectivity beyond the normal bluetooth and wifi, like FM radio and infrared.

Also, symbian is still somewhat of an open ecosystem unlike iphone app store or palm pre app store, etc, which is good to me.

Oh, and windows mobile sucks, android I find too hard to program for and t-mobile here kind of sucks, and iphone hate is philosophical. I used Palm Treos for years, but they are dying off and maybe symbian is too, but that is my best option right now. Maemo is not a phone OS....yet.

I think OP needs an iphone

Er... just a small question. Did you try downloading trials for some of the ovi store apps u seem to have lost? I had to re-install Gravity in my E71 after a reflash, and I didn't have the serial key, so I just installed the trial to see what happened. Turns out it was locked to my IMEI, so when I installed the so-called trial, it automatically detected I was an owner and registered my software.

Any chance u could get some of ur paid apps this way?

And by the way, I do support the off-topic part. U really are ranting in the wrong forum. Maemo and Symbian are entirely different beasts. They don't have the same structure, they don't have the same philosophy, hell, they probably don't even have a single decision-maker in common involved.

Ur compatibility issues with Maemo are, therefore, a completely different beast. And honestly, it's a good thing they arise, IMHO. It does encourage developers to (at the least) rethink their work in order to take benefit from new features that are implemented. If software for 2.4 Linux, for instance, didn't have to be re-thought of in some way to be used in 2.6, wuld people have made the same effort to make use of 2.6 as they actually did? I honestly think they wouldn't have. And people naturally flocked to 2.6 to benefit from those, didn't they?

I know I did, as I know I will try and download mpre updates for my devices, even being fully aware that it may break existing apps or force me to reinstall them. I think it's usually a fair price to pay to me use of new features developers worked their asses off to implement =)

No, there were no trials for what I downloaded from ovi store.

And don't forget the device does not have to be reset because AppManager is not working anymore in an ideal world. Many other users will just ditch the device if it is not in warranty anymore.

Frankly speaking, for a $700 device, when I can buy a windows netbook for $300 which works 10 times better in regards to upgrade to a different SP, or in regards of stability of "Control Panel/Add/Remove applications" I expected more. I don't have time to dig and try to look in howardforums or in other sites, I installed NSS on my computer to trick my N95 device that is some other sub-version of it, but the NSS itself is not intuitive and as I said, I have no time. I lost some applications, be it. I'm not using the device anymore that much. Sad, but Symbian is a lost OS for me.

There are things that need to be underlined maybe Nokia will get it right in Maemo, if they scrwed it on s60. s60 is Nokia's gui layer and api framework.

I read that article about Japanese cell phone makers that have 3rd generation network capabilities, they have tons of MP cameras on phones, HD video, television, 3D television, the web browsing in Japan is mostly on mobile phones and not on computers, but they don't have a single OS platform to rival with iPhone OSX. They have a fragmented market every producer with its OS, but none of them have the "easy to use", "user friendly" and "eye catching" interface that iPhone has... and they recognize that and with their long phone development experience look at this newcomer, Apple, and they recognize the UI of OSX is top of the line. Symbian foundation has head-quarters in USA and in Japan.. Hopefully they will improve before Symbian RIP...

What Maemo and Nokia can learn from this is users want a system more friendly than Windows, like OSX is. And Windows is friendly compared to Symbian...