Symbian^3 now officially unveiled, Design Preview looks spectacular
Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:54 GMT, February 15th 2010
The Symbian Foundation has today unveiled Symbian^3, with details quoted below. And, courtesy of the video-friendly chaps at Nokia Conversations (YouTube channel), we now have an impressive video 'design preview' of Symbian^3 in action. Remember, this is the OS and user interface that will be included in Symbian-powered smartphones in the second half of 2010. Highlights from the video, embedded at high resolution below, are multiple homescreens, 3D 'Coverflow' for music albums, 'single tap' direct manipulation UI everywhere, multitouch (pinching, splaying, to zoom) and live visual multitasking (Web OS/Maemo 5-style). It's quite a visual feast, so look below and enjoy.
And from the Symbian Foundation:
"Symbian^3 is expected to be “feature complete” by the end of Q1. Members of the Symbian community, including device creators, network operators, hardware technology providers, professional services companies and application developers are already engaged with S^3 and the first devices using the platform are expected to ship as early as Q3 this year.
Symbian^3 includes:
- HDMI support enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player.
- Music store integration embedded within the radio enables users to identify a song and learn more about it. The addition of a “buy now” button, which links with the user’s chosen music store, makes purchasing easy.
- More efficient memory management due to Writeable Data Paging allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience, especially on mid-range hardware.
- A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the hardware acceleration available to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Users, developers and device creators will all benefit greatly from the visual enhancements and smooth transitions that will significantly improve the look-and-feel of their applications and services. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down.
- The industry-leading networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, provides next-generation Internet experiences on today’s devices. Consumers will benefit from the architecture's ability to seamlessly balance each individual application’s needs regarding factors such as bandwidth, latency and jitter. This improves the consumer’s experience of network-dependent applications and Internet services like VoIP and media content streaming.
- One-click connectivity for all applications greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, without interrupting the user. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behaviour, for example ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to WLAN when a free WLAN network is available.
- Usability enhancements across the user interface include the adoption of a direct “single tap” interaction model, making it much easier to complete common tasks on a device. Multi-touch support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom” forms the basis of a gesture framework that can be extended and leveraged by the developer community.
- The Homescreen takes a big step forward with support for multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The widget manager makes discovery and download of new widgets simple and support for multiple instances of a native widget means that consumers can monitor multiple weather forecasts, news feeds, social networking accounts or multiple email accounts simultaneously through a common interface.
The developer experience has also been greatly improved. The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits and the runtime in Symbian^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1. The Web Runtime support provided in the platform remains a key part of the developer story, allowing web developers to directly re-use their skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX to create Homescreen widgets and standalone applications."
Categories: Miscellaneous, Links of Interest, Industry, Events
Platforms: General, S60 5th Edition
News Discussion
anphase
Nice to see stuff like multi-touch on Symbian. It really does look spectacular and it will be even more interesting to see the devices powered by Symbian^3.
Unregistered
Will Symbian^3 be ported on existing devices like 5800, N97 or it will be only available in new upcoming devices
Unregistered
i just hope this gets put across onto the n97
5800
I don't believe S^3 will be ported to 5800 or N97. There is no logic Nokia do that. If you want S^3 then you should get a new device covered with. It's simple story and history of devices shows us this simple future. One of reasons to buy a new device is how it is looks but major reason is software behind and this will be key for Nokia to sells new devices. I love my 5800 XM (1 year perfect work to me) but I want S^3. If I can't get it on like software update for my 5800 then probably I'll consider to buy new device.
Arcade
Isnt multitouch exclusive to apple due to some copyright thing ?
Unregistered
"The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits and the runtime in Symbian^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1"
so actually i figure it will run on them, maybe not as efficiently but still!!!
so actually i figure it will run on them, maybe not as efficiently but still!!!
Unregistered
Is there gonna be any development at all for non-Touch screen phones or is touch gonna be the only symbian from now on ?
Unregistered
"Isnt multitouch exclusive to apple due to some copyright thing ?"
Im guessing no as both Palm's WebOS and Android have multitouch.
Im guessing no as both Palm's WebOS and Android have multitouch.
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by 5800
I don't believe S^3 will be ported to 5800 or N97. There is no logic Nokia do that. If you want S^3 then you should get a new device covered with. It's simple story and history of devices shows us this simple future. One of reasons to buy a new device is how it is looks but major reason is software behind and this will be key for Nokia to sells new devices. I love my 5800 XM (1 year perfect work to me) but I want S^3. If I can't get it on like software update for my 5800 then probably I'll consider to buy new device.
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Unregistered
Looking at the bullet point list there, and watching the video, S^3 probably needs HW acceleration so I doubt you'll see it on N97 or any other current Nokia S60v5 phones. Any symbian phones using Omap 3, such as the SEMC and Samsung ones, could in theory support it given that TI's beagleboard and ZoomII are reference boards for S^3. I guess it's up to those manufacturers to decide what they're going to do though. At least the potential is there, but I don't know anything about the other HW on those phones and if it has suitable drivers for S^3. However it's done though, it will be a decent amount of effort and we all know how little time Samsung in particular like to spend on supporting phones they already sold. Personally, I would not be holding my breath..
