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Third time’s the charm

As mentioned earlier in the review, the N8 is Nokia’s first device to be based on the new Symbian^3 platform. Before we dive into Symbian^3 and how it works and what new features it brings along, let’s have a quick look at Symbian’s evolution in the recent years.  

Evolution of Symbian; S60 1st Edition, S60 3rd Edition, Symbian^3 (L-R)

Although Symbian can trace its roots back to the 90’s and the days of Psion (known as EPOC OS back then), Symbian as we know it today only took shape earlier this decade with Nokia and Ericsson’s involvement. The basic design principle for Symbian OS was that of maintaining absolute simplicity, and making conscious and efficient use of the (then) spare resources available on mobile devices. As a result, the ‘OS’ itself did not come with a user interface of any sort. It simply included the (EKA2) nanokernel packaged with a few basic primitives, libraries and device drivers to extend it to the realm of a microkernel.

After an initial reference design, further development of the frontend itself was left to the device manufacturers, leading to the likes of the Nokia Series 60 UI, UIQ etc. Over the course of this decade, mainstream Symbian moved from version 6.0 to the version 9.4 used in Nokia’s last S60 update. Over the course of years, Nokia added features and updates to its S60 UI resulting in various editions and feature packs. The last major update made by Nokia was to add support for high-resolution touch screens resulting in S60 5th Edition. However, sometime in 2008, Symbian went open source and along with the OS, now came packaged the S60 UI, creating what is known as the Symbian Platform. It was also during this time that Nokia started pushing the use of Qt as the framework of choice for Symbian development.

The Symbian platform includes code not just from Nokia, which was the primary contributor to the code base, but also from other companies (Sony Ericsson being one of them) as they decided to withdraw from using and developing Symbian. The platform as such now also includes parts of other releases such as UIQ, MOAP etc. The first product based on Symbian Platform was Symbian^1, which was a mildly reworked S60 5th Edition. Symbian^2 was an insignificant release with only a handful of Japanese vendors releasing handsets based on it. What we see today, Symbian^3, is Nokia’s boldest move forward, bringing significant and much needed updates to the platform. It is also going to be the last major Symbian release for a while, with Symbian^4 having been cancelled and its code base and feature set having been rolled into Symbian^3.

On first look, it may seem like not a lot has changed between Symbian^3 and previous iterations, apart from an improved UI. But Symbian^3 is Nokia’s first OS built from the ground up for the high resolution touch-screen interface paradigm and it is a marked improvement over its rather poorly implemented (and received) S60 5th Edition touch interface. The OS is now finger-friendly and multi-touch capable (except the on-screen keyboard), not requiring a stylus, and makes use of single-tap interaction throughout, thereby eliminating the need to dig through layers of menus. Welcome to the party Nokia, better late than never!

   
(L-R) The slick screensaver that makes use of OLED’s ‘free’ black color, Multitasking in S^3, the Dialer app, a typical S^3 menu

Another significant update to Symbian^3 is the introduction of the GPU accelerated UI. While Symbian has never really been slow to respond to input, this was more a result of the fact that it was almost completely devoid of any animation or effects and as mentioned earlier, Symbian’s inherent thrift when it came to using available resources. Although functional, it looked outright prehistoric compared to most modern mobile operating systems, and having to deal with multiple menu hierarchies to change even fairly obvious settings and options didn’t win it any favors either.

With Symbian^3, Nokia has tried to make a clean transition to the present day and age and for the most part, Symbian^3 and the N8’s BCM2727 media processor is able to pull it off reasonably well. The N8’s response is quick, whether it be navigating the menus or switching between applications. The transitions are smooth with no lag; the phone doesn’t get bogged down even with multiple applications running in the background. It also responds to taps and gestures consistently without needing to double tap or repeat gestures. Overall, using the N8 is a fairly smooth experience with nothing to complain about.

   
Home screens in Symbian^3(first three), S^3 Widget Manager (Right)

Very similar to Android, Symbian^3 now also allows for multiple home screens (three to be exact), with the switching between them facilitated by a simple side-swipe gesture. The current home screen you are on is indicated by one of three dots at the bottom. It is very easy to customize each of the home screens with application shortcuts, notifications, and widgets such as weather, email, social networks, calendar, etc. This is facilitated by a long-press anywhere on the home screen, which initiates the widget manager.

The widgets themselves afford a decent amount of customization. You can also easily switch the widgets online and offline by selecting a single option, unlike the last time I used Symbian where this had to be done on a per application basis. And this logical simplification of actions runs deeper than just the home screen. For example, managing data connections is much simpler on the N8 than it was on the E5. Although it still makes use of “Destinations” to manage your data networks, which isn’t the most straightforward or efficient method to handle data-network related settings, at least all the options are now housed on one page. Symbian^3 also makes some updates to the network stack and it is now 4G ready, should Nokia decide to launch such a device. 

There are some quirks in Symbian^3’s current incarnation. For one, the dialer app does not work in landscape mode. Secondly, there is no QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode. Also, using the keyboard in landscape mode takes up the entire screen. So if you are entering your name in a form on a site, clicking on the text field will open up the keyboard with a white text area up top; you cannot see the site itself. As I quickly learned on the Nokia Ovi Store registration page itself, it becomes very irritating when trying to enter CAPTCHAs. You either have to memorize the entire CAPTCHA, or switch back and forth between the website and landscape keyboard view. And finally, the battery indicator on the N8 is a fair bit off from the actual remaining battery life as reported by the N8 itself!

  
(L-R) S^3 lacks a QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode; battery indicator shows 3/4th of the battery is left, even though it’s not true; the landscape keyboard takes up the whole screen

I’d mentioned earlier that Symbian^3 is going to be Nokia’s last major OS release for a while and this is true. But this does not mean that Nokia plans on pulling on with this release in its current form for another decade. With the closing of Symbian^4 development, what Nokia is actually trying is to do is roll out regular, incremental features and updates to the Symbian^3 code base, instead of branching it off to a new OS release. This is needed for two reasons: to keep Nokia devices such as the N8 competitive, as well as to maintain forward momentum and consumer interest in the Symbian platform. Nokia has promised to make one such significant update to Symbian^3 in early 2011 and some of the updates are much needed.

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