1. I know… I know… It’s been months. We’ve been waiting for months for Symbian Anna to come.

2. Nokia Australia has just released a video, explaining some of the updates and new features inside Symbian Anna.

3. These including (but not limited to) :
- New portrait QWERTY
- New Calendar
- New Web browser
- New iconography
- Yada yada yada…

4. Just watch the video

5. Symbian Anna will be made available for existing Symbian^3 devices during August 2011 (depends on market conditions).

1. Nokia Malaysia organised a special preview session for bloggers on Friday May 27th in Kuala Lumpur.

2. This preview session is intended to show the latest Symbian devices which are the E6 and the X7.

3. Also previewed, was the first glimpse of Symbian Anna. The new Symbian revamp that was scheduled to be shipped with the E6 and X7, and also to be made available to all existing Symbian^3 smartphones (N8, E7, C7, C6-01) in the coming weeks.

Some observations

Calendar

1. I only had a brief moment with Anna, particularly with the X7. And I wasted no time, for 25-30 minutes or so, I digged into X7 user interface and found some interesting tidbits.

The calendar view is improved. In here, calendar entries are displayed. Just like on Symbian^1. Interestingly, it applies for month and week views.

For single day view, time-slots are displayed all the time even on empty days.

The toolbar has been removed. Giving more space for contents. However, this means changing views is harder (Options – Change View…).

Full screen view can be activated by pinching the screen.

Editing screen is also improved (no screenshot)

File Manager

1. Finally. Selecting multiple files (Mark) is easier. When activated, checkboxes will appear on the left of the filenames. Very easy to mark any files that we want. The menu also dynamically changes when selection begins.

2. Speed is increased, eg. opening large photo.

Web-browser

1. I was impressed with the rendering speed. Definitely better than the old Symbian Web.

2. But the UI is still not to my liking. e.g. Changing tabs/windows is still needs many clicks.

3. Creating new tab/window is supported. But the UI for it is very slow. The closest comparison I can mention is like creating new tab on Skyfire for iPad. Very sloowwww….

Overall impression

1. To be honest, Symbian Anna is a step in the right direction. The most obvious change is the application icons, where they are now standardised and looks cooler. And that’s about it.
2. There are some core application changes like the Web browser, and Photo viewer. But most apps stays the same like on Symbian^3.

3. For Symbian^3 users, the changes are not that noticeable. Particularly it has the same UI. Not really a refresh.

4. The overall speed is increased. Launching apps is faster.

5. The portrait QWERTY is included, users can choose between the alphanumeric keypad or the new portrait QWERTY. But, in my opinion, the new portrait QWERTY keyboard needs some time to get used to. The individual keys are too small for my thumbs.

6. Anna will be shipped with E6 & X7 first. Then only for existing Symbian^3 smartphones via software update.

7. Nokia E6 will be priced at only RM1155 when it reaches Malaysia market in early June 2011. For the X7, the price will be determined later. It will be made available in early July 2011.

8. All in all… cant wait to test it in real life

*** More coverage from Tallboyz who also attended the preview session.

- For i-Symbian.Com
- Asri al-Baker
- May 30th 2011

1. Mobile Documents, the alternative Email client for Symbian, which, in my opinion, is not just another regular email client, it’s a WORK OF ART.

2. A few days ago, Visiarc announced it’s cooperation with Nokia Betalabs to host Mobile Documents in Betalabs’ website, to access more potential users and to collect more feedbacks.

3. At the same time, Visiarc also announced a new version of Mobile Documents, optimised for Symbian^3 devices. You can download the new version (0.9.19) from Nokia Betalabs at the link in the above paragraph.

4. I’ve used Mobile Documents for a couple of months now, and I am a fan! Honestly, it’s not perfect, has some bugs and needs overhaul in the UI department. However, I stand by the concept and I share Visiarc’s vision of a powerful mobile email solution. Mobile Documents cannot be taken lightly, it’s the signs of more beautiful and powerful things in the future.

5. To understand and dig deep into the vision, I interviewed Peter Lindgren, CEO of Visiarc, via email somewhere in November 2010. And I am honoured for his answers. Text interview is a traditional i-Symbian.Com feature which we love to do since aeons ago. Among others, we have interviewed Steve Litchfield, Sander Van Der Wal, and aso Malcolm Lithgow (to name a few) over the years.

