New UI to be built on top of Symbian, S60 to be taken behind the barn and shot in the face?



Scott Weiss, User Interface Technology Manager for The Symbian Foundation, recently said that S60 5th edition, the version that you see on current touch devices shipping from Nokia (NYSE: NOK) such as the N97 and 5800, is a temporary solution and things will change rather soon.

Back in April, the Symbian foundation blog said these two things will be included in Symbian^4 which is supposed to be feature complete this time next year, and be final by the end of 2010:

        * A new “Orbit” extension library for Qt, which contains more than 50 widgets tailored for mobile user experience, and which will provide a replacement for the existing “Avkon” widget set.
        * A new “Direct UI” interaction and navigation logic, combined with finger-optimised layouts offering excellent touch and hybrid-device user experience.

Krzysztof Choma, who is now unemployed, but used to be a Senior Software Engineer at Nokia for 3 months, and before that a Senior Software Engineer for Symbian for 2 years, confirms that the decision to kill Avkon, which is the codename for Nokia’s flavor of S60, has not yet been made and goes through the pros and cons of switching to Direct UI. The pros for taking Avkon behind the barn and putting a bullet in it’s brain are many: it’s old, maintaining it is costly and starting from scratch to compete with Palm (NSDQ: PALM) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is tempting. The cons: developers would have to rewrite their applications. Well boo hoo!

Direct UI, the replacement for Avkon, is built on top of Qt from what I can tell, and creating a Hello World application in Qt on Symbian takes 10 lines of code, where as for Avkon you have to import multiple classes and create several files.

Conclusion after all that technomumbojumbo: Touch versions of S60 are still going to look like the same S60 from 2002 when the Nokia 7650 came out, and Symbian is not going to be competitive, in the UI/UX department, until the end of 2010. Expect devices with the new UI to probably hit in 2011. When Steve Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of it’s time, he was not kidding.

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Ovako nešto sam i očekivao!! Odmah se vidjelo da se s60v5 ne može porediti sa Apple TS interfejsom.
I ako je dosta ljudi skeptično, ja i dalje vjerujem u Nokiju. Vidjećemo za godinu dana, kada se pojavi taj novi korisnički interfejs na šta će to da liči. Biće tu problema oko kompatibilnosti, moraće se "prepisivati" aplikacije, nanovo pisati... itd... itd...

O tom po tom!! 

Nokia 5900 XpressMusic spotted from the back?



At a quick glance, you might think that you're looking at the back of a 5530 here, but look closer -- the camera's a little different, and we don't know what's up with that grille or the slits underneath. Indeed, we could very well be looking at the back of a rumored 5900 XpressMusic, a phone allegedly set to bow at Nokia World in Stuttgart next month with a 5 megapixel camera, S60 5th Edition FP1 (first we've heard of an S60 5th Edition feature pack), and -- get this -- support for SDXC, which would give the phone truly insane expandability options. It's also apparently a bit thinner than the 5800 it'd be replacing, though the SDXC rumor is truly off the wall -- we'll need to wait right up until Nokia World until we believe that particular tidbit.

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Nokia RX-51 tablet captured in the wild



Not long at all after that mysterious Nokia RX-51 passed through the FCC comes shots from Indonesian message board Kaskus of the tablet-like device in the wild. The blurred box shot and the label behind the battery clearly say RX-51 prototype, and the design is unmistakably similar to the rumored press photo for the Maemo 5-powered Rover from back in May. We can't help but notice the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens and, more importantly, SIM card slot and an ear piece, which would be perfect for placing calls on, say, T-Mobile's network. Few more shots after the break, and hit up the read link for the gallery of photos.
[Via Mobile Bulgaria; thanks to everyone who sent this in!]





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Nokia rumored to be kicking Symbian OS to the curb, moving in with Maemo




Poor Symbian. Sony Ericsson's been giving you some hot play with its Satio smartphone, but lately it seems Nokia wants little to do with you, always throwing a cold shoulder and mentioning what a great guy that Maemo dude is. Now, according to rumors from the (still pink) German Financial Times, Nokia is looking to drop Symbian OS altogether and move to Maemo wholesale, powering not just its internet tablets but also its smartphones, the first of which is due in "the next few weeks" -- possibly referring to the RX-51 Rover that's been out and about lately. According to the report, the Symbian OS just can't keep up with the younger players these days; "far too cumbersome to work with." Nokia has issued a typical no comment, but interestingly last night's mention of a "alliance" between Microsoft and Nokia for the creation of Office for Nokia phones made no explicit mention of Office for Symbian. Intrigue; we love it.

