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Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video)
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.]
Symbian^3 officially announced, previewed on video
The time has finally come for us to see Symbian's milestone shift toward finger-friendly operation in motion. Firstly, to allay any fears that it'd lack all the modern amenities, we'll note that kinetic scrolling, swiping, and pinch-to-zoom are all present and accounted for, while a "visual multi-tasking" option allows you to see the open applications in an interface not a million miles away from the Pre's card implementation. Customization is also a big deal in the new UI, with multiple Home Screen pages available, accompanied by a litany of widgets you can add and manage. The media player application looks like a homage (read: copy) of Apple's Cover Flow UI, right down to the album covers flipping around to reveal the track listing. We're not complaining, we consider that a very intelligent and pleasing way to browse through music. Go check out the moving picture show after the break.
Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience
We've been pretty hard on Nokia with regard to its miserable S60 5th (aka, Symbian^1) user experience as compared to the competition. Fortunately, Nokia's bound and determined to freshen things up in 2010 with two major updates scheduled for the first and second halves of the year. At the moment, Symbian^3 (that's Symbian three) is expected first with Symbian^4 coming before the end of the year (functionally complete in Q3 with S^4 devices shipping in early 2011 according to the symbian.org wiki page). What we've got above then, is a UI Concept proposal for the latter. As you can tell from the pics, Symbian^4 promises to deliver an entirely new user interface: navigation is streamlined and platform apps will be reorganized and redesigned to leverage next gen graphics meant to deliver visually appealing transparencies and transitions on Symbian devices. The experience is based on Direct UI and built upon Qt and Orbit -- a strategy that Nokia hopes will lure developers to the table by making apps easy to build and update with broad scalability across Nokia's entire lineup of handsets. Note that the concept is open for discussion (and thus change) so voice your opinion now. And no, responding "N900 FTW" doesn't count. One more image after the break.
