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 (NYSE: NOK) 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 (NSDQ: PALM) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) 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.
Truphone has updated its Symbian S60 application and now it works on 11 additional Nokia (NYSE: NOK) handsets, running S60 3.2 (Feature pack 2) and touch-enabled S60 5th Edition. The new Nokia S60 smartphones that now sing along the popular low-cost VoIP and IM service/application are: N96, N78, N85, N79, 5630, 5800, 5320, 6210, 6220, 6650, and E63.
In addition, three of the devices from the list — Nokia N85, N79 and 5630 — are also compatible with the original Truphone Wi-Fi calling service.
With this addition, Truphone is now compatible with a total of 26 Nokia devices. Of those, software for 14 of the Truphone-compatible phones can now be downloaded from Nokia’s Ovi Store, with the software for 11 of the remaining 12 new devices to be added to the Ovi store soon.
SymbianGuru has new application for Symbian S60 device owners called LoudSpeaker. Apparently, this app should replace Bluetooth handsfree device, allowing us to safely use our mobile phone while driving. And while I’m little sceptical the software could replace a piece of the hardware this time, I guess trying the app can’t hurt.
Feature wise, LoudSpeaker supports:
Answering the incoming call automatically (after pre-set number of seconds)
Activation on certain profiles, only
Adjustable sounds on the call start and hang up
The application works on all Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition devices, and is available in following languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian. More details is available from SymbianGuru’s website…
Zeemote has recently announced that their JS1 Bluetooth Gaming Controller can now sing along even broader range of mobile devices from Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and LG. Basically, they announced a Symbian S60 driver, allowing their device to be used not just for games, but also for other applications such as music player, web browser and so on — virtually any application will work.
It’s a great move by Zeemote, as now millions of Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition smartphone owners can use their handy accessory, not just for gaming, but for getting around the apps, too. At the same time, with this move Zeemote added dozens of new phones to the list of supported device. Nice!
The Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E72 is the device I’m personally looking forward to the most this year since it fixes the problems of my current favorite phone, the Nokia E71. Adding a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 5 megapixel camera are just what the doctor ordered. The iPhone 3GS isn’t doing it for me, the N97 is a load of fail, and the N86 is ugly. David Chieng, who from his bio is a:
Self-professed geek and husband. Now Editor for HWM, Singapore’s top technology magazine. Previous stints in publishing include editing for MAX-IT and PC Magazine in Malaysia.
He has a a Nokia E72. Images of the device can be checked out in this Flickr set, but more importantly, images taken with the 5 megapixel camera can be seen here. His E72 is running firmware dated June 5th, 2009, version 021.009. I can tell you from experience, that’s a wicked early firmware. Shipping firmware is usually 100.XYZ, but even with early code, his images look great!
We’ve been waiting for it to happen. Adobe’s Flash technology has been slow to make a big push into the mobile space, Adobe it looks like Adobe will finally go live with their anticipated Flash Player 10 beta this October! The arrival of Flash Player 10 beta release for smarpthones will bring the mobile world one step closer to a truly mobile web.
Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Naraye announced Adobe Flash Player 10 beta last week:
“We are bringing Flash Player 10 to smartphone class devices to enable the latest web browsing experience. Multiple partners have already received early version of this release and we expect to release a beta version for developers at our Max conference in October. Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Symbian OS, Windows Mobile and the new Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Web OS will be the first devices to support web browsing with the new Flash player…”
Of course, seeing all kinds of Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, WebOS (Palm Pre!) and Android OS-powered smartphones running around with full Flash support is going to make it harder for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to ignore the multimedia web technology. Apple’s betting that the HTML 5 standard will eventually kill Adobe Flash’s 95%+ market penetration, but in the meantime, iPhone users will have to watch their non-iPhone-having friends play around with embedded videos and interactive elements.
Nothing new in this video that you haven’t seen before at some at some loud annoying club with terrible music playing in the background, drowning out the marketing drivel being spat out by hired public relations professionals flirting with journalists and bloggers alike:
We do get is some pricing info and a launch window: €600, October. That’s a lot cheaper than I was expecting, and a lot sooner. I’ll believe it when I see it, for now it’s just a rumor.