6. Text interview is easier to digest, you can re-read many times, you can stop reading anytime you want and you can skip to any particular topic in the interview if you want.

7. I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I wrote it It’s a looong interview, so take a cup of coffee and enjoy!

8. Oh! And there’s a nice little surprise at the end of this interview

Introduction
———-

1. Hi Peter. How is it over there?

Hi Asri. Winter is approaching and we already have had our fair share of snow storms. Being this far north, close to the polar circle, days are short and nights are long and black. It’s nice but very different from what you have. I actually visited Malaysia a month ago, very nice, but thirty hot and humid degrees is perhaps a bit too far at the other end.

2. Can you introduce yourself? The longer the better?

I’m Peter Lindgren, the CEO and Co-founder of VISIARC. We’ve set out to mobilize email and are actively developing Mobile Documents, a cloud-boosted push mail service. For a bit more than a decade I’ve been pushing the envelope as an entrepreneur in Internet software development, marketing and sales in different companies. By training I have my Master of Science degree and Post-Graduate studies in Marketing and Management. But my greatest interest has always been art and design, graphical design especially. Luckily, I still can be hands-on engaged in the user interaction and interface design process, to make sure we don’t compromise the user experience. A profound interest in usability is something that we all share. When not on the job, I try to live an active life and depending on the season I enjoy different winter or water sports. Especially I love traveling in and near tropical waters. I’m also fortunate that in the sense that doing what we do on a global scale brings travel opportunities all over the world.

3. What does your schedule look like today? Business travels? Meetings?

Today is Sunday and my day off. Obviously my professional and personal life is a blur. I don’t mind. If you mostly do things that you are passionate about, then what does an unbalanced life look like?

4. Anything interesting coming from Visiarc in the very near future?

Yes there is. Expect interesting stuff around the shift between November and December (2010).

5. Lets start the interview shall we?

Of course.

Visiarc
—–

1. You (Visiarc) have won various awards throughout the years. How do you feel about being at the forefront of innovation?

Receiving recognitions for your innovations is very rewarding. Only user feedback means more. We are where we like to be right now. From experience, we know that being too far ahead is painful – likely just as painful or even worse than being left behind. In my world, there’s no shortage of innovative ideas and disruptive concepts.

2. How long have you established Visiarc? Have you achieved your targets that you envisioned for Visiarc since the beginning? Can you tell us a bit about it’s history?

We started out building and launching our first mobile cloud back in fall 2002. That was early, early as in a time when a brick (Nokia 9210 Communicator) was a leading and really the first smartphone. Cloud wasn’t even coined. From that perspective we’re kind of pioneers in the mobility space. That was way too early, but now I think time is catching up. Just two years ago, what we’re trying to do was too radical. In three years time, what we do will be a totally “given”. What I refer to is of course mobile apps that reach out into the cloud to add most of its value. Nokia started talking about it three years ago, powerful servers in the cloud, fast networks and smart phones. A couple of years ago Microsoft adopted this strategy, Software + Service. This year Google says mobile first. Of course, I say…

3. How many people in your team? Do you have offices outside Sweden?

We’re just eight people today, a really small but tight team. VISIARC is a private company and just as you say, we’re based in Sweden. But today, in the networked Internet era, you don’t necessarily need more to start a global mobile cloud business, any online business for that matter. Yet, we do. But that’s just more a consequence of the scope and reach of our business concept and vision.

4. What does Visiarc mean? Is it a Viking word?

VISIARC is a totally man-made word that means nothing anywhere, but has the one increasingly important characteristic – being globally unique – so that any search hit leads to you, and only you. Just try google, we’re alone and on the top of the world at zero cost.

Actually it has a meaning too. The first part “visi” refers to visualization, a key concept, viewing of emails, attachments and documents. “Arc” is a common feature but also refers to a bridge. Bridges bring people closer together, just as messaging and email. If you take a look at the logo the “A” and “V” are the same, two stylized eyes looking in each respective opposite direction. That provides a 360 degree view, representing both our focus on viewing as well as our global scope. Sorry, no heritage to the vikings to be found.

5. What is the mission and vision of Visiarc?

Mission, well I’m not sure we’ve headed out on any holy mission, but we want to make things more convenient and not necessarily just a little at a time. I like our vision – to spread the rich messaging tool we’re building to every person on this earth for free – to give everyone a first-class Internet voice. Our Freemium subscription based model will make that possible. Free email will be free with us – any document, any email, any attachment, on any device, from any source, on any network, anywhere, anytime – instantly & securely – to and from anyone. I guess if we succeed, Mobile Documents will soon become a household name in the global village.