At least application developers can safely move over to Qt app development though, with the knowledge that they can still sell apps to the whole set of Symbian devices, right from S60v3 FP1 up to S^3. Possibly even with one codebase too, which is much better than the current situation. Nokia needs to start making a big noise about that on Forum Nokia as soon as possible, including some examples of functional apps which work on all those platforms.
At least application developers can safely move over to Qt app development though, with the knowledge that they can still sell apps to the whole set of Symbian devices, right from S60v3 FP1 up to S^3. Possibly even with one codebase too, which is much better than the current situation. Nokia needs to start making a big noise about that on Forum Nokia as soon as possible, including some examples of functional apps which work on all those platforms.
Unregistered
According to wikipedia, there were 63 devices running S60v3 FP1, FP2 and S60v5. That's probably a fairly large proportion of *all* symbian devices still in use, potentially able to run an application written once. I think that's an underestimate, I'm sure I've seen some numbers somewhere saying there were over 30 S60v5 devices around and wikipedia only list a half-dozen or so.
That sounds like pretty good news for developers to me.
That sounds like pretty good news for developers to me.
rafiii
Very good stuff for the OS of transition. Can't wait for the N87 :D
Unregistered
"Isnt multitouch exclusive to apple due to some copyright thing ?"
Apple do have a multi-touch patent, but only in the US, and possibly unenforceable due to the vague nature of what's protected (ie. "it would be nice to have multi-touch"); here's an excerpt:
“A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.”
As you can see, they don't only contain references to multi-touch but to the interpretation of single-touch gestures, which have been around since the original Palm and Psion devices.
Unfortunately, there is a long history of piss-poor patents being granted in the US, which are generic in nature, contain no real technical features but do make life hard for the competition.
However, if Apple do have patents on the actual technology behind multi-touch, no doubt Nokia and others will find a way to circumvent this....
Apple do have a multi-touch patent, but only in the US, and possibly unenforceable due to the vague nature of what's protected (ie. "it would be nice to have multi-touch"); here's an excerpt:
“A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.”
As you can see, they don't only contain references to multi-touch but to the interpretation of single-touch gestures, which have been around since the original Palm and Psion devices.
Unfortunately, there is a long history of piss-poor patents being granted in the US, which are generic in nature, contain no real technical features but do make life hard for the competition.
However, if Apple do have patents on the actual technology behind multi-touch, no doubt Nokia and others will find a way to circumvent this....
Unregistered
Is it just me or does this fundamentally look like a small polish to the current 5th edition? I mean, the "complicated" menu structure is still there, just with cool and shiny transitions and HW acceleration. The UI looks a bit laggy even on this promo video and all in all it just doesn't seem like a huge leap forward to me.
Not that this wouldn't be progress. It's still just fuglier than the rest.
Not that this wouldn't be progress. It's still just fuglier than the rest.
Brendan Donegan
"The complicated menu structure is still there"
You mean at 0:04? If that's complicated for you then how did you even manage to submit that comment?
And it seems your definition of 'looks nice' is either 'looks like the iPhone' or 'looks like Android'. There's not really much that can be done there then is there?
You mean at 0:04? If that's complicated for you then how did you even manage to submit that comment?
And it seems your definition of 'looks nice' is either 'looks like the iPhone' or 'looks like Android'. There's not really much that can be done there then is there?
brrip
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Is it just me or does this fundamentally look like a small polish to the current 5th edition? I mean, the "complicated" menu structure is still there, just with cool and shiny transitions and HW acceleration. The UI looks a bit laggy even on this promo video and all in all it just doesn't seem like a huge leap forward to me.
Not that this wouldn't be progress. It's still just fuglier than the rest. |
It's a delicate balance between tweaking and retaining familiarity of an already successful OS.
Loving the N900-style task manager btw! (also looks a bit like the one on the i8910)
germcevoy
I doubt we will see the 5800 or N97 updated to run this. Can multi touch even run on resistive screens?.
The promo isn't 'spectacular'. Looks nice though and hopefully a little clunky than we have got at the moment.
The promo isn't 'spectacular'. Looks nice though and hopefully a little clunky than we have got at the moment.
Ratkat
I really don't want to be a naysayer here, I really hope that Symbian ^3 is a resounding success. but....
I do remember that the N97 looked this good in it's promo video, and just as fast, the reality was something completely different.
ohhh, HDMI support, nice feature, yes, reality how often will you use it? not often, imagine having a Blu-Ray 1080p Movie on your phone, yep, thats going to be a huge memory card filled.
It's ok adding all these new features, but how about fixing the ones Symbian already has?
