S60 using TAT to bling up their mobile phone UI
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 6:47 AM PST In Nokia
The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) is a Swedish company that makes something called Kastor which is, to quote their website, “a powerful UI rendering platform.” It’s something that users can’t go willy nilly and install on their own, but instead software that should enable the next generation of products to produce a whole lot of wow. One of their public relations people, Anna Lagerkvist, contacted me and let me know that TAT’s technology is being used by Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), Samsung, Motorola (NYSE: MOT), that they’re designing the UI for Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android and that as of today their work will also be in future S60 releases.
TAT has a whole bunch of talented people, just look at some of these videos to get an idea of what they’re capable of.
A few questions arise however, since S60 is going to be donated to the Symbian Foundation … isn’t this going to put TAT’s software under the EPL?
“Available” for S60, but not yet something we can do ourselves… I love that tabbed standby screen though it looks optimized for touch and UIQ. Interesting that they are working on the Android UI as well …
There are rumours that the next firmware upgrade for the N95 will have either SP2, or Kastor, but thats as far as it goes, you know what rumours are like, usually false claims, and wishful thinking.
Direct competition for the soon-to-be google phone and it’s OS/UI. Good to see others competing.
looks ugly to me, just loads of eye candy just thrown in together to make the UI look “better”.
I hope the final result is a little more classier/subtle then those videos.
I would imagine that even if the S60 platform is “public domain” manufacturers would seek and be allowed to differentiate with these kinds of layers on top.
But then again, FP2 already have lot’s of effects that look like those. Perhaps FP2 was “kastor powered” all along
Available does not mean used. They may have ported their framework to S60 but just wait for Nokia or other S60 licensee to take it into before giving this news any value. Have you seen an announcement from Nokia about licensing such technology?
As for expecting to see it in any 3.1 or 3.2 devices that is pure fantasy. The content of those phones was frozen long time ago, they are not going to simple re-do them overnight.