Mobile Documents
—————

1. Can you share with us the background for Mobile Documents? How did the idea come into the picture and why?

Email as we know it is older than the web and is basically still the same as back in the 70s and 80s. Yet we’ve seen no innovation in email since push mail, and that’s ten years ago. Take anything else mobile that is ten years old and compare to today (phones, laptops, navigators, web browsers etc) and you will conclude they are as different as day and night. Email though remains the same. Traditional email is not only dated, it’s outdated.

Everyone uses email and everyone is taking it so much for granted. Revolutionary thoughts and changes are and has simply been overlooked, since “we all know what email is”. Who asks what could email be?. We did and we also asked ourselves how can we create something that is radically different? And even if the answer means a disruptive solution, can we make it a plug-and-play technology to fit the present, the legacy? Simply, to really mobilize email, a drastically different approach is what is required, a cloud-boosted approach.

Then why email? Well, email is dominant. For a fact, it’s the most popular and fastest growing mobile Internet activity. It’s not mobile first, it’s mobile mail first. Mobile mail is 4x larger than #2 and #3. A whopping 42% of the time spent on mobile Internet in the US is email, up from 36% last year according to Nielsen . #3 is social media (Twitter/Facebook) and it grew only from 8% to 10% last year, 3x slower than email! Email usage is increasing every year, and we are the sole company to address the root cause of the #1 problem with mobile mail.

This is today. We identified this development to come several years ago, and solving this problem is what drives us.

2. Mobile Documents, in a way, is competing against Nokia’s own solution called Nokia Messaging Email which also does push email. What is the most important feature of Mobile Documents that distingush it from other competing products out there?

That’s easy. Mobile Documents offers mobile documents. Nokia Messaging doesn’t. There are other differences as well. Nokia is taking its messaging closer to the social networking space while were concentrating on the last mobile frontier in email, managing the steady stream of ever-increasingly larger attachments and documents ending up in mailboxes. In a way this also makes Mobile Documents more professionally and business oriented than the more personal and social path Nokia Messaging is following. Last but not least, Mobile Documents will not be free, it’ll be freemium.

3. Email 2.0 can be seen a lot in Mobile Documents’ product sheets and marketing materials, can you share with us what is Email 2.0? Are we still in Email 1.0 now?

Mobile Documents represents a paradigm shift in email, that is also why we talk about Email 2.0. Ask yourself, ask your peers or ask any mobile email user what the major problem with mobile mail is. The answer is heavy attachments. When asking users how they deal with such heavy attachments they will tell you they don’t. They don’t deal with them at all on the phone, but they do that back in front of the computer, at home or in the office. Not very mobile, right?

Simply Email 1.0, it can’t do mobile documents, it can download only. Email 2.0 offers an entire toolbox to manage emails, attachments and documents – and we’re the only company to address this the #1 problem associated with the most popular mobile Internet activity. There are two key mobile concepts that Email 2.0 address; (1) remote viewing/reading and (2) remote handling/sending/managing emails, attachments and documents – instantly and without the need to download first.

Mobile Documents offers value to everyone in the mobile ecosystem. The user gets a better user experience and can do things easily that is basically not possible to do with traditional email – saving time and bandwidth. Companies can save 60-80% on roaming charges and receive a higher productivity and increased level of security with no documents in the field. Carriers/MNOs are offered multiple advantages. A fact is that one single optical fiber is about 250,000 time more capable than an entire 4G LTE phone cell, to be shared among all users. That means the air will always be crowded. With Email 2.0 (attachments today clog up networks across the globe, just ask) operators can deliver a better Quality of Service. Collaborating with VISIARC there are even more benefits to be reaped for an operator.

We’re used to do email on our computers. But the world is changing. There are today a little more than 1 billion PCs. Already there are more people with a smartphone. We’re entering a mobile age. Soon the majority of the global population and in particular the young will have a smartphone, but far from all a PC. And soon every single one will have Internet and email. In spring 2009, Nokia asked people with web mail if they wanted to mobilize their email. 78% said yes, but 10% had mobilized their email. Over the next couple of years we’ll go from a low penetration with a very few to a high penetration with a majority of the world population to have mobile mail. What will they opt for, probably email that is designed with mobility in mind, Mail 2.0.

