Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 on the N97?

With the advent of Symbian^3, it makes one wonder about the possibility of the new OS on our beloved N97’s. Symbian^3 promises to improve the UI by:

Symbian^3

An improved user experience

There are a range of user experience improvements in Symbian^3, incremental enhancements that make Symbian-based devices easier and more enjoyable to use.

Single tap interaction model – no more “tap to select, tap again to action”. Consistent roll-out of a “single tap” paradigm throughout the touch UI removes the need for double tapping anywhere in the user interface, delivering a more immediate and direct user experience. The implementation includes framework changes that allow 3rd party applications to benefit easily.

Multi-touch gesture support (for things like drag, flick and pinch-to-zoom) comes to many applications, including the Homescreen, Photos and the video player. Any application can integrate support for gestures by taking advantage of the framework and the set of gestures recognised can be customised and extended by device creators.

Better memory management, achieved through writeable data paging, leaves more free RAM for applications.

A faster UI – the Symbian^3 user interface uses the new graphics architecture to great effect to ensure that devices feel snappy and responsive.

The Homescreen Evolves

The Homescreen, starting point for all user interaction, evolves in Symbian^3. Find that you can’t squeeze all the widgets you need onto one page, or want separate pages for personal and work widgets? No problem, the Homescreen now supports multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The number of Homescreen pages is limited only by available memory.

Want to show multiple email accounts or weather forecasts for more than one city? No problem, in Symbian^3 the Homescreen gains support for multiple instances of a native widget.

The Homescreen also gains an improved Widget Manager configuration interface that provides a rich UI for downloading new Homescreen widgets. Widgets gain the ability to extend their UI, for example when the user selects a widget. The extended UI can be any size and is displayed on top of other widgets as a floating element.

As in previous releases widgets can be created in either web runtime (using HTML, Javascript etc) or natively using Qt, C++ or standard C. Symbian^3 sees the addition of support for Adobe FlashLite widgets (so long as a FlashLite player is available in your device).

See the Symbian^3 Homescreen architecture and the Homescreen package backlog for further information.

More entertaining – HD video, smart remote controls, interactive radio, podcasts

There’s a lot happening in Symbian^3 in the multimedia space:

HDMI Output: The latest phones can do almost everything your set-top box or PC can – only you can fit it in your pocket! But sometimes that pocket-sized screen just isn’t big enough – for example, showing your holiday photos and videos to family and friends, or watching a movie at home. Wouldn’t it be great if that pocket-sized screen could grow when needed – so it was big when you wanted it to be? With HDMI Output, this is easy – just plug your phone into your TV and see your movies and photos on a screen measuring feet, not just inches! And movies arent the end of the story – just think about the possibilities of big screen gaming.

Symbian^3 brings support for HDMI v1.3a and above plus HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). The Photos, Music Player and Video Player applications have been updated to output to HDMI when a connector is attached. See feature 876 for more details.

Full remote control for your music player: See track and artist names and browse your music collection direct from the screen on your Bluetooth headset or remote control. Change playlist without having to take your device out of your pocket. The technology behind this is v1.4 of the Bluetooth Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP v1.4) – a headset or remote with matching Bluetooth support will be required. Symbian^3 also brings stack-level support for a Symbian device acting in the “remote control” role to browse the media on any other player that supports Bluetooth AVRCP v1.4.

For further details see the Bluetooth Services package and feature 879.

Music store integration in the Radio app – making radio interactive. Ever heard a great song on the radio and wanted to know what it was or buy it then and there? The new “Buy now” button in the Radio app solves this problem by using RT+ RDS metadata to link through to the user’s chosen music store, providing them with relevant info on the current song and artist and letting them make an immediate purchase if they wish to. Music store plug-ins can be supplied by a device creator or carrier or downloaded and installed by the user themselves.

For further information see the Radio package and feature 880.

Podcast management: The Podcasts app, new in Symbian^3, allows you to manage podcast subscriptions and automatically download new shows to a predefined schedule, integrating with the music and video players for playback. With the Podcasts app in place you’ll always have something new to listen to.

Next generation graphics

A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture paves the way for a faster and more engaging user interface by enabling hardware acceleration of all graphics operations. Applications such as Photos take full advantage to enhance their look and feel, integrating effects such as fades and transitions between their various screens. Semi-transparent UI elements are supported, great for example when overlaying controls or notifications onto video during playback. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down. And all these features can scale to the capabilities of the hardware, allowing everything from simpler, cheaper phones to feature-rich, high-end devices.

See feature 176 and the Graphics package for further information.

Better data networking

One-click connectivity greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, doing the right thing without interrupting the user. It delivers a consistent and simple experience across all network-aware applications, streamlining the UI to remove all unnecessary prompts and dialogs. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behaviour, for example ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to WLAN when a free WLAN network is available. See the One Click Connectivity page and feature 565 for more details.

Smart network management: Under the covers Symbian^3 delivers a new core data networking architecture (known variously as “Three Plane Comms” or “FreeWay”). An application is able to indicate that it has particular service requirements such as high bandwidth (eg for speedy video upload) or jitter control (eg for smooth streaming of internet radio). The system seamlessly balances each individual application’s needs to deliver the best possible overall user experience.

Core improvements: Symbian^3’s new networking architecture and related optimisations also deliver throughput and jitter improvements to all data-enabled applications. This future-proofs the platform ready for the high bandwidth 4G networks that will roll out over the next few years. This industry-leading architecture provides a great basis for VoIP, audio and video streaming and efficient use of high bandwidth networks of all kinds.

So, with all these improvements to the Symbian OS, it does spark curiosity amongst S60 users. I know all the features are not possible, but some of the features might be implemented and it wouldn’t hurt the N97 if they were implemented. Seeing how the new Symbian’s interface is intertwined with an additional graphics chip, it would be difficult to implement all these features on the N97. Obviously, features like HD playback, multi-tap gestures, HDMI output and hardware improvements like 4G enablement would be nearly impossible or impossible to implement. But, features like better RAM management, a new and improved homescreen(with limited graphics acceleration of course) and the single-tap implementation in the UI would improve the usability of the N97.

With that being said, it should be noted that this is nothing but food for thought. Even if the N97 is able to handle at least some of the features of the Symbian^3, it would not be a wise business decision for Nokia to release it on the N97. It is also hard to carry this on the N97 because the drivers for the N97 would have to be updated to work on the new OS. However, with a strong strong hacking community, it won’t be a surprise to see a port of the new OS on our beloved phones. Hackers, are you ready for the challenge?

So, what do you guys think? Will it be possible to introduce the Symbian^3? Would you like to see it on your N97?

Peace,

Salman

Nokia Fever