In a lot of respects, its rare to talk about Bible apps for one specific platform – there so many – the causality of Bible apps for the Symbian platform has been one of those questions that has gnawed at me a bit. Not so much even for the lack of applications, but the missed opportunities because of where the Symbian platform has been represented.
What is Symbian?
Symbian is a mobile operating system and platform that’s been used by Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Fujitsu, and LG for mobile phones. To date, there have been over 600 million devices shipped and sold with the Symbian operating system, making it one of the most prolific in use.
Nokia has been quite adept at making Symbian fit its needs. It has pretty much been selling Symbian devices longer than people have given credence to there even being a category called smartphones. To that end, Symbian has been deployed with more carriers and in more world regions than all but the most basic of Java handsets.
Unfortunately, it is also considered an older platform that while stable and optimized for mobile devices, falls quite far behind some of the newer entrants in respect to ease-of-use, developer tools, and ease of finding applications. And so Symbian recently befell Nokia’s reorganization efforts (first spun into an open source platform, and now to be greatly minimized over the next years to be replaced by Windows Phone).
Symbian and Bibles
By accident of niche, Biblical software usually is a fairly easy one to fill. Find a publisher that has the languages that you want to address, write the application to deliver it, and then make it available. The issue with Symbian is that its actually a pretty difficult platform to build on. Without getting too technical, its just plain to say that developers have needed to had a certain type of older technical knowledge (previously) or invest in toolsets (Qt, Java, etc.) which required a good amount of patience before progress.
When I moved to the Symbian platform in 2008, there wasn’t much to find for Bible apps. Laridian, Olive Tree, Symbian Bible, and Go-Bible were pretty much your only options. And for a while, this was just fine and covered most of the Symbian devices that were in existence. When Symbian went to a touch-based user interface (UI), things got a lot fragmented, and Symbian Bible pretty much became the only option (Best eBible came on the scene later). Which was good and not good – a free application, using Bibles formatted for the Palm Bible+ application, and had no support for newer translations. Newer platforms ended up with a very easy “in” for adoption, they had what people could read, and could find.
A Missed Opportunity…
In light of all of that history, its easy to say that Symbian (and the companies associated with that platform) might have missed an opportunity to take a platform that has already made considerable inroads even further. But, it had a good bit going against it, and so it is now in the position it is in.
But does that mean that all potential opportunity for this platform have been lost? I’d say no, if technical aptitude is seen as a gift that can benefit the Body. When I say technical aptitude, a platform (like Symbian, but all qualify here) benefits by such knowledge as developer tools, device interfaces, language mapping, usage analytics, etc. A person who is skilled in any of these areas would be a suitable team member for a larger project creating an application, service, or refining a digital faith experience. These persons have to be looked for in “not normal places” as their gift isn’t something you’d find in Exodus on the way to creating a mobile altar (Exodus 25-27).
There’s also the benefit of much of Symbian’s assets being made available in open forums (for example Forum Nokia), through some open source technologies (for example Qt), and through the continued ownership of Symbian devices (installed-based analysis by Vision Mobile). In effect, there’s a lot of folks out there who can still benefit from a Bible solution on this platform.
The Lesson for Other Mobile Platforms
It is easy for the market, and popular (loud) opinion to state where you should place your development resources. Certainly, making plans for mobile software you’ve got to take into account devices, services, and experiences (the entire frame of mobile) and what is currently and what will be in the years to come.
When it comes to religious software, you also have the opportunity to always tap into the installed base of current users. Many times, your frequent fans and users of digital faith items will not splurge on the latest devices or services, though they will want to receive some of the same experiences that newer devices offer. It is in this that the opportunity lies, and where its possible to not just make a product, but help drive older platforms to a friendlier sunset.
Currently, there are several mobile platforms that have come and gone (Epoc, PalmOS, Windows Mobile), and some that are pretty much on their last legs (Symbian, older versions of Android and iOS, RIM’s BB OS 6 and earlier). Developers looking to cut their teeth on a mobile platform to learn and to provide experiences should not forget these platforms. And at the same time, you should go into any project with a clear (and simple) goal and definitive timeline. You will not be able to support those devices for very long when the official support has faded.