4. Designwise, currently, Mobile Documents on Symbian does not look very attractive compared to the Android version. What enhancements can we expect to be implemented to the Symbian version in the near future? Will we see a more unified & professional user experience in Mobile Documents across all platforms?

I wouldn’t go so far as calling it unattractive. We’ve adopted a clean uncluttered minimalistic approach in line with the general look-and-feel and behavior that is standard on Symbian. We want our app to look and behave like everything else because that benefits our users.

Thank you, pleased to hear that you like the Android look. On Symbian you should expect enhancements in the unique key aspects of Mobile Documents, and quite soon. Soon after, you can also expect general enhancements based on user feedback. Correct, we’re also in the process of unifying and harmonizing the various platforms feature-wise. Yet, interaction-wise each app will stay true to respective platform behaviors.

5. How long did it take for Visiarc to develop Mobile Documents? From idea & concept to actual software running on real devices. How’s the
response from Symbian users?

We’ve been working pretty much full-time for three years now, from prototype to where we are today.

The response has been overwhelming. At first we asked ourselves, will anyone download? will they like it? Yes, they did! And yes, they do. We’re still in beta and there are a few fundamental features we don’t yet have that’ll be released shortly, still we receive mostly very positive reviews. I’m quite excited about that considering the relatively early stage we’re at yet.

6. Empowering users to do more with their email attachments seems to be the philosophy behind Mobile Documents. In your opinion, how connected devices (e.g. smartphones) can be fully utilised? For work and personal?

In the smartphone era of today, users expect nothing less than the same user experience they get from an app downloaded for personal use from an app store as they demand for an enterprise app. The software companies that don’t recognize that will meet the same destiny as the dinosaurs. And I agree, you’re absolutely right. We want people too, from one intuitive place, be able to manage their personal and professional life. That’s one reason why we’ll offer personal free email for free so that it can sit next to your work email. Because that’s how people live their lives, they need to manage both their personal and professional lives at the same time.

Yes, Mobile Documents is about empowering people, get more done on the go, instantly. Conceptually I don’t believe that we will or want to be carrying every single data file with us. Instead what we want is ways to gain mobile access to any of our files, regardless if it sits in my Google Docs or corporate mailbox. And that’s what we’re doing, starting to mobilize email, attachments and documents. Unless data files die, there is unlimited value that we can bring about, philosophically talking.

7. Other than the regular office files (doc, ppt, pdf etc), do you have future plan to support more file formats? Multimedia files maybe? Or how about ZIP/RAR file support where users can click on a ZIP attachment and Mobile Documents will extract the contents serverside allowing the contents to be viewed?

Indeed, very good suggestions. Let me put it this way. Doing most stuff in the cloud, neither is there any limit in what kind of operations, functions or manipulations we can do, nor is there any limit on the number of file types and formats we can support.

8. In Mobile Documents, viewing files are done by rendering them serverside, nothing is downloaded locally. How this is achieved? Do you develop the technology yourself? What is it called? You patent it? What is Cherrypicking?

First, we leave all the heavy stuff in the cloud server-side where we do all heavy-lifting. We open up attachments and documents there, render and on demand stream the bits and pieces that the users wants. We use the mobile network. This makes everything instant and it saves time and bandwidth. It requires minimal effort of the mobile phone since the smaller the screen the less information needs to be sent. This also means that all limited resources on the phone (CPU and storage) can be dedicated to maximize user experience (unlike opening, parsing, drawing etc). Plus, no downloaded documents means no documents that can be lost or stolen.

Second, traditional email requires users to download the entire email and attachments. Mobile Documents allows the user to manage the email and attachments without a download. Simply, like a shopping cart a user can collect and add attachments to new email without downloading, from any email sent or received in any account or even from other remote document sources in the cloud. Press send and it’s sent. Instantly. Since nothing resides on the local phone but are visual representations, everything regardless of actual size becomes light as a feather and instant. This we label Remote Attachment Management and Cherry Picking technologies – the core of Email 2.0. Basically we shortcut the unnecessary – download, find, add and send – loop that cost nothing but time and a lot of money if you’re roaming.

Yes, the underpinning key technologies of Mobile Documents are patent pending.

