Symbian might have been taking a beating over the past few months, but that doesn’t mean the world’s most popular smartphone platform (I doubt the installed base hase been overtaken by Android yet, although I might be mistaken) is just going to sit idly by. While Nokia gets its first Windows Phone 7 devices ready, work on Symbian^3 continues, and the Dutch (yeahaw!) product manager for Nokia Benelux has confirmed that a massive overhaul of the platform will be pushed to phones later this year [Dutch].
It’s indeed going to be a massive overhaul – Symbian^3 devices will be getting an entirely new user interface, which should finally give the old girl a more modern face to compete with the likes of Android and iOS. Marc Driessen, product manger at Nokia Benelux, has confirmed that this update will ship around fall 2011, preceded by a smaller update earlier in the year.
The smaller update will replace the iconography, while the large fall update will make menus less deep (finally!). The fall update will also give Symbian^3 an Android-esque pull-down status bar, and the navigation bar at the bottom fo the screen will become easier to use. Widgets will also be freed from the grid pattern, and can be placed on multiple homescreens.
As said, the update will ship fall this year for all Symbian^3 devices – both existing models and future models.
Having just replaced my galaxy s with a nokia n8 im very pleased with this news. Great phone with terrible software. I like to think that nokia will continue to support symbian after rhe release of their windows phones.
I hope the same. I’ve a Nokia E72 and I love the phone, and I’m a huge fan of Symbian since it’s small and powerful. The UI is fine for a non-touch phone like the E72. What really shows, however, is the lack of polish in the provided apps. Something as simple as the email client not linking into Symbian’s network connection framework but rather doing everything itself, resulting in my connection preferences (Wifi then 3G) not being effective in the email client though they work elseware. I could go on and on about the crappy applications Nokia’s been providing with Symbian as of late, and I don’t think a UI overhaul is going to fix that. I’d be happy if they left the UI alone and fixed their provided apps. You know there’s a problem when 3rd party apps like Skype fit into the os better than Nokia’s own.
I don’t think it’s out of the question either. Nokia have contracts with businesses that rely on these devices and have them integrated with their environments. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a mobile phone manufacturer maintaining multiple OS’.
Nokia is committed to supporting symbian beyond wp7 phone launch (as in upgrades that bring new features, not just stability fixes), as well as releasing new symbian devices with beefier hardware.
Nokia already has several operating system lines (s30, s40, symbian, maemo/meego), so there is nothing special about this arrangement.
I’ve been considering getting an e7 to replace my first gen 8gb iphone that runs on edge. Its almost 4 years old. I really want something with a full qwerty keyboard. The thing that has been worrying me is symbian^3 though. The hardware looks amazing.
I’ve only ever owned one nokia phone that ran symbian. It was an e61 running s60 3rd edition. The phone was stolen by a family member who bought the iphone when it first came out but didn’t like it.
As an N8 user who would’ve rather wanted an E7 because of the QWERTY I can tell you that the software is indeed something to worry about. The menus are pretty messy and the mail application is great at crashing/hanging.
On the other hand I think since the E7 has come out at least the mail app will get a fix, since that device is directed at business peeps who I can’t imagine would be happy without a proper mail application.
I’d wait for the update and check the response before getting a Symbian^3 device, but that’s just me.
The improvements certainly look nice, I’ll definitely be taking a more serious look at the E7 if these pan out. It’s good to see Nokia finally understanding that no matter how good your hardware is, people won’t buy it if the software is crap.
I’ll join nostalgia club
I have E61i, and love it.
Enjoying: PyS60, PuTTY, real-time Mail for Exchange synced with my Google account (incl. calendar, contacts), Podcasting, various Internet services, BT file system in Total Commander, …
Dislike: it could be faster though, it’s H\W is limited compared to today’s beasts
Screeny: http://i53.tinypic.com/6i4t3m.png
On topic: I really dislike new grid ala desktop design and hope that mobile designers will get over it very soon
Edited 2011-03-12 03:27 UTC
On a somewhat related note to PyS60, I wonder if it is possible to write apps for s^3 with python and qt. That would be neat. It would also give me some motivation to learn python. The closest thing to python I know is ruby.
I *believe* that QT has python bindings, but I could be wrong on that. Definitely something to look into though, that would inspire me to dig into python again as well.
Python definitely has Qt bindings. Two projects actually.
PyQT – http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/intro
and
Pyside(Nokia’s own) – http://www.pyside.org/
enjoy!
I don’t know about s^3, but about learning Py – you learn modules as needed, as Python grammar is simplest it can get
just run: “import antigravity” and you already float
http://xkcd.com/353/
2!
Suddenly it’s all “Nokia sucks…”, “Symbian is far gone…”. But all I see is people around me changing their devices from one Nokia to another NEW NOKIA!!!
I went from nokia and linux to an iphone and macbook pro. Now my plans are to go back to nokia and linux.
The thing I’m really excited about for, as far as future of Symbian goes, is the upcoming (RSN) availability of productized Qt Quick for the Ovi store, and millions of devices (they are projecting to have >200 million devices able to run these).
In a short period, Symbian has switched from having the most obsolete programming environment of all smartphone platforms (Avkon) to the most modern one (Qt Quick).
Very good article on The Register, looks like they have some very serious internal management problems they need to fix:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/10/nokia_ui_saga/
I’d very much like to see things fixed but it’s going to be very difficult.
Great article indeed. You should post this on the front page!