6 Things Why Android is Better Than Symbian OS

Android is the famous OS now due to various advantages over any other mobile OS.

1. Change the defaults – One of the cool things about smartphones is the abundance of 3rd party applications, including web browsers, messaging applications, and the like. Unfortunately, in Symbian, there’s no way to set these 3rd party applications as the default for certain actions. This is annoying, for instance, if you prefer to use Opera Mobile as your web browser,  instead of the default one. Any link you click on the phone will automatically open in the default browser, no matter what. With Android, you can change the defaults for anything, including the browser and messaging quite easily, with no hacking required.

2. Browsing – the default web browser on Android is noticeably faster than the Symbian one, specifically for large websites. It’s also much smoother to use, and seems to be more accurate when clicking links. The Android browser also offers visual bookmarks, which is handy to get a peek at each webpage, and these are updated when you open them, too.

3. Multiple homescreens –  The Samsung i8910 OmniaHD actually offers 3 ‘panels’ in its TouchWiz UI, but no other Symbian-powered smartphone offers multiple customized homescreens. On the HTC Eris, I have 3 with the native homescreen, or 7 with the HTC SenseUI homescreen. This is awesome and gives me more room for widgets and shortcuts to contacts or applications. The HTC SenseUI even allows me to save my homescreen setups as ‘scenes’ that I can quickly switch between – for home and work, for instance. To be quite honest, though, 7 homescreens is absolutely ridiculous, and I have trouble remembering what’s on each one. 3 is much more manageable and realistic, in my opinion. Both are better than the single option we have with Symbian^1. It should be noted that Symbian^3, which should be on devices later this year, will support multiple homescreens, so there’s some improvement being made. (the white bar above ‘phone’ indicates the current homescreen in the photo here).

4. Integration – this is the big one that Symbian really needs to get on board with, specifically on Nokia’s handsets. When anyone got my HTC Eris, part of the initial setup process asked if yoy had a Google account, and if you wanted to login with it. You can did so once, and magically, all your Google Mail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Talk info was copied down to the device. Others have reported that when they logged in with their Google account on a different Android device, their apps were downloaded, too. 

5. Notifications – the top of the display on Android devices is for notifications. In a small strip, you can easily see the time, battery level, signal strength, system indicators (GPS, WiFi, etc), and a set number of application notifications. On Symbian, this same area takes up twice as many pixels and offers a fraction of the information. This notifications feature is perhaps the most convenient part of Android, and one that I feel is overlooked. On every other platform, new messages, emails, etc pop up in your face and you pretty much have to do something with them. With Android, these notifications are tucked out of the way in the notification bar until you pull it down to do something with them. This allows you to manage things on your terms, rather than interrupting your workflow. There is also a convenient ‘Clear Notifications’ button to quickly dismiss everything.

6. Applications – the App Market on my Android phone allows me to browse by popularity or date added, neither of which are available on the Ovi Store (Update: this feature is now available in the Ovi Store). It also has a usable search function that actually returns relevant results, which the Ovi Store search function doesn’t always do. While browsing the App Market on Android, you can click to install an app, and then continue browsing while that application is downloaded and installed in the background. 

7. Onscreen keyboards – the onscreen keyboards on Android were clearly designed for touch – specifically the portrait QWERTY. Compare below, and you can easily see why it’s actually usable, compared to the one stuck on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

6. Platform Updates – this is a two-part point. For one, any updates to Android devices are delivered over-the-air, period. There is no need to find a Windows-powered PC or any of that – it’s all done over-the-air. Symbian devices have gotten better about this, but both Nokia and Samsung continue to release firmware updates through their PC-only applications, which is lame. The second part is actual platform upgrades. When you buy a Symbian-powered smartphone, you get whatever version it comes with – S60v3, S60v3 Feature Pack 2, S60v5, etc, and that’s all you get. Most Android-powered smartphones shipped with either v1.5 or v1.6 pre-installed, and nearly all of them have been officially slated for the newer v2.0+ upgrade. This is a big deal, and now that the Symbian source is free and open source, you wonder if we’ll start to see opportunities to update later handsets like the N97 Mini to Symbian^2.