9. You also provide a web interface for users to manage their Mobile Documents’ accounts and their documents. What is your highest priority in ensuring users confidentiality and documents’ security? Are they encrypted?

Nothing is more important than to preserve our users security and privacy. Mobile Documents is secure. All connections between the mobile app and our cloud is secure. Even when users set up new email accounts, we always try to help finding the encrypted settings as long as the primary email provider allows secure connections, but not all do. We use strong 128-bit bank-level encryption over SSL.

Like most Internet services, we use a password based security model (no hardware crypto device). The length of the password then becomes critical. From this perspective Mobile Documents offers a nice security aspect. We offer the PIN. For example, a long twelve character password with a mix of numbers, small and large cap letters and alphanumeric characters on a mobile is just plain awkward. Such attempts are futile. Either users will disable password protection or change the password to a short easy insecure one, or simply stop using the app. With Mobile Documents you only input the long awkward password once. Then you create a PIN. The long password is not stored on the smartphone but a secure cookie that allows the user to login with the short convenient PIN code. Should the phone get lost or stolen the user simply logs in on the web interface and change password. The cookie then becomes invalid instantly. So even if the thief would know the PIN, it doesn’t allow access to Mobile Documents any longer. And with no emails or documents on the device there’s little to be lost, more than the actual device of course. To reset a password is also the main function of the web interface.

10. Can you share your future plans for Mobile Documents? Will you add features such as adding attachments to outgoing email from device, or adding eye-candy such as transition effects and cute icons? Will it be free forever? Ever?

Right away I can tell you that adding attachments from the local device is the single most asked for feature. It’ll be released soon too. There are a few new icons in the pipe. If they’re cute or not, I wouldn’t know. We will keep Mobile Documents free as in freemium after the beta period too.

Business Model
————

1. You offer Mobile Documents for free? Why?

Our vision is to bring Mobile Documents to every relevant mobile phone and we don’t want to discriminate any platform, device or network. We believe the next generation email should be free. If everyone can use Mobile Documents that benefits us in many ways as well. I simply see no reason to not let it be free.

2. Where does the money come from? As a business entity, how do you leverage your offerings?

We’ve financed it out of our own pockets and we still do. We have received some seed funding and loans though.

As soon as Mobile Documents becomes the best mobile mail, a premium version will be offered for advanced users on a subscription basis. These advanced users will leverage and pay for the free usage. People that don’t use email much will receive the Mobile Documents benefits for free.

One cool thing is that since we’re not a software company per se but rather subscription based, one user can have one or ten smartphones with Mobile documents all in sync at no extra cost.

3. Is Visiarc also involved in other businesses? Such as?

We’ve done a fair share of mobile development for other mobile companies over the years. Being on the cutting edge and working with R&D pre-release software, I can just say that I respect the signed NDAs.

4. Other than Mobile Documents, do you develop any other products or solutions?

No we don’t.

5. If it’s possible, can you share your plan for the near future? To ensure user’s confidence in your business?

We’ve been around since the dawn of the first smartphone and we’re still today more alive and kicking than ever. If you like what we do, support us.

As I always say, if there are things you don’t like, let us know so that we can fix them. If you like what we do, please let us know too, because that’s what motivates us.

Want to reach the entire team? Email us at support@mobiledocuments.com, or email me at peter.lindgren@visiarc.com.

Multi-platforms approach
———————

1. Most of your products are available only for Symbian, why?

Symbian offers the single largest user base and we have always been doing hardcore Symbian development. It was just a natural starting point for us. But we’re platform agnostic. We have a first early beta out on Android market and the next platform is iPhone.

2. What is your opinion on the announcement by Nokia to develop Symbian on it’s own? What will be the impact to software developers and those who build software and services around the Symbian ecosystem?

From a Nokia perspective I just understand. It makes a lot of sense. For Symbian as a platform Nokia was in the driver’s seat of its development already. I don’t really have an opinion.

3. How many Symbian smartphones do you own personally at the moment? Which one is your top favourite Symbian smartphone of all time?

Actually, I don’t know. They’re all in the office. I know that we have Nokia 9210, 7650, 3650, Sony Ericsson P800/P910, Motorola A1000 and many more to the more present E71, N97/mini, N8 and other. I’ve used all these and many more, except the Symbian based Motorolas for obvious reasons if you ever had one.

