New UI to be built on top of Symbian, S60 to be taken behind the barn and shot in the face?

Scott Weiss, User Interface Technology Manager for The Symbian Foundation, recently said that S60 5th edition, the version that you see on current touch devices shipping from Nokia such as the N97 and 5800, is a temporary solution and things will change rather soon.

Back in April, the Symbian foundation blog said these two things will be included in Symbian^4 which is supposed to be feature complete this time next year, and be final by the end of 2010:

A new “Orbit” extension library for Qt, which contains more than 50 widgets tailored for mobile user experience, and which will provide a replacement for the existing “Avkon” widget set.

A new “Direct UI” interaction and navigation logic, combined with finger-optimised layouts offering excellent touch and hybrid-device user experience.

Krzysztof Choma, who is now unemployed, but used to be a Senior Software Engineer at Nokia for 3 months, and before that a Senior Software Engineer for Symbian for 2 years, confirms that the decision to kill Avkon, which is the codename for Nokia’s flavor of S60, has not yet been made and goes through the pros and cons of switching to Direct UI. The pros for taking Avkon behind the barn and putting a bullet in it’s brain are many: it’s old, maintaining it is costly and starting from scratch to compete with Palm and Apple is tempting. The cons: developers would have to rewrite their applications. Well boo hoo!

Direct UI, the replacement for Avkon, is built on top of Qt from what I can tell, and creating a Hello World application in Qt on Symbian takes 10 lines of code, where as for Avkon you have to import multiple classes and create several files.

Conclusion after all that technomumbojumbo: Touch versions of S60 are still going to look like the same S60 from 2002 when the Nokia 7650 came out, and Symbian is not going to be competitive, in the UI/UX department, until the end of 2010. Expect devices with the new UI to probably hit in 2011. When Steve Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of it’s time, he was not kidding.

[Screenshot above via SlashGear]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

Tom

Yay, about time. I hope the new UI doesn’t suck.
manu

x2
so tired of symbian crappy ui hope they make a change soon cuz otherwise am gonna change to android.(really looking for one that comes with fm radio + transmitter)
Mika

“Direct UI, the replacement for Avkon, is built on top of Qt from what I can tell,”

WTF????. Not yet anather UI. Why QT for the S60 is not enough? Why would you need yet another layer on top of Qt? Nokia is currently porting QT to S60 and I think that’s exactly what we need. If you put that DirectUI layer on top of Qt then portability of Qt is also lost, what’s the point of that?
Mika

“When Steve Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of it’s time, he was not kidding.”

Yeah right. Latest iPhone 3GS eg. still can’t multitask user programs, how is that “5 years ahead of it’s time” when Symbian phones have always been able to do that? iPhone also still has cripled bluetooth, crappy camera with no camera settings and flash, etc etc etc. iPhone lacks lot’s of features which even cheapest Nokia phone has had several years now.

Steve jobs should understand that UI is not the only part of the phone which is important. He does not seem to understand that.

Pretty UI is useless if rest of the phone’s features are missing or implemented badly.
Vesko

“Steve jobs should understand that UI is not the only part of the phone which is important. He does not seem to understand that.”
The customers seem to undestand perfectly that the UI is the single most important thing about phones. Maybe Nokia should change their point of view…
Darep

This is great news! Especially the “10 lines for Hello world” -part! I don’t see why any developer wouldn’t want to change to that from the mess that is Symbian C++ & Avkon.

But yeah, it’s years away and atleast I am already fed up with this S60 5th crap and auctioning off my 5800 for the iPhone. Doubt the 5800 would get the update to Direct UI.
Mika

“The customers seem to undestand perfectly that the UI is the single most important thing about phones. Maybe Nokia should change their point of view…”

As I said earlier, pretty UI is useless if rest of the phone’s features are missing or implemented badly. And that’s the case withj iPhone. I think you are from finland so you know the phrase “Moni kakku päältä kaunis”. I’m not sure what would be equal phrase in english. The idea is that something may look good, but isn’t really when you touch it more.