Lastly, when you are a platform that has cultured a community of content, but you are no longer able to support that platform, utilize the open code and support communities of Code.Google, Forum Nokia, SourceForge, GitHub, and others as places to put your code and release notes. There might be someone willing to take up the project, or at least help you migrate your project’s contents into a newer platform. For example, MMM participated in an effort to update the Rapier Bible application for Maemo 5 devices, fixing some linger bugs, but that also set the stage to develop (and later release into widespread testing) a Bible application written in Qt from the ground up called Katana. The rewritten application leans on lessons of the former, but has a much longer viable life because of decisions made early on to support certain content and programming hooks.
For Symbian, it may very well be the case that the sun is setting for it as a leading mobile platform. It is also the case that there are some years and various regions of users that still haven’t been served with digital faith content though having a platform capable of supporting it. Do keep that in mind as you consider your mobile strategies, and remember to study the past platforms for what is probably going to happen to many others in a nearer-than-you-can-expect future.
We mentioned on Twitter yesterday that an update for Digital Disciples Charlotte was coming, and now we’ve got the details to pass along.
This is a story sent to us from the mission field. The details are true, but names and physical details have been changed.
Over at 
I caught it while traveling last week, but didn’t make the effort to repost – hopefully correcting that now. The 
Mobile Ministry is More Than Devices (Part 1)
Friday, May 13th, 2011(Refined*) Definition of Mobile
(Refined*) Definition of Mobile Ministry
*Both of these refined definitions were taken from our GCIA 2011 Presentation Deck; you can refer to our other discussions on the definition of mobile ministry by using the tag reference to our articles on this subject.
There are a few pieces to note within this definition key to my position on this. First, mobile isn’t about having a certain kind of mobile device. Mobile devices are considered to be any computing device that is portable. That means laptops, tablets, PDAs, phones, music players, personal media players, gaming systems, and even calculators are mobile computers. What you do with them doesn’t yet drive the definition, these are all devices which process several types of input and output another type of data without physical tethering by either the user or the computing device.
Next, there are three parts of mobile which aren’t exclusive to mobile, but do drive the understanding towards how to proceed forward. Mobile is made up of three layers: devices, services, and experiences. Devices include all of those which I described in the paragraph above. However, when you hear “mobile devices” in marketing and similar communications, it is implied that you are speaking of computing devices that have screens between 5in and 2in in diameter. This doesn’t mean that other devices aren’t mobile, only that the marketing term for mobile has been constrained to this type of device form factor only.
Portable devices without a screen that also facilitate computing-style interactions are also mobile computers, but again, marketing or functionality determines their name, and therefore their perception. This includes how we think about portable computing devices for those with disabilities.
After the idea of devices, we have services. Services include those applications, wireless networks, applications (and their frameworks and development tools), and those tools of analysis and monetization that enable the devices to perform/facilitate communications or describe/analyze events. On this layer you have the fun of mobile platforms, cellular frequencies, developer tools, regional idiosyncrasies towards using a device (SIM, no SIM, MVNOs, etc.), SMS, etc. It is in this layer that much of what has happened to date in terms of the application of mobiles in ministry has taken place.
Lastly, you have experiences. Experiences include “soft” aspects of mobile including design, marketing, intended effects (education, salvation, discipleship, etc.), and the environments effected by mobile (politics, psychology, theology, etc.). The experience of any mobile device, for example, how hard is it to call up a verse in the Bible when listening to a preacher, overall determines how we judge the device and service layers of mobile as an entire experience.
One of the many difficulties that organizations (not just in terms of digital faith) are having with mobile is that they are letting the device layer direct the application of mobile to their intended audiences. Unfortunately, when that happens, especially when you take smartphones out of the equation, is that the development of consistent experiences and integration of services becomes very difficult. Engaging any mobile audience requires a clear understanding of how these three layers are going to be effected, and decisions need to be made very early in the process as to what layer you will most focus on, and how you will craft your expectations around that layer.
This continues in Part 2 next week.
Tags: definition of mobile, definition of mobile ministry, devices, experiences, platforms, services
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