Boy that’s a lot of Symbian^’s in one title.

Jay over at MyNokiaBlog sure found a couple jewels lately.
First up, apparently some Symbian^4 screenshots were released yesterday. There seems to be a whole lot of changes (all good!).

• New Smoother Font (Veranda apparently but that depends on the device creator)
• Multiple homescreens (Different wallpaper possible on each Homescreen)

• New App switcher icon on the top right (similar to the one on Maemo 5, means no more press-and-hold-menu-button)

• Both locked-to-position type, and movable type Widgets

• Drop down Menu bar at the top (which will contain more options)

The resolution still seems to be 640×380 though. I’m hoping they bump it up to atleast 800 × 480 pixels (like Maemo 5) ? Also this seems to be primarily touch, so no word on how the Non-Touch Symbian^4 UI might look like (or if it would be any different).
Also here’s hoping for some decent animation too, in Symbian^4 eh ? Lot’s more over at MyNokiaBlog.
Out of all these, the Toolbar, Menu bar and back button (among some other features) arnt going to be in Symbian^3 though.
Then to add to that, the Symbian Roadmap was released today, which lists their future goals and intentions too. As Jay has noted :

• Apparently there’s a Symbian^5 and Symbian^6 already on the charts.
• Symbian^4 might have multicore support sometime in 2010
• Symbian^3 has kernel support for multicore processors which will achieve better performance with better battery life!
• Symbian is designed for low power consumption from the ground up and now leading the wave in low power efficiency.
• Symbian^3 is running on dual Cortex A9 (which is awesome, and similar to what the N900 is running on right now).
• A9 will allow recording of up to 1080p.
• High end 3D graphics accelerator to bring PC-like web browsing
• Symbian^3 devices will be available from (July-ish onwards) 2010
• Dual Core devices will be shipping in 2011
• Symbian^4 devices will be available from 2011 [H1]
• Symbian^5 devices will be available from 2011 [H2]
• Symbian^6 devices will be available from 2012 [H1]

Also, some interesting points from the roadmap:

• There are 33 Symbian^1 devices so far, from Samsung, Fujitsu, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Sharp.
• Over 100,000 man years of development
• Over 300,000,000 Symbian devices shipped

In Symbian^3 :

• Easier to use: Single tap across the UI,
  
  support for gestures such as pinch and flick
• Faster: ScreenPlay uses hardware
  
  acceleration to deliver a blazingly fast UI
• Watch HD movies and play games on TV via
  
  
  HDMI
• Improved Homescreen: Multiple pages,
  
  new widget manager, more powerful widgets
• New app: Podcasts
• Radio app: “Buy now” from music stores
• One click connectivity makes connecting
  
  to the internet a breeze
• Multicore support

While, in Symbian^4 :

• A fresh new look for all applications, based on Qt.
• Direct access to key functionality and beautiful effects and transitions in a streamlined user interface.

There is a whole bunch of exciting stuff, such as Messages being sorted as Conversations in S^4 (which we would have thought would already be in S^3 ?) and such, so do check out the Symbian Roadmap.

Or view it below :
10.02 Symbian Platform Roadmap v1.0

I gotta say, as someone who’s stuck to Symbian since it first started out with the Nokia 7650 (it’s first mass market phone), I cant help but feel overjoyed to see where they’re going to take it.
Ofcourse I’m totally impatient too ! Symbian ^4 (as good as S^3 might be) cant get here fast enough for me.
I also want to take a second out to say “Well Done !” to the crew over at Symbian ! Make us proud, guys !

[Images via : MyNokiaBlog]

Via : zomgitscj