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

It is unlikely that Nokia or any other handset manufacturers will be able to produce touchscreen phones with multi-touch input display soon. This is because Apple has filed many patents for this multi-touch technology that can only be used by Apple exclusively.

Please note that touchscreen display of the S60 Touch is still based on old resistive touch technology as used in Symbian UIQ. This requires the user to apply pressure for input on the screen. The iPhones touchscreen is based capacitative touch technology which works to finger electricity. That is the reason why the iPhone's input is relatively subtle and precise.

S60 5th Edition just does not have the "wow" factor like the iPhone when it was introduced almost 2 years ago. There are just too many so called similar touchsreen phones from Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. nowadays.

In my opinion, Nokia should start to design and develop a brand new phone with Android that hopefully will set it apart from competition. This new phone should provide users with a "unique" experience that no other phones (even iPhone) can match.

Nokia cannot continue to use Symbian if it wants to innovate with "think out of the box" phones.

According to Nokia's documentation, S60 5th edition is build on Symbian 9.4:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/90190621-daa5-4376-8a7b-0fc7d4960f67/S60_5th_edition_Whats_New_In_S60_5th_Edition.html

Unfortunately this would mean that all the fancy new platform features of Symbian 9.5 are not available with S60 5th edition! Although in the past Nokia has ported new platform features back to older platform releases. (e.g. On demand paging for the n95). So this needs confirmation.

I thought ScreenPlay and FreeWay are part of 9.5. Would be a pity if S60 5th edition is not using ScreenPlay!

Has anyone any idea how good or bad is the backward compatibility with existing 3rd edition software? Are they binary compatible or do they require recompiling on new SDK? How about user interfaces..? How will the old 3rd designed UIs scale to the new screen size and touch interface?

Does it support HTML-email?

Finally ! back to old EPOC 32 and psion stuff

A curiousity. Can you combine OLED and touch? would this bring advantages beyond bettery life?
I guess we'll find out eventually.

also, shame no FM transmitter in the 5800, I liked that solution for my car in the N85. sure that'll arrive too as it goes well with CWM.

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

Symbian OS v1.0 was running on a touch screen device.

Symbian OS v1.0 was running on a touch screen device.

I assume you mean EPOC revision 1.0? Altough Symbian OS is based on EPOC, Symbian was tailored for phone-centric devices. And comparing the S60 UI to Psions running EPOC is just ridiculous.

Now, Series 80 and Series 90 (which were very similar) could easily be compared to the earlier Psions, as the UI was much more PDA oriented, than S60 which was designed to run purely on regular looking/working mobile phones.

I completely agree with others who commented on adding touch screen functionality to S60 - I just don't see it working very well. In my opinion, Nokia should have continued development on Series 90 in stead of adding a touch screen layer on the soft key based S60 UI. Or better yet, simply add phone functionality to their Linux based internet tablets... :icon14:

There is only one thing I really like about the new Nokia 5800, and that's the price.

I have a basic question - with the 5th edition out, what happens to v3 of Symbian? There are currently a lot of Nokia devices on S60v3 (3.0, 3.1, 3.2) and some are yet to be released (n85, N79, etc.).
Will this mean that with v5 out, support for v3 will stop soon? Should we all wait and buy only v5 devices or its safe to buy v3. I am considering buying a new phone and had my eyes set on the n85. But I don't want to put 350 euros in a device whose OS version will loose support soon...

I am just sad to know SE will make phones next year with this s60 v5 stuff (before symbian foundation)...when they could instead avoid killing UIQ, and use this (UIQ 4 aka UIQ touch)

http://uiq.com/product/showroom/

no contest...

Nokia cannot continue to use Symbian if it wants to innovate with "think out of the box" phones.

And using Android would be thinking outside of the box? Enable a phone that will go beyond iPhone? Yeah, sure. Much more than Symbian. Because, err..., you know, uhm...

This very first S60 Touch phone is just one phone among many more that will arrive in the future from Nokia. It's not a high-end phone and not meant to be one. All that talk about a would-be (and failing) "iPhone killer" is nice to kill time, but neither very clever nor really relevant, if you ask me.