What I would finally like to see in Symbian ^3 is a full proper PIM application suite, and a decent native email client, not the unreliable mess that is Nokia Messaging, but a proper html email client that doesn't rely on Nokia dodgy push service.
I do remember that the N97 looked this good in it's promo video, and just as fast, the reality was something completely different.
ohhh, HDMI support, nice feature, yes, reality how often will you use it? not often, imagine having a Blu-Ray 1080p Movie on your phone, yep, thats going to be a huge memory card filled.
It's ok adding all these new features, but how about fixing the ones Symbian already has?
What I would finally like to see in Symbian ^3 is a full proper PIM application suite, and a decent native email client, not the unreliable mess that is Nokia Messaging, but a proper html email client that doesn't rely on Nokia dodgy push service.
Unregistered
I am finding it REALLY hard with this announcement to see the attractions of an iPhone now - and I don't mean for me, I mean for any consumer anywhere.
Why WOULD anyone buy an iPhone when a Nokia (running Symbian ^3) will give you something SO much better SO much cheaper? Better OS, better UI, better camera, open drm free music, fully free and better maps and nav, etc etc etc. The ONLY thing is the appstore apps, and Ovi Store will gradually catch up.
And as for Android, I think Nokia's recent efforts and Symbian ^3, and the implications of MeeGo (just announced, see later stories on the site) kill Android stone dead on every front...
Why WOULD anyone buy an iPhone when a Nokia (running Symbian ^3) will give you something SO much better SO much cheaper? Better OS, better UI, better camera, open drm free music, fully free and better maps and nav, etc etc etc. The ONLY thing is the appstore apps, and Ovi Store will gradually catch up.
And as for Android, I think Nokia's recent efforts and Symbian ^3, and the implications of MeeGo (just announced, see later stories on the site) kill Android stone dead on every front...
Joe Dohn
All that is shown in the video is just a copy of the (now "old") iPhone interface (except the task switcher, of course).
I really hope the Open Source release of SymbianOS will allow it to gain real new ideas from the community...
I really hope the Open Source release of SymbianOS will allow it to gain real new ideas from the community...
Hih
Thats all? LOL.
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
I am finding it REALLY hard with this announcement to see the attractions of an iPhone now - and I don't mean for me, I mean for any consumer anywhere.
Why WOULD anyone buy an iPhone when a Nokia (running Symbian ^3) will give you something SO much better SO much cheaper? Better OS, better UI, better camera, open drm free music, fully free and better maps and nav, etc etc etc. The ONLY thing is the appstore apps, and Ovi Store will gradually catch up. And as for Android, I think Nokia's recent efforts and Symbian ^3, and the implications of MeeGo (just announced, see later stories on the site) kill Android stone dead on every front... |
KPOM
To Brendan, et. al. Symbian^1 does have a confusing menu structure. For instance, some navigation controls are under Maps while others are in the general settings menus. There is a lot of "nesting" of options, as well. iPhone has the easiest structure of any phone I have seen. It does come at the cost of flexibility, but most tasks are within a tap or two from anywhere (the home button in particular is nice). Android is somewhere in the middle. Certain things are confusing (e.g. having to mount an SD card from the notification pane), but other things are simpler than Symbian^1 while retaining flexibility.
I think the question is how far Symbian^3 goes in simplifying the menu structure. If it is just a pretty facade on a confusing menu structure (the way Maemo 5 looks like right now), it will quickly become apparent. If, however, they have made more controls available within one menu level, and have made more advanced controls appear in more logical places, it should go over well.
I think the question is how far Symbian^3 goes in simplifying the menu structure. If it is just a pretty facade on a confusing menu structure (the way Maemo 5 looks like right now), it will quickly become apparent. If, however, they have made more controls available within one menu level, and have made more advanced controls appear in more logical places, it should go over well.
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
People will still buy an iphone even if other manufacturers surpass it in hardware specifications/UI and features. It is an "elite" brand that has been stuck in the minds of consumers. You are "cool" if you have one. Or in the so called "in-crowd". There is so much exposure that it will never go away. Tho good side is at least apple is trying to improve it slowly. (not that it needs it with all the hype it gets)
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Now, I'd just like to qualify the above by admitting that I have both an iPhone and a BMW (luckily I don't also have a pair of Oakley Juliets or I would be utterly and unanimously despised), however the sad fact is that it is true. iPhone user = wanker -in the eyes of most.
I also see something in the video that I really like, the task switching. How much of a pain in the arse is the iPhone when you are mid way through through doing something with an app, then you have to switch to something else, then go back to the original app and be back at square one. GRRR!
Rumoured to be fixed in version 4 though, fortunately. Unfortunately that won't change the unfortunate image of us iPhone owners.
(I also have Nokia phones and an Android one and I carry whatever suits my needs, I am so thrilled what is happening in the mobile phone world, as I develop for them and I can only see good times ahead - the above video just fills me with excitement for the future)
boxieblue
i thought Symbian^3 would be all about visual enhancements, until i saw the features listed. this is awesome!