Products · Product
Symbian
Raised as a usability problem by 21 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2010–2025), in 20 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Interface was very confusing and full of bugsUnreviewed
20102026- Symbian was built for keys only, so its touch interface felt bad2021-03-02
- Symbian interface was confusing and cluttered2020-08-01
- Developers find building Symbian apps horribly complex to do2016-10-02
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 22 complaints
- Native API is a bespoke C++ dialect riddled with legacy2025-07-17
- UI built for keyboard phones, with apps not designed for touch input2025-07-17
- Developers struggle badly with the Active Object programming model, causing widespread pain2023-12-05
- Menus must be navigated with arrow keys, with no hotkeys for menu options2022-11-12
- Developer APIs and SDK so hard to use that apps were infeasible2022-10-20
- Awful UI, with poor Gmail integration2022-05-24
- Symbian was built for keys only, so its touch interface felt bad2021-03-02
- Symbian interface was confusing and cluttered2020-08-01
- Using it was annoying; ease of use and UX were lacking2020-06-25
- Series 60 UI is terrible to use2020-06-25
- Basic tasks like web, photos and video calls were painfully awkward and unusable2020-06-25
- Cluttered touch UI with laggy, non-kinetic scrolling under 30fps2017-01-04
- Developers find building Symbian apps horribly complex to do2016-10-02
- Symbian UX was horrible and hard to use on the N952016-02-14
- Symbian has several half-hearted touch layers and cluttered desktop-style features, making it a mess to use2014-03-18
- Symbian interface was very confusing and full of bugs2013-11-04
- Core UI described as badly designed and truly awful, barely semi-usable2013-07-14
- Emulator is unusable; running two instances requires installing duplicate copies2012-06-18
- Symbian has the same basic problems as Windows Mobile 6.5, designed for resistive screens2011-07-26
- Fragmented, poorly designed UI layers left the OS outdated and hard to develop for2011-02-11
- Developers face slow app signing and a slow, painful development workflow2010-10-20
- High-end Symbian phones are non-intuitive to use2010-06-24