S60 5th Edition - touch and sensor enablers, enriched Internet and multimedia

Sticking a touch layer to a 8 years old softkey based OS: guaranteed mess. They should have redesigned it from scratch.

Alas poor iPhone, I knew you well.... 😉

Why are comments disabled on the 5800 announcement story?

Sticking a touch layer to a 8 years old softkey based OS: guaranteed mess. They should have redesigned it from scratch.

The Symbian OS is not softkey based.

There have been touchscreen versions of Symbian since it began, Symbian UIQ was touchscreen based and Nokia's very own Symbian Series 90 was touchscreen based too.

S60 has used buttons until now, but there's no reason to think it cannot make the leap to touchscreens.

As for designing a platform from scratch, that would mean throwing away compatibility with a massive userbase (the largest of any smartphone) and many network operators who use S60 to deliver their own services. It would also probably mean abandoning compatibility with button-based devices which still make up the vast majority of phone and smartphone sales.

Number 4 is "unfortunate" in some cultures, that's probably why they decided to skip it.
>>I wonder if any non-java apps for N95 (S60 3ed) will install/work on Tube, too.<<

Tzer2 wrote:The Symbian OS is not softkey based.

Well, then those Option/Back buttons at the bottom of the screens are just optical illusions... The same old softkeys with menus/submenus/subsubmenus.

The OS has always supported proper touch - right back before it was even called Symbian. The fact that S60 always has two softkeys has no relevance to the OS.

Unregistered wrote:Sticking a touch layer to a 8 years old softkey based OS: guaranteed mess. They should have redesigned it from scratch.

They didn't have to. Symbian OS has supported touch interfaces since 1995 when it appeared as EPOC on the Psion Series 5. The UIQ UI has always been touch-based. Even the original S60 UI could handle some touch events on the emulator.

What Nokia did not do was change the existing UI, the touch stuff has been added to the UI, not replacing bits of it. And rightly so, because this keeps existing apps compatible with S60 5th edition. Nokia already gets plenty of flak because of the lack of a proper appstore, they don't need more flak because of a new major compatability break.

svdwal wrote:
What Nokia did not do was change the existing UI

That's the point, genius.

Unregistered wrote:That's the point, genius.

Sigh. Nokia changing the UI is equivalent to Nokia killing their developer ecosystem. Nobody is that daft.

Thats a large stylus 😮

@Tzer2: still not able to comment on 5800 page

for me, i'm very happy to see what nokia has launched today... it is worth waiting for it... now anxiously waiting for it's review...

i was going to buy N82 next week but now i've to wait for it's review...

this is certainly going to be a competition to iPhone... n i think it should be compared with iPhone... in the categories of music, camera and OS (usability)

but there are few things that i'm concerned about:
1. how is the tactile feedback?
2. will it support to play current nGage games?

Very good OS and very good the SDK was also launched at the same time.
Maybe the SDK launch should be more stressed out along with the launch of the device, the Nokia 5800.

Also a special launch should be done in U.S. because there are a lot of developers that emigrated in U.S. from Europe, Asia, etc. and those should be the target of the revamped and full of features OS/SDK.

If you ignore the "giant" U.S. which is the top software producer, and the top multi-media producer (and also the top news producer) you are out of the game of mobile industry leaders in the long term. A special focus shoul have been accorded to U.S. market and penetration of Nokia 5800 and Symbian in general. I don't understand this, Nokia cannot sign a deal with T-Mobile or with AT&T? Right now, Nokia N95 is for sale only unlocked in U.S. for 800$, where in Canada it is sold for only 79$ with a contract.

Almost nobody in U.S has a Nokia or a N95 because of the lack of partnership between Nokia and AT&T or T-Mobile. I think AT&T has a signed exclusivity with Apple iPhone which prevents AT&T to sell any Nokia (N95 or else), and I see T-Mobile has an agreement with Google G1 Andorid - so Nokia is just left out of the U.S, market ? If this is true, and it seems to be the case, then Nokia will have a BIG problem in the future, because most of the media is coming from U.S. This could be the end of the dominating position for Nokia in mobile industry and the raise of Apple with its iPhone.

irfanil wrote:2. will it support to play current nGage games?

I'm still not able to comment on the 5800 story either - vbulletin says I may not have correct permissions etc.