Update: As Reggie has pointed out in the comments, Peter Schneider, Nokia's Maemo marketing guru, has put the brakes on this rumor via Twitter. "No, Nokia is not replacing Symbian with Maemo. Symbian and Maemo will continue to coexist." So much for intrigue, and romance.

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New Nokia phones spotted along N97 Mini and possibly the 5900 XM

Leaked photos of unannounced phones always make the delight of mobile enthusiasts, so we’re sure that this new image with many Nokia phones will be of interest to you  (or at least to those who like Finnish phones).

Said image shows no less than 10 Nokia handsets, although it looks like only 5 of them are unannounced – including the Nokia N97 Mini.

According to The Nokia Blog, the photo (seen below) was posted on Flickr by an unnamed retailer, which will soon offer all the phones that appear in it:



First of all, there’s the Nokia N97 Mini next to the N97. As you can see, the N97 Mini has a narrower touchscreen display and doesn’t have a nav-pad on the QWERTY keyboard:



Next we have a full-touch phone that might be the rumored Nokia 5900 XpressMusic:



This is an unknown slider which could be from the Nseries line-up:



Another slider, a white one this time, is also featured in the photo:



The other 5 phones look like  already-announced ones.

Nokia Surge 6760, Nokia 6303 and Nokia 6700 classic:



Nokia E52 and Nokia E72:



That’s about it for now. We’ll probably find out the names of the unknown phones soon, so stick around.

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Another photo of the Nokia RX-51 aka Rover aka Internet Tablet w/ 3G appears

Below we see a photo of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s next Internet Tablet, set to be announced exactly 2 weeks from today at Nokia World in Germany. Eldar Murtazin from Mobile-Review has one, and according to his Twitter account he plans on posting a preview of Maemo and Rover by the end of today. I don’t know about you, but my salivary glands are set to slobber right about now.

Also see the two screenshots that were leaked today: one and two.



Oh and one more thing, sorry to shit on your hopes and dreams, but this device will NOT have a capacitive screen, it will be resistive.

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za ovo se štekaju pare 

Pictures: Nokia 12MP camera phone caught in the wild





Here are two live pictures of an unknown Nokia 12MP camera phone. The phone kinda looks like a slim version of the Nokia N93i, dont you think? The phones specs are still unknown.

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Nokia Erdos: a shiny specter, or an OLED-equipped reality?



We're in no position to say that Nokia's so-called Erdos -- which was recently caught lookin' pretty in the video down in the read link -- is anything more than a fanatical mockup, but we're fully ready to be believers. To be frank, we've a hard time understanding why Nokia wouldn't showcase this gem at its recent Nokia World expo if it were indeed nearing release, but whatever the case, we've received a number of tips suggested that the OLED-packin' handset could be formally introduced as early as next month. Falling within the 8xxx series, this ultrathin, ultra-shiny slider boasts a stainless steel design, A-GPS, 3G support, a 2.4-inch QVGA (320 x 240) display, WiFi, USB, 5 megapixel camera (with video recording) and 8GB of internal storage. Feel free to have a look for yourself, but just in case this all proves to be nothing more than a figment of some guy's imagination, you should probably fall in love with the X6 as well.



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Nokia N920, keyboardless, big screen N900 successor shows up

Interesting rumor poped- up on the net today. And I have no idea whether it’s true or not.

But if it is, the pictured product has leaked darn early.

We have just got our hands on Nokia N900, which is not even shipping yet. And now the image of what is claimed to be it’s successor, Nokia N920 Internet Tablet showed up at Nokiaport.de forum, and was discovered there by Chinese site InMobile365.

(Sort of pretty circuitous route, I’d say, which does not ad much to the credibility of the rumor)

Nevertheless, the picture of Nokia N920 looks real enough, so here it is:



It is said that Nokia N920 will come with a big 4.13” capacitive touchscreen display, thin body, and will not have a physical keyboard. That’s about all that is known about the new device for now.

But don’t expect it anytime soon. The best case scenario for Nokia N920  launch would be around Mobile World Congress 2010 in February, though I doubt that. More likely, we will see it sometime in spring/summer of 2010.

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