I used a symbian phone for 3 years. And in Pakistan the Symbian phones are still the first preference. But Android just popped up in the world comibing
AMOLED display and prevailed on everything. Even Apple is struggling hard to counter this surge
I never used Android. SO a pretty basic question. What makes android better than Symbian
[according to you]
I've used Symbian for 7 months before switching to an Android phone (HTC Desire Z). The reason I switched so soon was more due to the fact that the N97 is a very bad, buggy phone as a whole than Symbian. I'll restrict my comments to comparing Symbian to Android only (and not about specifically the N97).
First of all, the Android UI makes it easier for me to access the things I need more easily. The 7 home screens allow easy access to the items I use frequently, very easily. On the HTC, there are a number of widgets that already display the relavent information from the apps that I use often without having to open the app. The widgets I use also can display a lot of information. Some widgets are small and some take up the whole home screen. Depending on how much information you need different widgets for different apps are of different sizes. The weather widget I use only takes up 1/8 the screen where as Friend Stream (for Facebook updates) and Twitter widgets take up the whole screen.
In comparison, Symbian on the phone I use has only one home screen. (The latest version, Symbian^3, has 3 home screens.) The widgets are also rather limited to displaying only three lines of information and can only take 1/6 of the screen. The FB widget and Gravity (for Twitter feeds) need to be bigger than this for them to be useful for me.
It is easier to add a shortcut on Android. All you do is long tap and then select the short cut you want. You can also move the short cut anywhere on the existing home screen or to another very easily. On Symbian, you need to first create a short cut widget (which can hold 4 short cuts), then edit the widget and then select which of the 4 short cuts in the widget and then select the app. If you want to move the short cut one space to the left, you have to edit the shortcut widget, remove the short cut from the current spot, select the spot where you want the short cut to go, then select the app for the short cut.
In general, I find that there are many things where with Symbian you have to drill down multiple submenus or subfolders to get what you want. Although with Android, you may have to drill down, I find you don't need to drill down as many levels. Android seems to encourage a flatter structure in its UI. This may mean that things may not be so organised into groups of folders and subfolders, but more often than not, it makes searching for things you don't use often easier. With Symbian, if you want to find something that you don't use often, it involves searching in more folders and subfolders/menus.
The one big thing for me is that the Android browser is much, much better than the Symbian browser. I find I had difficulty opening some web sites on the Symbian browser. The Android browser seems to be able to open almost any web site I would visit on my PC. You can get around the Symbian browser problems by installing a different browser. However, Symbian does not seem to let you change default browsers for all applications. I can change the default browser in Symbian for email links, but I cannot do the same for Gravity (my Twitter app) or Facebook. I did use two alternate browsers on my Symbian phone, but I got tired of using 3 different browsers depending on what I need to do. I did install a second browser (Opera Mini) on my Android phone, but I only use the Android browser now. When I upgraded from my N97, I considered the E7, but the browser was one of the main reasons I decided to go with the Desire Z.
Android has its Marketplace app that allows you to browse through and select apps to install. Symbian has the Ovi app store. I find that the Android Marketplace to be easier to use. It is just faster when scrolling through the list of apps. The Ovi Store is painfully slow in comparison.
The new version Symbian has improvements over the version I used on the N97. From what I've seen of the new Symbian, Android is still a better experience overall.