Why are Symbian 'smartphones' not as smart as thei...

Question

I used to have a Nokia 6230i, which I was really pleased with – the operating system (S40) was pretty much a perfected evolution from what I used to have on my 5140, and before that, the 5210. Recently I was offered an 'upgrade' to the 6120 classic, one of the newest Symbian S60 'smartphones' (reasons for quotation marks to follow). I took the 6120, lured mainly by the Nokia Maps application.
Whilst I have been impressed with Nokia Maps and a handful of other applications, I have to say that on the whole the move to Symbian has been a very frustrating one, and now I'm wondering whether I can really be bothered to keep the 6120 just for the sake of a few applications. The worst thing is that in general the OS seems to have taken a step backwards from my old phone – incredible really that Nokia have simply ditched so many of the tweaks that they had perfected with the 6230i (and, I understand, the 6300).
So I've made a list here of ways in which the new phone is actually much worse than the old one. I'm by no means the first one to spot all of these problems, but I thought I'd list all my problems in one place. Until Nokia sorts these out I shall probably ditch the 6120 in favour of a 6300 (I rarely use 3G and never use video calling – it's just too expensive), or maybe a non-Nokia phone altogether. Some of you may not agree with my preferences below, but I think we should at least be given the option to change them ourselves. I've been using the latest firmware (3.83) for the 6120, and some of these may not apply to other S60 phones.
1. You can't have a shortcut to the Inbox! Surely (maybe after Contacts or New message) this would be the most frequently used shortcut ever? It is totally ridiculous that you have to go through Messaging every time. The list of shortcuts is very poor in general – other obvious ones missing include:
Active standby – so I could switch it on or off as I need;
Personalisation – so I don't have to go through the whole Settings tree to get to the options I change most frequently;
Alarm clock – you shouldn't have to go through Clock, instead you should be able to get straight to 'New quick alarm';
Network settings – so I can turn 3G on and off as I need it.
And yet for some reason Nokia think that we need shortcuts to About product, Welcome, Tutorial, Device Manager and Activation keys – hardly features that you use very often! Also the shortcuts list isn't alphabetical – wouldn't this be the easiest way of finding the shortcuts you want? Basically the whole system of shortcuts needs sorting out – a much better way of doing it would be to have the ability to make shortcuts to anywhere you want in the menu tree (I think this is how Sony Ericssons work?).
2. Can only have up to 8 shortcuts – 2 on the selection keys and 6 active standby. The old 'Go to' list could have as many shortcuts as you wanted. Why couldn't we have more active standby shortcuts to scroll though? Or a single shortcut to a 'Go to' submenu/grid that we could customise ourselves?
3. Can't customise Active standby modules – you should be able to remove the calendar and add modules (e.g. Inbox, Contacts) that you use more often (I think you may be able to do this on some other S60 phones?).
4. Contact searching by last name – when I search for someone's name, I always look by first name. Having additional results show up for last names just means it takes that much longer to find what I'm looking for – we should really be able to turn this off.
5. Imported contacts put names into last name – most of my contacts are listed by first name only, with a surname only when there are two people with the same first name (surely this is the way most people file their contacts?). So when I import my old contacts, it would make much more sense to import names into the first name. Couldn't it also split two-word names into first name and last name?
6. No option to turn off startup tone – the 6230i had this, so why now does everyone around me need to know when I turn on my phone?
7. Can't turn off camera shutter sound – another annoying sound you now can't get rid of, even in Silent mode.
8. Can't set alarm clock snooze interval – on my old 6230i you could change the snooze time, now I'm stuck with it going off every 5 minutes.
9. Can no longer snooze with any button – you could do this on the 6230i, but now you have to make sure you hit the right button (and not Stop by mistake). Not so easy when you've barely woken up.
10. Can't scroll down to text message details – you used to be able to keep scrolling down after a text message to get the details (such as date & time) but now you have to go through yet another annoying menu.
11. Can't use number shortcuts in Profile list – you used to be able to use the number buttons to shortcut through your list of profiles. For example, I could just hit Power -> 4 to get to my 'Office' profile, but now I have to scroll through the whole list.
12. Limited number shortcuts in menus – you can only use the numbers on the keypad to shortcut through to a certain depth of menus. For example, within Phone settings you can't use the numbers to navigate the menus any more.
13. Only time of last call from a caller is shown in missed/received calls – previously you could go into the Missed calls list, select a caller and go to 'Time of call', which would show you when all the calls were from that person. Now if you want to do this you have to go into the Log, find the person you're looking for, and then filter out that number.
14. Volume button can mute call – previously when you turned the volume down all the way during a call it would go to the lowest voume, useful for when someone is shouting at you down the phone. Now if you do this it mutes the volume entirely, which is a lot less useful (depending on whether you actually need to hear what they're shouting!).
15. No conversions or calculations from standby mode – on the 6230i you could type a number straight in on the main screen (as you would a phone number) and then go Options -> In domestic to do a currency conversion. No sign of this on the 6120.
16. No countdown timer or stopwatch – I actually used the countdown timer quite often. Now I have Nokia to blame for my burnt pies. :-(
So come on Nokia, sort it out! Surely it can't be that difficult? And next time, why not pay attention to improvements that have been made so well in other product lines?

Answer 1

@PsychoMania.
Okay could you please tell me what Nokia phone to buy to get GPS onboard, a 5MP camera with a Xeon flash, Wi-Fi and a decent browser WITHOUT S60? ;-)
Nokia forces S60 onto users these days and you are right, I probably don't need Symbian. You sure could do all of the above WITHOUT Symbian and S60.
I work as a software developer myself and I don't think Symbian is so fantastic. Yes you can make deeper applications that integrate better than a Java-application but at what cost? Bye, bye sandbox and interpreter code.
Take SkyeQuikey. It needs to load forever after every reboot and is very unstable. It refuses to properly work sometimes and seems to be leaking memory (managed code is the way of the future - everyone knows this but S60 does not support it unlike Windows Mobile). In other words: Very close to being useless because stability and speed is essential for me.
Your analogy with Windows is very interesting. Windows DOES the entire basics well (especially Vista) except antivirus - just like S60. But unlike S60, Vista does all its basic features quite good if you ask me. You don’t need to change the basics of what one has come to expect from an OS – Windows Explorer covers even my most Linux-fanatic colleagues needs very well. The basic file explorer in S60 cannot even show complete details for long filenames. But the Music Player can… see the problem?
There is no excuse for not having a properly SMS editor. Windows Mobile has it and is also a fully operating system. Actually EVERY phone has a complete OS and every feature is simply an application but Symbian only differs in being MORE open to the public and 3rd party developers (but still somewhat bound to the hardware unlike Windows XP/Vista).
Consider every feature of the phone to be bundled integrated software. But the problem is that the software is of very low quality. And no 3rd part software can be as good as a 1st part software becuase Symbian is NOT completely open.
Research??
I did not think that buying a S60 phone meant replacing almost every basic function with something better. And still, nobody has made a complete replacement of the texting system that matches what feature-phones can do. And the worst part is that it is quite possible but either people don't care or the usual Symbian fans don't care about texting. If that is the case then Nokia should stop shipping every feature-rich phone they make, with S60.
According to what they are going to change with FP2, Nokia also seems to be aware of this because their focus is on the UI. But they could have done this long ago. So maybe our critic is not completely wrong?