1. I listened to one of AAS Podcasts (number 165 I think), and I think Ewan did a good observation regarding the proposed Symbian^4 UI by Nokia.
2. Ewan mentioned about an application called Gig Finder which is using a different UI from the standard Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) UI.
3. For the sake of excitment and testing something new, I installed Gig Finder to take a peek into the so called new Symbian UI elements.
4. Although the application is packaged in SIS, I believe it is a Widget, not a native application.
On the left is Gig Finder, and on the right is the proposed Homescreen UI for Symbian^4
5. Hell yeah! It is indeed different from the stock Symbian^1 user interface which I hate to love it!
6. The UI is modern and has elements of other modern UI in the market. For example, there are 3 icons at the bottom of the screen which is called Toolbar, it is used to access the most accessed (logically) functions.
7. There’s also other elements that will pop out for users to confirm actions. And the pop-up is hanging, i.e. not locked to the bottom of the screen like the existing Symbian^1 UI.
8. For the Options and other menus like Setting of the app, and those that is not accessed frequently, including the Information about the App, the menu is accessible by pressing an icon at the top left corner of the screen.
9. The UI looks good on landscape mode too!
10. The new Symbian^4 UI is not finalised yet. And Symbian just annonounced Symbian^3 as a full open source system. It will be interesting to see what the community will bring to the plate.
11. Bring it on Symbian^4!!!
- Asri al-Baker