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Nokia Offers Glimpse of Symbian Facelift

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the don't-give-up-the-ghost dept.

Barence writes to mention that Nokia is giving users a first glimpse at what promises to be a completely overhauled Symbian user experience this coming year. Nokia's chief exec blamed the user interface — as opposed to the OS itself — as the root problem. "The company will roll out a completely re-engineered user interface in 2010, aimed at addressing many of the criticisms associated with the OS. 'We will reduce the clutter and improve the input methods including multi-touch and single tap,' Kallasvuo told delegates. 'It should be just two taps to get to your favorite music or videos, rather than eight. We'll improve browser experience so that it's a quicker, flash improved, media experience with pinch-to-zoom and so on.' And, Kallasvuo wasn't stopping there. Aside from completely redesigning the interface, he also suggested that future Symbian OSes would be much faster."

24 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by tool462 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't know if I care for the fonts. A little too tall and skinny. I'm an American. I like things to be a little more...squat.

  2. Re:My Question Is by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because they only bought TrollTech a year ago, and thus have only recently had an strong interest in their own superly awesome GUI toolkit, Qt. Note that the newest version of Qt release this week offers prominently support for Symbian.

    --
    try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
  3. I love the iPhone by adamwright · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not only because of what it does, but because of the competition it's created in an industry that hadn't really moved in a decade. Free markets do work, sometimes!

    1. Re:I love the iPhone by vakuona · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like what feature?

    2. Re:I love the iPhone by sien · · Score: 2, Informative

      The iphone is a fine device. But your statement wildly overstates impact and improvements of the iphone over other phones.

      In 1997 a reasonable phone looked like the 1997 Nokia 3110. By 2007 Nokia had the N95

      In the 10 years till 2007 mobile phones, before the iphone had the following improvements:

      • The 1999 and further Blackberries that changed mobile devices massively, possibly more than the iphone by giving people good mobile communications. Barack Obama was not addicted to updating facebook on his iphone, it was Blackberry.
      • mp3 players
      • net browsers, albeit not as good as the iphone's
      • gigabyte flash storage
      • mulit-megapixel cameras.

      But yeah, other than that, there hadn't been that much improvement....

  4. Nokia... by faragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... please, let Symbian die. The N900 is so much better than any Symbian aberration...

    1. Re:Nokia... by kwalker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not every Nokia phone is going to have a 600MHz ARM and half a gig of RAM behind the screen. Not every phone user is going to shell out the prices higher-end components are going to require. Nokia has the market share they have because of the diversity of their products. They need to cover the high-end as well as the low-end. I could easily see Nokia moving from S40 on the low end and S60 on the high end to S40 for low-end and pre-paid phones (If they don't drop it altogether), S60 in the low-to-medium phones (I think their E63 is a step in that direction), and Maemo 5 on their high-end phones that compete with Androids and iPhones.

      --
      ... And so it comes to this.
    2. Re:Nokia... by BasilBrush · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Symbian is a pain, underperformer, without possibility of matching Linux or OS X.

      Symbian is a pain to program in C++ (But the same as any other phone OS in Java). But it uses far less memory and battery power than any *nix. So it isn't the easy call you imagine. OS X is far superior for top end smartphones. But for lower cost phones, Symbian has a lot of positives.

    3. Re:Nokia... by unix1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Who cares about Android anyway? It still can't install/run applications to/from its own memory card, the most severe limitation. Its own google map support is a joke compared to Nokia's support or Apple's support (don't ask me why, I don't know). And Nokia still makes tons of money for every iPhone that Apple sells because of the licensed Nokia technology it has in it.

      Wrong on all counts:

      1. You can most certainly install apps from the SD card on all Android phones. Future phones will have more local storage, so you won't need to rely on a memory card - and you could say the same about iPhone - hey, it doesn't even have a slot for a card - who cares about iPhone anyway?

      2. Google maps support is excellent with Android 2.0, better than with any other phone currently.

      3. So, does Nokia want to become a licensing business? Or keep dominating their market with their own innovative devices?

  5. I have an N97 and an N900 by kurt555gs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Symbian is a pig. QT on Symbian is lipstick on a pig. There is no other good way to say this. I had an N95 8GB, and Symbian 3 was actually fine on that, buttons and all. Symbian 5, ala N97 is just pushing Symbians limits to far. The best technical terms I can use to describe Symbian 5 (N97) is it's a "steaming pile of shit".

    The N900 on the other hand is just phuquing unbelievable. Once they put QT on top of Maemo Linux, it will be so far away from any othe the other phone OS's, that there just will be no contest. (I say phone, but the N900 is really more of a mobile computer with cell capabilities than a phone).

    The N900 rox!

    --
    * Carthago Delenda Est *
    1. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by kurt555gs · · Score: 5, Informative

      All you need to get FULL root privileges on the N900 is to download this -> http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/rootsh/

      That's it, you PWN the device.

      --
      * Carthago Delenda Est *
    2. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by Martz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can completely agree about both the N95 and the N97.

      For me the N95 broke new ground and really was an impressive device when it was released. The fixes did a lot to help usability and stability.

      The N97 is the Nokia device which has pissed me off so much - that I've become stuborn and vowed to never, ever again own another Nokia Symbian device. It's a complete disaster, even with the much anticipated v20 firmware.

      I get a free company phone of my choosing, and I could've taken the iPhone at various times but I stood my ground on the principle of it being a "more free" device in terms of application choice. Now I'd be happy to give all of that up just to have a device which has a slick UI, does the basic functions perfectly and isn't so frustrating that I want to smash the device into the floor or throw it out of the car window.

