Another year on and another Symbian show - this year called the Symbian Exhange & Exposition 2009. Since the demise last year of UIQ and Motorola exiting the Symbian ecosystem, what relevance does this show have to Moto Smartphones?

 

The relevance is that even though Motorola have quit the Symbian development arena, other ex-UIQ manufacturers, most notably SonyEriccsson, are still actively developing Symbian phones - only this time using the S60 user interface instead of UIQ.

 

Infact, the SonyEriccsson Satio is one of the highlights of this years' smaller, more compact show. With a far more developer-centric feel than previous shows, and with the news that next years' show will be held in Berlin, there are far less phones to play with and a very different vibe to the show.

 

So there's less to see and less to do, but is there any less going on? In truth yes - this year has the feel of very much a "trial" event, feeling its way in the muddy waters of a newly formed open-source developer community. It feels like Symbian, Nokia, SonyEriccsson, Samsung and the rest have cut back on almost everything they historically bring to shows... even the legendary mints are conspicuous by their absence. The cut backs have actually got so severe that they can't even afford tables or power points in the media zone!