Anyway, this is in response to that story 😊

Looks like the 5800 is a good initial touch-experiment phone. It seems to be missing Nokia Haptikos, which gives near perfect haptics, see here:
http://www.redferret.net/?p=9533

Also, no TV out which is interesting, and clearly a marketing ploy. Still, it's a good handset. I hope the high end touch device next year (presumably) will have proper haptics, and multitouch (oh that would be so nice!), VGA tv out all the time (not just for real player and gallery), a 5MP camera, Xenon flash, etc.

Still this is good competition for iPhone nonetheless, the HW is immediately much better than their lame 3G attempt.

will it support to play current nGage games?

N-Gage can be supported.

Think that the 5800 screen (640 pixels) is double the size of the N-Gage current games which is 320 pixels.

So they can add a virtual D-Pad (touch screen Directional pad) in the first 320 pixels of the screen, large enough for easy screen touch and they can run the game in the other half of the screen.

However, this needs to be supported by Nokia Symbian OS. Not hard to be done, but not sure if they have even considered this idea.

Will you still have to go down seven levels of menu to change the RealPlayer access point every time you change AP? Will the PIM apps still be crap? Will there still be incongruities like having media streams in 'Gallery' rather than 'Media' or 'Music'? Will I still be listening to podcasts in Music Player, but then have to open a separate app called 'Podcasting' when I want to delete them?

Honestly, the whole UI is an utter mess, and they should have cleaned the whole thing up before adding even more stuff.

Still can't post in the 5800 thread, so I'll post here instead.

I'm seriously considering canceling my N96 preorder (it's released on Oct 15th in Sweden) in favor of the 5800, for a number of reasons.

5800 advantages (compared to the N96)

1) It only costs a bit over half as much as the N96.

2) The N96 has received lukewarm reviews, and may not sell very well. I fear it might go the same way as my current phone, the N93. That is, abandoned by Nokia a few months after release. The 5800, on the other hand, is the first in a new line of devices - this line is likely to get a lot of attention from Nokia for a while.

3) Higher screen resolution, and bigger screen (I think I read 3.2 inches, as compared to the N96's 2.8 inches). I'm sure this will be nice for movies and photos.

4) In the case of the 5800, I won't be paying for a DVB-H receiver (mobile TV) which I can't use since there are no broadcasts in Sweden.

N96 advantages (compared to the 5800)

1) 16 GB built-in storage. The 5800 only has a card slot (although, a 8 GB card is included when you buy the phone).

2) The N96 has more software available for it than the 5800 will, because it will take developers some time to make the needed adjustments. For example, it'll probably be a while before Python (PyS60) is released for the 5800.

3) The N96 has N-Gage, which me and my N93 have been waiting for, for over 2 years now (grumble). Because of the lack of hardware buttons and the new 360x640 screen resolution, it may be a while (if at all) before the 5800 gets N-Gage.

I think the 5800 will sell pretty well. I think a lot of people have been waiting for "a cheaper iPhone". And I think people will appreciate the fact that it has a semi-familiar S60-interface.

Does S60 5th Edition on Symbian 9.5 use ScreenPlay and FreeWay technologies? Does it have the fancy new graphical effects with independently rendered overlays which ScreenPlay promises? Is network configuration simpler and better automated with roaming from WiFi to 3G?

If Open C++ with STL is supported, this is a major step forward.

This beats iPhone SDK and Google "Customized" Java as development platforms.

C++ is very fast, not like Python or Java.

Also the Qt can be added now on the Symbian platform (Qt is written in C++) so this expands everything - maybe KDE can be ported on Symbian too, and then all the nice applications like KWord, OpenOffice and so on can be ported to Symbian. This depends also on the RAM memory that Nokia puts on these phones, but if they put a decent 256 MB of RAM, anything is possible. These phone devices will be really computers.

I wait to see Nokia's Linux Maemo also in a phone, to directly compete Google's Linux Andorid. Linux is a better OS than Symbian, and has far more applications and posibilities.

The Nokia 5800 article can't get comments from me.

The new phone rocks. keeping my breath until the n-series version come out. Yes I think so. Perhaps an E-series touch with a qwerty. he, he...

Nokia Make my day!

You're saying Nokia can only fail if not dominant on the US market over time. Clearly that's not the usual pattern but if you consider where the growth is, they might have more profitable opportunities to look at first. BRIC countries and others are just waking up and not everyone there has already a phone.