What’s the point of having nice UI if phone’s features limit badly what you can do with it? How do you use your phone? Do you just use your time on adoring the UI and showing the UI to others, or do you use phone’s features extensively? Atleast i do the latter one, that’s why I don’t really like iPhone because I can’t do what I want using it. it’s too limited.
Mika

I don’t think that Symbian is so difficult to use as iPhone users try to make it look like. Symbian is different to iPhoneOS, but it does not mean it’s more difficult to use. Tens of millions use Symbian smartphones daily.

Being different does not mean being difficult. Eg. Windows guys always claim that Linux is difficult to use, but it is not. It’s just different to Windows. You always need some time to learn new stuff no matter how easy it is.

And being easy can be problem too, If you as a phone manufacturer think that users of your phones are idiots and they can’t handle too many otions etc, then that can lead to product which is severely limited. And I think that’s exactly what has happened with iPhone.

Actually UI which is not as polished as something else can be much more powerful, in many cases UI like that can let you do much more with your device. Lets take take the linux and Windows as an example again. Windows users rarely user sommanline, it’s hidden from them because Microsoft thinks it confuses users. Actually that’s wery bad decision because now Windows users are reaklkly confused if they some day have to use command line. Windows users also laugh at linux users who like to do stuff from commandline.

On Linux using command line is much more faster and powerful, than using tiools with GUI. In many cases it takes just one command to to do something, but if you want to use GUI toolls then you have to open windows, select menus, press buttons etc. Usually it’äs much faster to do stuff from commandline even if the UI is not as nice.

So oversimplified UI can be problem, and I think that’s one problem in iPhone. Another is that for some weird reason Apple seems to ignore wery useful features which have been in Nokia phones foe ages now.
Darep

This is quite offtopic, but, oh well..

Here’s a feature for you:
There’s only ONE SSH client app for the 5800 (s2putty) and it’s utter Shit. You can use it but it’s so slow and irritating to use I feel like I don’t want to use it. But I have to. Just to enter a line of text, I have to tap the screen 5 times before I get to write it. And 2 to send it.

For the iPhone/iPod Touch there are atleast three in the App Store and Terminal in Cydia (which I think is the best). They’re all well designed and very quick to use, I can write a command after one. single. tap. And one tap to send it.

There’s nothing limiting me on the iPod Touch. All the features are there. (Cydia & Backgrounder)

I was quite happy with the 5800 when I got it, mainly because I didn’t know better! I bought an iPod Touch sometime ago just to see what all the hype was all about and I was blown away. It is so good.

Regarding your comment on command lines… Command lines are bad for beginners.
Everyone struggles with a command line if they’re new to it. Why? Because you have to learn and REMEMBER the commands. And on top of that, it helps greatly if you remember the arguments, too. Command lines put a ton of stress on the user’s memory, and quite frankly, I’d prefer to use my memory for something else than commands. If you’re a command line guru, you’ll be comfortable, quite happy and productive. Same goes with Symbian – if you’re a Symbian guru, you’ll be comfortable there.

The iPhone/iPod Touch I can just use. I don’t have to learn anything, I can just use it and go about my business.
Mika

“There’s only ONE SSH client app for the 5800 (s2putty) and it’s utter Shit. You can use it but it’s so slow and irritating to use I feel like I don’t want to use it. But I have to. Just to enter a line of text, I have to tap the screen 5 times before I get to write it. And 2 to send it.”

Yeah right. What you say IS NOT TRUE. There is dedicated PuTTY Touch UI for S60 5th edition. Putty Touch UI 0.7.x supports S60 5th edition and touch screen phones like 5800 XPressMusic and N97. I have been using Putty’s touch UI version since it was in version 0.6.x and it works just fine.

Eg. if you want to enter line of text then ONE SINGLE TAP opens virtual keyboard. And tapping the enter key on virtual keyboard sends the text. So only ONE SINGLE TAP is needed to send the text. After sending the text you write and another line, or you can tap the green checkmark key which closes the virtual keyboard.