      Nokia really have to improve - they have no other choice - otherwise I believe they will lose the smartphone market.

      As good as the N900 is or promises to be - I refuse to believe the hype or to be an early adopter. I'd have to see the phone in action in Real Life first before even considering another Nokia product.

    3. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by cenc · · Score: 2, Informative

      C++ libraries for producing programs that will run on both windows, linux, whatever OS (not sure of the full range). Likely most famously found on the KDE desktop.

      The important thing for the n900 is we now have a set of libraries that in theory should provide an ability to write software that will run on your home computer, and on your cell phone (without java or some other silliness). Basically all the Linux applications that exist already should (perhaps with some tweaking) be usable on your cell phone without needing to reinvent the wheel to use the massive base of mature software that is already available for Linux and similar.

      In theory, it means I should be able to deploy most of the desktop software we use in my office on n900's without needing to retrain people in my office to use it when they are out of the office.

      We will see. So far the hype seems to be warranted, but I am sure we all have been burned before by some arbitrary corporate decision or more commonly some arbitrary marketing decision.

      --
      Living in Chile
    4. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by BasilBrush · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't remember if anyone ever tried putting a GUI on top of CP/M, but that is analogous to trying to make Symbian work as a touch screen OS.

      Complete nonsense. The original name for Symbian OS was EPOC 32, and it was developed for the Psion 5 - a touch screen PDA. So in actual fact, the OS and APIs were designed from the outset for touchscreen as well as keyboard.

    5. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by Jazzbunny · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Back in the days Symbian wasn't a pig, I had Nokia 7650, the first Symbian phone released, and it was everything nerd could hope for. For example I had universal TV control program there, so I could change the channels at my local sports bar at my will and cause mayhem if I wanted to. Later Symbian were locked up more tightly, but currently Maemo looks something I had back in the days + more. I will be using my tax refunds to get N900 and I think I wont regret it.

    6. Re:I have an N97 and an N900 by EvilNTUser · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh, it's actually even simpler than that. Enable the extras repo in the package manager, then install rootsh.

      Does the exact same thing, of course, but it's so nice to have a real package manager.

      --
      My Sig: SEGV
  6. Re:My Question Is by ZackSchil · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because they didn't have an example interface from Apple to crib off of at that point.

    No, really.

  7. Apple... by mrops · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...That is the real answer. For the longest time, Nokia had phones that everyone bought. They were expensive, but so were Mercedes and BMW.

    Then came the iPhone. Like it or not, it changed the whole mobile market. Nokia was complacent and was caught off guard.

    I recall Nokia was so full of themselves that they dismissed Android claiming writing a phone OS is no joke.

    Having said all that, I have been for the last 10 years and still am a Nokia fanboy.

    I love Nokia philosophy of phone first, everything else later. I hope that stays.

    1. Re:Apple... by sznupi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you're looking at this solely from the point of view of western, possibly US, market...

      Nokia had always vast spectrum of phones, from very cheap to expensive. Heck, their cheapest phone now costs 20 Euro, without contract (the stated goal of Nokia, supposedly not tongue-in-cheek, is to have 5 Euro phone in a few years). Also, they launched Maemo before iPhone announcement. And reality is that Android has yet to prove itself...

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    2. Re:Apple... by jandrese · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nokia has always had a vast spectrum of phones with crappy UIs. That's what the parent was talking about. Now that Apple and Google are starting to make a noticable dent in their marketshare they've been forced to actually try to build a UI that doesn't stab you in the face every time you try to look up someone's name by their phone number or attempt to change the order of the icons on the screen.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    3. Re:Apple... by sznupi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Define "crappy". Majority of their phones are used only for phonecalls and text messages. Sometimes quick photo. Given that people across the spectrum manage to do it just fine (and I can't imagine non-trivial portion of them using anything with a touchscreen, for example), I'd suspect S30 and S40 are better than you give them credit.

      Plus...please, how exactly a low-end (TRUE low-end, not what American would call like that but what is in reality high middle segment) phone can be much different at this point? Noticeable dent? Are you kidding? Nokia is the only hugely profitable phone manufacturer (other either are out of the market, struggling for a long time, or phones aren't their primary product; with the possible exception of RIM, though they basically sell a corporate service, not phones). Nokia marketshare: ~40% of global market, over 50% of smartphones. You just don't see it because your carriers were blocking Nokia from entering for a long time, for Nokia refusal to castrate their devices.

      Now that Symbian will improve when devices with it are becoming really affordable, nearing $100 mark without contract, you should probably get used to the thought of bright future for Nokia.

      PS. "look up someone's name by their phone number"? You mean when you have a number, but don't know to who it belongs to? That's trivial even on the cheapest, 20 Euro Nokia phone... (also, realize that most of the market doesn't care and doesn't want to change the order of icons; plus it speeds up navigation, lets you use numpad to spatially associated to icons on a grid)

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    4. Re:Apple... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Insightful
      last I checked, writing a phone OS isn't a joke.

      Oh yeah?

      How do you explain this then?

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    5. Re:Apple... by mvdwege · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, the Apple fanbois are out in force today. Nokia's interface design has warts, to be sure, but the general S60 interface is derived from the old non-smartphone interface that has been carried on phones ever since GSM became popular (one navigation key, one select key, one cancel key). Compared to Siemens or Sony-Ericsson, the Nokia interface isn't non-intuitive at all, and since the majority of European phone users are used to these interfaces, S60 isn't a big change.

      So the Apple fanbois like your parent are obviously talking about things they know nothing of. What else is new.

      Mart

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  8. Re:My Question Is by fbjon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Progress is the end result of competition.

    --
    True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.