I'm not saying they should partner with a major provider in the states - that would make sense- but they already are the #1 in volume and margin worldwide !

Cheers
Greg

I suspect people can't add comments to the 5800 thread because its posted in All About Symbian Forums> General> Admin.

Why just take the UIQ and start from there. Seeing the Ovi videos, even the users there are confused of the touch - sometimes a double click is needed, sometimes not. In the video where the young lady is using the phone, she taps a line on a list, then waits some, sees nothing happening and then again clicks the line. Since touch UI has been in EPOC/Symbian from the start, why did Nokia have to throw away the good design stuff and implement something of their own which does not work. Well, maybe they'll fix it in time.... And slow it is too..

architengi wrote:N-Gage can be supported.

Think that the 5800 screen (640 pixels) is double the size of the N-Gage current games which is 320 pixels.

So they can add a virtual D-Pad (touch screen Directional pad) in the first 320 pixels of the screen, large enough for easy screen touch and they can run the game in the other half of the screen.

However, this needs to be supported by Nokia Symbian OS. Not hard to be done, but not sure if they have even considered this idea.

Your idea is not completely without merit, but do you realise how small the playing area would be? It would be about 30% of the screen.

Like others here I'm pretty sure S60 v5 is running above Symbian OS v9.4, rather than v9.5.

Nokia has done touch before, does nobody remember the 7710 ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7710

There have even been S60 devices with touch, Lenovo had at least one model on sale in China with a stylus & handwriting recognition for writing Chinese notes & messages. (In a hotel with slow Internet, so please forgive me for not digging out the details.)

Edited:
I believe the 5800 does have TV Out. [Was: S60 v5 with TV Out - I guess that will appear in the N Series first.]

ttfn

Tzer2 wrote:

Symbian UIQ was touchscreen based and Nokia's very own Symbian Series 90 was touchscreen based too. S60 has used buttons until now, but there's no reason to think it cannot make the leap to touchscreens.

This is where I think Nokia have really gone off the rails.

UIQ was DESIGNED to be touch based - S90 was DESIGNED to be touch based.
S60 was not and was very much "cludged" to make the E90 possible (and it still isn't as good a communicator as the S80 based 9500 in many ways)

S60 is trying to become all things to all people and if that happens, I believe it will go down the pan!

What Nokia should have done IMHO is keep the separate platforms, S80, UIQ, S90 etc. further and keep S60 for what it is good at.

Putting all their eggs in one basket and trying to make S60 the new "do it all" is a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

Apple and WinMo must be even happier tonight!

Very true, agree with Crissybear fully. And tonyn -- the Nokia touchscreen device in China was based on UIQ2...

Chrissybear wrote:This is where I think Nokia have really gone off the rails.

UIQ was DESIGNED to be touch based - S90 was DESIGNED to be touch based.
S60 was not and was very much "cludged" to make the E90 possible

S60 is trying to become all things to all people and if that happens, I believe it will go down the pan!

What Nokia should have done IMHO is keep the separate platforms, S80, UIQ, S90 etc. further and keep S60 for what it is good at.

IMHO the fact that Nokia tries to unify all the UI in ONE system (s60) makes so much sense.

It was very wrong that s40 and s60 and UIQ were incompatible (also s80, s90 which are now retired), all being also Symbian.

Symbian should be one unified platform. In this respect I see Nokia not using s80 anymore and using s60 instead. Nokia should retire s40 as well and replace it with a slim version of s60, that at least is (on a great degree) compatible with s60 and can run some of the s60 apps (not all, because the phones that use now s40 have less memory and a slim hardware anyways).

What is wrong is keeping s40 as separate. UIQ and s60 will be joined into Open Symbian.

I don't think s90 and UIQ were the "right" touch interface compared to iPhone usability. The s90 and UIQ touch feature were just a mouse replacement for windows-based interface used in computers. But the iPhone touch usability recreate the rules of the touch game. Touch is not anymore starting with iPhone a just click and cursor move with the finger, it is beyond that. This is what s^0 touch has inside - a "re-think" way of doing things with touch. Yes, the old menus were kept, but maybe this is good. At least we know where the "Options" are all the time, no?

Phones are going backwards. Give me a Nokia 1208 any time.