THE YOUNG MINDS AT WORK

Android vs Symbian – which is the better option? Read on to find out

I’m a typical mobile phone user in India. And like to be updated about the latest technology. Something made me think “Which operating system is better, Android or Symbian?”. This question was asked by my classmate, Shrisha S. Bhat. As I usually prefer Nokia N-series mobiles my answer was Symbian. But when he asked me on what basis I told him theanswer, I was stumped. That led me to search over the internet, asking different guys who know more about the topic. Finally I reached the point where I realized that I was wrong. The fact is Android overcomes Symbian in many ways. The points written below should illustrate the many ways in which Android surpasses Symbian.

Great processing power based on modern processors. Androids use Cortex-A8 based processors which deliver a much better performance than Symbians with Arm 11 CPUs. Excellent examples are HTC Snapdragons (currently with 2nd generation) and Samsung Hummingbirds, both running at 1 GHz speed (versus 680MHz speed in Symbians). The gap in processing power is even larger with the newest dual-core CPUs based on Cortex- A9 architecture (like in Motorola Atrix). That makes Symbians to fall even farther behind Androids.  

Screen resolution. Androids use higher screen resolutions with 800(854)x480 compared to Symbians (640×360). This allows more details to be displayed on screen, which is especially handy with web browsing (the extra information on screen saves the trouble to scroll too much). Furthermore, the recently announced Atrix brings even a higher qHD resolution (960×540)! That means 2.25 times more pixels on the phone display than those found in Symbian phones.

Memory (RAM). Everyone hates when the applications in a phone start to crash because of low memory. While 512MB RAM is normal for Androids, Symbians have to leave with 256MB RAM. Despite Nokia trying to optimize the memory usage, “out of memory” messages still happen in Symbian phones. On the contrary, some Androids reward you with even more RAM (768MB in Desire HD, 1GB in Atrix).

Graphics and games. Symbian devices  use  the  Broadcom  BCM2727 GPU, which while seems to perform pretty well against  the old Adreno 200 chips (Nexus One), it falls behind the newest Android GPUs. Current Android devices come with powerful GPUs based on Adreno 205 (Desire HD) or PowerVR SGX540 cores. Furthermore, the newest Nvidia Tegra 2 chips  bring  even  further  boost  in graphics performance, that is said to show 3-4 times better performance than Adreno 205 or SGX540! Nvidia has  opened  a  special  portal  called Tegra Zone, where the owners of Android Tegra 2 devices can enjoy high quality gaming (as Nvidia describes the chip: “capable of extreme multitasking with  the  first mobile dualcore CPU, hardware accelerated Flash, and console-quality gaming with an ultra-low power GeForce GPU).

UI and customization. It has been pointed out by many analysts that Nokia UI is not modern enough to compete with Android/iOS. The limited  customization  of  the  homescreens and deep menus are all weaknesses of Symbian. On contrary, Androids offer huge customization of homescreens,  menus,  launchers, widgets that will satisfy vast majority of tastes. Either go with manufacturer customized UI (like HTC Sense with its 7 homescreens and widgets) or create a new one completely suited to your  tastes. Popular launchers  like Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher are handy to create customized UIs.

Web Browser. The Android stock browser is the most popular out there because it does the job nicely. Starting form  Android  2.2,  it  can  support Adobe 10.1 full flash, that  is being used in many websites. This enables full  browsing  experience,  enables flash  video  streaming  and  playing flash games from websites like Kongregate. Symbian browser at this moment is a headache to use. For that reason, some users have jumped to use  Opera,  but  it  doesn’t  support flash.

Multimedia. Thanks to powerful hardware and abundance of multimedia applications, playing videos, listening  to music or playing with photos  is  fun  on Android  devices. Large screens (up to 4.3″), great displays (Super Amoleds), huge amount of media players, support for all popular audio/video formats, HDMI connectivity, DLNA media streaming – all these contribute  to  the media  fun. Symbians have to  limit themselves with lesser displays, rely on default media player (because there are hardly any good alternative applications) and miss DLNA connectivity.

Applications Store. While Symbian OVI Store has grown recently (258% in 2010),  it’s growth  is  lower compared  to Android market  (544%  in 2010). The number of applications is also much higher in Android Market (200,000) compared to OVI (40,000). However, what the user notices most is how these app stores integrate with their phones. While OVI seems to be just a disconnected place to download  applications, Android Market will synchronize your installed applications, will notify you of almost daily updates, will auto update them all if  you wish  (even  simultaneously) and offer similar apps. Some alternative client applications for Android Market, like AppBrain, take it even further by allowing you to browse the applications on PC and schedule auto installs on your phone or allow customized selection of apps suitable for your needs.

Applications. As pointed above, there are more Android apps available than Symbian Apps. But what does this give us? For one, you can do more things that you can’t do with Symbian, because Symbian doesn’t have similar application. For example, I’m using at least 5 Dutch Android apps that have no Symbian equivalents. Next, there is the variety of applications. Thanks to more developers being involved with Android, we get a huge choice of applications. Try to count  the  number  of  applications available for Android and Symbian in a particular interest, say how many music  or medical  applications  are available in each platform.

When we look at the applications outside  the  Apps  Stores,  they  are most easy to install on Androids: just copy them to the phone and run it there. With Symbian, you have  to deal with the complicated Symbian signing  procedure.  DailyMobile’s Symbian forum has probably a few thousands posts with desperate questions on this matter. Finally, sharing apps on Androids is a breeze thanks to Apps Sharing applications and QR codes. There are multiple ways to do this, including Dropbox sharing and Barcode scanning. 

Custom ROMs and Modding. This is a special area where Androids shine above other platforms. Professional modding  communities  like Cyanogen, XDA-World, or Modaco are  immensely popular by creating new firmware with either new OS versions or improving those that come built-into the devices or by adding new features. For people who love to scqueeze the best out of their phones, Android truly offers the best possibilities.

OS updates. On average, every 6 month there is a new OS version in Android. While manufacturers have different ideas about updating their phones (HTC does an excellent job updating their phones), you can almost always update your phone to latest  version  thanks  to  custom ROMs. The fist Android phone (G1) that was released in 2008, was updated  to Android 2.2 Froyo via Vodaphone and via custom ROMs. Symbian jumped from S60V5 to S^3 for touch  devices,  but  none  of  those S60V5 devices was updated (probably because the hardware was crap).

Market trends.Some trends are obvious,  like  declining  popularity  of Symbian  devices,  falling  Symbian and  rising  Android market  shares, other  manufacturers  abandoning Symbian at all (like Samsung and SE), disposal  of  Symbian  foundation, etc… It has come now to “One versus Many”  where  Symbian  is  alone (Nokia)  against  a  team  of  players (Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, SE, LG, etc…).  In  January,  the CES 2011 electronics show was all about Android devices (now even stronger with  tablets  invading  the market), while  Symbian was nowhere  to be found. Maybe in MWC in February? Maybe… Taking too much time between announcing a phone and releasing it doesn’t help Symbian at all (typical examples are Nokia N8  and  E7).  Contrary  to  this  Androids keep it short, between 1 to 3 months (see DHD or Nexus S or LG Optimus 2X).

Many thanks to Shrisha for asking me a question which enlightened me on this topic.