I wish they could pack an s60v5 in the old 7710 body, its build was so ideal for ngage.

malerocks wrote:Will this mean that with v5 out, support for v3 will stop soon? Should we all wait and buy only v5 devices or its safe to buy v3. I am considering buying a new phone and had my eyes set on the n85. But I don't want to put 350 euros in a device whose OS version will loose support soon...

Don't worry about that, if you look at the s60 third party scene today, almost all of the vendorss still fully support s60v2. S60v3 won't vanish in thin air, if nokia stops supporting it. 😊

rbrunner wrote:And using Android would be thinking outside of the box? Enable a phone that will go beyond iPhone? Yeah, sure. Much more than Symbian. Because, err..., you know, uhm...

This very first S60 Touch phone is just one phone among many more that will arrive in the future from Nokia. It's not a high-end phone and not meant to be one. All that talk about a would-be (and failing) "iPhone killer" is nice to kill time, but neither very clever nor really relevant, if you ask me.

It is nothing wrong for Nokia to adopt Android platform for some of its high end phones. From the development standpoint, it is clear to me that the limitations of Symbian platform will not allow Nokia to go far. The S60 5th Edition is just not at the same league as OS X or Android.

Nokia can continue to develop low end phones with Symbian for certain markets but to compete with Apple and Google, Nokia really needs a BIG breakthrough phone.

Hardeep1singh wrote:Don't worry about that, if you look at the s60 third party scene today, almost all of the vendorss still fully support s60v2. S60v3 won't vanish in thin air, if nokia stops supporting it. 😊

Unregistered wrote:It is nothing wrong for Nokia to adopt Android platform for some of its high end phones.

The development standpoint, it is clear to me that the limitations of Symbian platform will not allow Nokia to go far.

An then, that wonderful Android, where people are not allowed to generate native ARM code, just write for something similar to a JVM? That's somehow so much better that Nokia should switch? Not even mentioning the politics about controlling something completely (Symbian, very soon) versus using something from sort of a competitor...

Why do I always have suspicious doubts whether people writing such remarks comparing "platforms" really ever dealt with OS API and subsystem specifications?

If you are interesting, some screeshoots about S60 5th Edition SDK for Symbian OS

http://www.8mobile.org/blog/?p=158

Feels a bit, uhm... unpolished, sketchy, beta

I'd love to know what these mythical Symbian limitations are? Unless you mean that it is fully multi-tasking, unlike a certain other manufacturer's phones, or doesn't need rebooting daily because of crashes, unlike phones powered by a certain large US software company, then yes, I guess you could call Symbian limited.

And comparing Symbian to Android is fairly pointless, as there is currently only one Android-powered device available, which hardly anyone has had a chance to try; I'm not saying Android is bad or anything, but no-one knows much about it yet...

moonshot wrote:Thats a large stylus 😮

Ooh, matron!

I think they're trying to make it hip-for-the-kids by having a guitar plectrum. How long until the DS version of Guitar Hero gets ported? 😊

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 (and it still isn't as good a communicator as the S80 based 9500 in many ways)

There is merit in this argument, I loved the S80 UI on the 9500 and still enjoy using mine from time to time. But supporting 3 UIs (S60, S80 & S90) built over a continually evolving Symbian OS was never going to be sustainable. Whilst additional hardware drivers & servers added by Nokia could be common between the platforms there would always be 3 versions of each UI application to maintain.

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.

It is a sign of commitment to the Symbian platform that Nokia are making such a large investment in adding new experiences to it.

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

I was actually talking about touch input on S60. 😉

This was on a nice little flip phone with stylus from Lenvo, the P930:
http://www.symbian.com/phones/lenovo_p930.html

ttfn

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

Ahem, S40 is based on Nokia OS (NOS), not 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).

Well there is certainly a trend to push S60 further down the product range, as cheaper hardware allows S60 & Symbian to reach lower devices with lower manufacturing costs.

ttfn

foobar wrote:Has anyone any idea how good or bad is the backward compatibility with existing 3rd edition software? Are they binary compatible or do they require recompiling on new SDK? How about user interfaces..? How will the old 3rd designed UIs scale to the new screen size and touch interface?