Well lets see… Let me quess, you are using the older original version of Putty which is not even meant to be used on touch screen phones, You are using original Putty which is made for the S60 3rd edition phones which don’t even have a touch screen. So it’s your mistake. Don’t blame the phone, OS or UI when it’s you who make a mistake.
Mika

“The iPhone/iPod Touch I can just use. I don’t have to learn anything, I can just use it and go about my business.”

Sorry but that’s bullshit. Everything new requires learning no matter how easy you THINK it is when you have used to it.
Mika

typofix:

After sending the text you can write and send another line, or you can tap the green checkmark key which closes the virtual keyboard.
Darep

“There is dedicated PuTTY Touch UI for S60 5th edition.”

Whoops! Totally my mistake! Hadn’t checked the site for a while and now there was a post from a few days ago Risto Avila has done smashing job with it, but it’s still quite limited (by the S60?) compared to the ones on the iPhone. Wtf, NO T9 if I use the single tap input!?
It’s not easy to develop apps with good UIs for the S60. And the S60 5th input interface is really, erm, conservative.

“Sorry but that’s bullshit. Everything new requires learning no matter how easy you THINK it is when you have used to it.”

Of course. It’s just a matter of how steep that learning curve is. I personally evaluate the steepness from the number of “WTF”s I get.
As an engineer, I also enjoy conquering hard to use platforms. I’ve somewhat conquered the S60 5th and all that’s left is the pain of using it. The iPod Touch was easy to conquer (no big satisfaction) but now I enjoy using it day-to-day. That’s what I meant to say there.

If I get bored, I’ll get me something new. Like a new Nokia, if they come up with this better UI and a better developer interface. (iPhone has a ton of stupid apps because even the stupidest person can develop for it )
Steve

Mika:
“So it’s your mistake. Don’t blame the phone, OS or UI ”

I see, so the customer is always wrong.

Nokia and Symbian need “fans” like you, Mika, like they need a hole in the brain.
Marcelo

@mika : Hey dude. Please stop crying out loud about this. You are clearly a Nokia blind fan (possible an employee) and it’s missing the most important point here:
NOBODY wants to make the Nokia iphone. But nokia stopped in time! So what we are crying here is to :
“Nokia Wake up and do something again as great as you did in the past ” Not “Iphone is better this that”.

Your view, is totally different from the market, and from ANY user research out there. Even heavy (multi-task!) users surrend to the better designed / developer friendly iPhone.. You want to know why? Even with the crap camera / bluetooth etc? You know why? Simple because they are seamless designed. They just work! Xcode development just works, the API are well designed thus making the whole software more well crafted, thus making more users THAT DON’t care if you can run another app in the background but can’t FIND the command to bring it back again to the top. (Yes, I have forgotten how many times, even Nokia employees!!! didn’t know that holding that strange menu – was that a home icon? Or do you really believe people realized that it’s an application switching place with the other? Or why is it a menu with one press) Bring the open application tab? Why do you think that The current UI is being demolished? It’s because it wasn’t designed from ground up, it was crunched most likely because of heavy deadlines, pressure from above and so on.

So please, stop dreaming that your poetical view on the current nokia software makes any sense. The problem is way bigger than apple’s and it’s iPhone. The problem is the the company settled down because it became leader. The problem is that position of “We are leader, we don’t need to innovative, we can copy with pride” crap.

Of course it’s quite easy to also brag here, but comforts me to know that the right persons DO KNOW the danger and the real situation of the Nokia software and are moving to fix it. If they thought like you mika, that “feature wise” they are safe… they would be sitting on the shipping just waiting to crash.

While the iPhone was a niche (only touchscreen, only one device) The scenario has changed: Palm pre with keyboard, Android with multiple input types, and most important : With easy to develop on SDK = APPS. And in the end, it’s not about the UI like you said only. It’s about content. and What In the world is the Ovi store?

Wake up ok? This is not time to be patriotic , I know that you are probably aware of how bad it would be if a giant like nokia falls. I would be really sorry for the friends that live over there. So, They know, they are moving and this will change the story. Because to believe it is good as you say… would be doom.

Br

Marcelo