Disheartening news, now, according to The Boy Genius Report. At the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, Sony Ericsson have explicitly stated that they believe UIQ (the Symbian interface that powers their top-end mobile phones, like the Sony Ericsson G900) is dead.
For any fans of their top-end mobile phones, that’s particularly sad news, so it’s not unreasonable that there’s some emotion and bad feeling in the air.
But, being objective, were the words of Patrick Olsson, from Sony Ericsson, actually, that accurate? Is UIQ as dead as people say? Well, in its current form, I’d grudgingly have to say yes, but there is a silver lining. Before I get to that, though, let’s take a look back at the classic handsets that led to my love affair with Sony Ericsson UIQ-powered mobile phones since 2003. First up was the Sony Ericsson P800, with UIQ2, a mobile phone notable for being roughly 3 billion times better than any other phone on the planet at that time. That was followed by the P900, that took UIQ mobile phones to new heights.
And then it went stratospheric with the Sony Ericsson P910, with its QWERTY keyboard hidden on the back of the flip, with that honking great touchscreen, and with UIQ 2.1 at its core.
In hindsight, things started to go not brilliantly with the Sony Ericsson P990, since it was underpowered, meaning that the brand new UIQ3 interface on it couldn’t perform to its full potential. Loads more mobile phones came along though, to rectify that, from the M600 and W950, to the P1 and W960, and up to, today, the aforementioned Sony Ericsson G900. None of those were mass market mobile phones, though, and UIQ never got the mass market push it needed. A shame, really, since I’ve always said it was nicer than the S60 version of Symbian seen on Nokia mobile phones.
So, with Sony Ericsson saying that they don’t think there’s a future in UIQ, is it dead? Well, as I said, in its current form, pretty much. But in all the furore, and really angry screaming (a few people on forums spring to mind, but I won’t name names…), people have forgotten that UIQ is signed up to the Symbian Foundation, so the core concepts (and I would bet money on this happening) will very likely appear on Symbian Foundation mobile phones. So, the spirit of UIQ isn’t done, I’m absolutely sure of that. Even if the base platform of Symbian Foundation is S60 (and not just S60-compatible, a very important distinction to make, and one that a hell of a lot of people are confusing), UIQ have a long history of interfaces for touchscreen mobile phones, so anybody who says that bits of their design genius won’t make it into Symbian Foundation are probably just being needlessly angry at Nokia.
Let’s just wait, and see what happens, and be happy when bits of UIQ appear in S60, and Sony Ericsson gets a new touch-based operating system which’ll now work with all the vast quantities of third-party software for S60, something UIQ never could manage…
Anyway, the bottom line is, UIQ may be dead in body, but it’s spirit will live on through the Symbian Foundation. If I had one, I’d stake my reputation on it…
Get the latest and greatest UIQ smartphone, the Sony Ericsson G900, today!
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
You’re mistaken, the P800 was more than 5 billion times better! I never drooled as much over any phone as the P800.
I have a G900, I think its just a little bit underpowered, but it is still awesome nonetheless.
Hopefully this will be for the best. Maybe SE will update the G900 with the touch enabled S60, or maybe thats just wishful thinking.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:01 am
You know, I have to concede, I underestimated. 5 billion sounds about right.
People forget how mind-blowing it was at the time, easily at least as important as the far more famous T610 that shared a range with it.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I saw a person using it a couple of months ago.
Its features are still comparable, I guess :p
January 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Aye, other than GPS and WiFi, my new X1 is basically the same in functionality as the old P800. It’s just that it does everything faster and harder, with more pixels lol
March 24th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Hi guys
ive had a long running love afair with Sony Ericsson mobiles for many years having owned ( still in a draw somwheres) p800 p910 and the P990i
its a genuine sadness that the Os is now defunkt but it comes as no resuprise now that nokia has relesed symbian as an open sorce it was i think inevitable
thanks all for reading
regards Peter Dark
April 7th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
[...] how I predicted, way back when, that although Symbian UIQ was dead in its as-then form, it would live on in other ways? Compare that with Steffen [...]