Nokia have publicly stated at the announcement of Symbian and S60 becoming Open Source that Symbian and S60 will be binary backwards compatible. This means that current software will also run on the 5800, unless it is specifically written to work only on a 3rd ed FP1, FP2 and/or FP3.

If an app knows how to handle touch events, it sets a flag during startup. Regarding screen sizes, apps are already expected to handle different screen sizes (and orientations) on the fly, so this should not a problem for well-written apps.

rbrunner wrote:
Those Symbian "limitations" come up now and then, but I have never seen somebody really *substantiate* them. If people really mean the Symbian platform, i.e. Symbian as an OS, and not mistakingly take a particular range of phone models to be somehow "the platform", I don't see the OS lagging. Multitasking, multithreading, virtual memory, portability (at least ARM and x86, for the emulators), POSIX support, several supported file systems, drivers, soon even SMP, hey come on, please tell me what you want more from an OS that will live inside a portable device?

An then, that wonderful Android, where people are not allowed to generate native ARM code, just write for something similar to a JVM? That's somehow so much better that Nokia should switch? Not even mentioning the politics about controlling something completely (Symbian, very soon) versus using something from sort of a competitor...

<<<<
Mats Lindoff, Sony Ericsson's chief technology architect, said that the firm had been testing Android with prototype devices, and that Google's was a " holistic" approach.

"[But] to go with mass production and working with prototypes are two different things," he explained. "If you want to give every service away to Google, then Android is the perfect solution."
>>>>

So if S60 5th edition is Symbian v9.4 then what with Symbian v9.5 be called? 6th Edition?

svdwal wrote:Seconded. Technically speaking, Symbian OS is still the best mobile OS out there. That is partly because iPhone OS is being limited by Apple so it presents a sandbox for apps, but even if that wasn't the case, Symbian OS is certainly capable of holdings it's ground.

>>>>

I beg to differ on that point. Symbian (EPOC32) was designed in the early 90s for mobile devices. It was not meant for serious web based applications. Even if it is possible, Nokia will need to spend a lot of money and effort to enable Symbian OS for this purpose. It is going to be very hard for Nokia to catch up with Symbian.

On the other hand, Apple's OS X and Google's Android were both designed for desktop applications using the latest technologies. They are naturally more advanced and superior for advanced mobile web based applications.

Of course, Apple will never release its OS for other handset manufacturer. So the viable alternative is android which is available for free. Nokia should at least adopt android for some of its future smartphones instead of reinventing the wheel with Symbian.

Unregistered wrote:I beg to differ on that point. Symbian (EPOC32) was designed in the early 90s for mobile devices. It was not meant for serious web based applications. Even if it is possible, Nokia will need to spend a lot of money and effort to enable Symbian OS for this purpose. It is going to be very hard for Nokia to catch up with Symbian.

On the other hand, Apple's OS X and Google's Android were both designed for desktop applications using the latest technologies. They are naturally more advanced and superior for advanced mobile web based applications.

Of course, Apple will never release its OS for other handset manufacturer. So the viable alternative is android which is available for free. Nokia should at least adopt android for some of its future smartphones instead of reinventing the wheel with Symbian.

Blah blah blah balh blaaah....

iPhone OS (as Apple calls it) is cut down version of Mac OS X, which is based on NEXT which was a deriative of Berkeley Software Distribution which dates to 1970s (or 1960s if we wanna go trough it's whole UNIX roots).

Android is fork of LINUX, which was created by Linus Torvalds at University of Helsinki during early 90's.

Both systems are hardly "designed for desktop applications using the latest technologies". Both are mix and match of long code history of various desktop OS with bits left and and mixed with other sources. Stop believing all the crap you read. Not that there's anything wrong with roots of either Android or iPhone OS, but stop glorifying them like a Engadget/Gizmodo reading teenage geek who knows nothing about the stuff he writes about.