While all eyes are on the newly announced Nokia E72, the Finnish giant’s other model, E75, is also a cool QWERTY keyboard-equipped smartphone, worth considering buying. Just recently, it has been spotted in white at the Eseries Social Media meetup, where Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Director of Eseries Marketing in Americas carried it around. Unfortunately, he hasn’t unveiled the release date — he just said “It’s coming”.
That’s good enough in my book, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the white E75 hitting store shelves within weeks. Otherwise, people may decide to wait for the E72, which is a cooler device, as far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, what do you think about the white E75? Like it? Or do you prefer the E72 in some other color? Comments form is all yours…
Immersion Corporation is joining the Symbian Foundation, to bring its touch feedback technology to all Symbian platform developers. As a result, the company made its TouchSense API available for the Foundation member companies.
Immersion argues that their haptics technology improves efficiency and intuitiveness by providing “unmistakable confirmation of touchscreen presses, adds improved accuracy and depth.”
Separately, they are also offering haptic player for touch feedback effects to the Symbian Foundation community.
For the record, more than 65 million handsets with Immersion’s high-fidelity, programmable haptics technology have shipped around the world so far.
Just when we saw that leaked video of Nokia E72, the Finnish giant decided to push the button and announce the new device to the world. My initial impression is - WOW! It seems that the E72 fixes all the “problems” (if I could call them problems at all) of its predecessor - E71, and it even looks better.
Here’s what’s improved in the E72 when compared to the E71:
5 megapixel camera as opposed to E71’s 3.2 megapixels
standard 3.5mm audio jack as opposed to 2.5mm
new version of Quickoffice which can sing along Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Office 2007 files
I also guess the E72 runs Symbian S60 3.2 (Feature pack 2) like AT&T (NYSE: T)’s E71x — E71 runs S60 3.1
slightly improved keyboard, like the one found on the E63
Rest of the specs seem identical — we still wait for Forum Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to include the E72 in their list of devices when we’ll have all the specs — and include a GPS, WiFi, HSPA, Bluetooth, QVGA screen… you name it.
The Nokia E72 is expected to begin shipping in late Q3 2009 at an estimated retail price of 350 EUR before taxes and subsidies.
Update: Stefan here, Dusan is traveling today, and it looks like Forum Nokia finally uploaded the E72 to their website! It’s also on Nokia’s consumer website; not to mention Nokia’s Press site uploaded the datasheet (PDF file). Here are the highlights:
114 x 59.5 x 10.1 mm
Three colors: Zodium Black, Metal Grey, Topaz Brown
128 g
2.36 inch display, 16.7 million colors
Micro USB
3.5 mm headphone jack
Compass + GPS
1500 mAh battery
GSM talk/standby: 12.5 hours/20 days
3G talk/standby: 6 hours/24 days
Quad Band EDGE
Tri Band HSPA! There will be two versions, one is 850/1900/2100 (NAM), the other is 900/1900/2100 (EU + ASIA)
HSDPA maxes out at 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA maxes out at 2 Mbps
WiFi b/g
640 x 480 video recording @ 15 frames per second
And yes, Dusan’s hunch was correct, it runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2
Update: Stefan here again, one more thing, Mark from the Nokia Blog found some live pictures, told Engadget about them, and now I’ve embedded them after the jump!
Update: Third update, happy I’m not blasting your RSS reader with posts yet? Nokia Conversations uploaded this video. Towards the end there is a shot of the E72 in all 3 colors, I’ve taken a screen grab and posted it after the jump.
Update: Fourth update, only because I know how much people love comparison photos. These come from A Bugged Life:
E72 left, E71 right:
E72 bottom, E71 top:
Update: Fifth update: more live pictures added after the jump, this time from VR-Zone.
SymbianGuru has new application for Symbian S60 device owners called LoudSpeaker. Apparently, this app should replace Bluetooth handsfree device, allowing us to safely use our mobile phone while driving. And while I’m little sceptical the software could replace a piece of the hardware this time, I guess trying the app can’t hurt.
Immersion Corporation is joining the Symbian Foundation, to bring its touch feedback technology to all Symbian platform developers. As a result, the company made its TouchSense API available for the Foundation member companies.
