Nokia VP, David Rivas, was in San Francisco yesterday touting Symbian^3 improvements. While we've
heard and
seen plenty about Symbian Three's enhanced user experience already, it's still worthy of another look considering Symbian's dominant marketshare. Besides, David provides a very detailed look as he walks us though elements like the customizable (and more finger friendly) homescreens meant to provide quick access to call features and at-a-glance data. Rivas also reiterates speed improvement claims over existing S60 5th devices (about a 3x improvement in graphics performance) that should "very very pleasantly surprise" users. Naturally, a faster UI coupled with a Symbian device running on something better than ARM 11 will also help here -- Nokia's only Cortex A8 device is the N900 running Maemo, not Symbian. David takes a veiled shot at Microsoft's new WP7 platform when discussing Symbian's true multitaking capabilities without any "tricks" -- apps are actually running in the background, not just freezing their state until you return. Multitouch screen control on capacitive
and resistive (
really?) touchscreen displays with Cover Flow-like album art navigation? Yup, it's all in there, as are hundreds of usability improvements (and fewer nags!) that should bring Symbian^3 up to the level of what everyone expects from a modern smartphone, according to Rivas. In other words, we'll have to wait for
S^4 on early 2011 devices to see any real innovation. While the live demo was run on a laptop, we suspect it won't be long until Nokia starts showing off its
live OS on a production handset. Until then, check the video after the break -- it's all we've got.
[Thanks, Rafael C.]
posted March 11th 2010 3:05AM
@tirim4
Wasn't Coverflow really a ripoff of Nokia's Nseries Gallery view ala N95, which was before the iPhone ever existed?
Looks great. Good interface combined with Symbians functionality.
For me, the good news is that they said resistive / multitouch capacitive was simply a checkbox question. Unlike most it seems, I prefer the resistive because of accuracy & stulys support.
I just wish they'd bring back S80.
The 9500 was a sexy beast, and nothing since can compare.
was i crazy to notice that the "play" control button did not change to "pause"/(||) when the music started playing?
Was no true mutltasking ever confirmed for WP7?
Is that guy using a BlackBerry ?
@Deputy Doofus
No. He's clearly holding an e72.
Too late. Android, iPhone OS and Windows Phone 7 Series will crush Symbian under their heels. In the US, it's already Game Over. The rest of the world will follow suit in just a few years.
Dead man walking.
@Johnny Rockets
As much as you would hope that unfortunately the ways things are going - it doesnt look to be true. iPhone's range is too small to crush Symbian. The only possibility is Android and WM7. WM7 is too early to tell yet but Google just flubbed up the Android game (hopefully not for good!) with its high-handedness. I dont know why Google thinks that just because every dying phone manufacturer like Moto jumped on Android, somehow Google gets their undying loyalty :-? After Google's crazy China move, see what Moto just did.
@naashak
What do you mean by "high-handedness" and why is it bad for Android?
@Johnny Rockets
Remember the China episode when Google plugged the plug on Moto's Android phone launch just because of issues with its search business and the Chinese govt.? Basically Moto lost tons of money coz everything had been set up and ready to go with retailing channels/support/distribution everything in place. By high-handedness I meant unilateral decision making by Google - thats not the way to work with partners in industry. Then the Nexus One comes along just a month after the Droid - pure conflict of interest there. MSFT may be a greedy hog but even they never made that move for WinMo precisely because it would piss off their phone hardware partners.
The moves are bad for Android because if you observe people are moving away from the Google experience Android devices and putting all sorts of stuff like Bing, Yahoo on Android handsets - just leading to more and more fragmentation. If we are thinking of Android as just another free OS to run whatever you want on it, sure thats not a problem. But the worth of Android esp. with Google's backing is so much more. When Android had 1st launched, I had a feeling that if Google didnt play it right it would run into the same issues as Symbian. Unfortunately the way it is looking....they are headed that way on greased tracks. And unlike Google, since Symbian has already been there and done that, they already have a head start in figuring out how to fix these fragmentation issues (ex. Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech and Qt).
It obviously isn't wowing me or anything, but it's a pretty big improvement over S60 5th/Symbian^1, so I give them credit for that. Props to Nokia.
awesome. i can't wait. WANT.