Almost 1000 ideas have been submitted to Symbian Ideas since its public launch in October 2009. After such a short time, it’s exciting to see that eight ideas are currently being implemented and a further twenty-one have been validated and require an individual or company to develop and contribute the code for the new or enhanced platform features or applications.
Ideas that will be realised as new Symbian features include:
The functionality to paint using the Image Editor is being developed by Ixonos, a foundation member, and will be available in Symbian^3, the latest version of the platform that will be “feature complete” by the end of Q1.
The ability to change the default browser on your device will be available in Symbian^4, thanks to a contribution from Opera.
Users will be able to synch their Facebook contacts with those on their phone in Symbian^4, thanks to a contribution from Nokia.
Symbian applications that are under development as a result of ideas submitted to Symbian Ideas include:
“Carbonfund“, a mobile CO2 calculator which calculates your carbon footprint and allows you to offset it using Paypal. Developed by OpenPath Products in collaboration with Carbonfund.org and Open Mobile Solutions, a beta will be demoed at Mobile World Congress.
A Wikipedia widget to help you access Wikipedia from your mobile both quickly and with ease. Developed by Ivan Litovski of the Symbian Foundation, who re-purposed code that is now freely available on the Symbian developer website. The widget is now available for free from Symbian Horizon.
For the uninitiated, Symbian Ideas is a way for anyone to influence the Symbian roadmap and the future of mobile. Users contribute ideas for the enhancement and extension of the Symbian platform (the operating system, the user interface, the applications) and the way the Symbian Foundation functions. Now that the Symbian platform is completely open sourced, there is no barrier to developers who wish to experiment, innovate and implement ideas.
The Symbian Ideas community is not the exclusive domain of developers. The hope is that individuals with diverse types of expertise and insight will escape their silos and use the site to propose, refine and implement new ideas for mobile. These individuals might be users, they might be healthcare professionals, or bankers, or automotive engineers… anyone with insight and ideas. Innovation is has sometimes seen as the product of an isolated ‘eureka’ moment. But it has also come to be viewed as the result of pooling diverse opinions and skills in order that existing concepts and ideas can be combined in new and unexpected ways. Bringing a diverse community together, with a common subject to debate, will make the Symbian platform truly innovative.
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.
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 !
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