4. With Nokia’s commitment to Qt for it’s future Symbian smartphone and MeeGo mobile computers, will Mobile Documents also be ported to Qt? By the way, will you make Mobile Documents available for future MeeGo products? Your opinion on Qt?

I like Qt. I look forward to familiarize myself with Qt Quick. Probably, Qt is very underestimated. We’re a small company, but of course, how could Qt not be part of our road map?

5. Recently, you also released Mobile Documents for Android. How’s the response? What’s the difference developing it for Symbian and Android?

6. What’s the most challenging aspect in developing Mobile Documents? Is it the mobile client, or the web interface, or the technology? How do you put everything together?

All! But I must say that without the help of all our beta users we would not have been where we are today. They’ve helped us identifying all the peculiarities and imperfections in the real-world.

A long detour, if you’re not interested in our challenges just move on to the next questions. Mobile Documents today interfaces with almost any type of mail server out there (note. IMAP and Exchange) including all their imperfections, implementations of protocols and configurations. That’s a challenge to connect and stay in sync to push any email as soon as it arrives. Then, these emails are sent by various other servers (SMTP) created by a plethora of different mail clients or scripts – emails that are standards compliant but in reality more or less broken. That’s another challenge. Then add a steady stream of attachments generated by various kinds of native and not so native software saving files in various formats. Some are fine but many are imperfect and other are infected with different viruses that need to be quarantined. That’s yet another challenge. Take all that machinery to push every new email to every single user to allow instant reading, viewing, streaming, cherry picking and other you stat to understand the scope. Then add a rapidly growing number of new users atop of this. That is a massive hurdle that we’ve soon overcome.

In relation, dealing with internal things such as innovative interface design, internal protocol implementations etc becomes less challenging, even though it may take time to perfect.

7. Will you also port Mobile Documents to other mobile platforms? Windows Phone 7? Bada? Blackberry? iOS?

We’re platform agnostic. The mobile mail experience is quite different across all platforms that you mention. The most important aspect to decide if to support a platform or not is if we can add great value to the platform or not, more than just mobilizing attachments and documents. But ultimately, we’ll support every relevant platform including all you mentioned.

8. In the future, these platforms will be more advanced than what they are today. And their built-in email clients will also improve. Where do you position Mobile Documents to stay relevant?

The built-in clients are of course fundamentally our closest competitor. But they can never be what we are, per definition. Unless the built-in client is not only a client but a cloud-boosted push mail service with built-in mobile document capabilities, of course. But then, we’re not standing still and I have both one or two ideas where to take Mobile Documents. Believe me.

9. Of all these mobile platforms, which one, in your opinion, has the potential to be leveraged, and will benefit your company, strategically and financially?

If I just knew…

10. Are you going to license your solutions to other interested parties? OEM manufacturers for example?

We are the sole proprietary owner of all material rights to everything that constitutes Mobile Documents™. The most important aspect is to make our innovations benefit the users. There are many things that can be improved beyond what we can achieve as a third-party developer through working with mobile network operators, hardware manufacturers and others.

Conclusion
———

Please say something to our readers.

Mobile Documents offers cloud-boosted push mail – we’re in beta still – and what we want is your feedback and support. We can’t always deliver everything tomorrow even if we want, being a small company, but we try hard to. Please help us make Mobile Documents the best mobile mail and document sharing experience.

———

There you go… I also asked Peter about giving you, our readers some little present and here it is. The same elegant wallpaper used by Peter to decorate his Nokia N8 in the video above (Betalabs – first video in this interview). Get it here (right-click – download) :

1. Scott Weiss, User Interface Manager of Symbian Foundation has posted an update of the progress for Symbian^4 UI development.

2. From the blog, there’s nothing much to report actually. If you are expecting new screenshots or video of the upcoming Symbian^4 UI cncept, you’ll be disappointed.

3. However, Scott did summarize briefly of the contributions and ideas that have been generated as well as the sheer amount of interest from the community who want to see a better Symbian in the future.

4. It has to be noted that Symbian^4 is still under heavy development and it will be a good year or more from now before we can see the actual product on real hardware.

5. There’s also 2 videos showcasing the same Symbian^4 UI concept that have been circulating on the interwebs for some time. They showed the photo gallery and the homescreen.

6. What do you think?

1. Symbian^4 is not yet ready and they are working hard to bring it feature complete towards the end of this year.

2. Symbian^4 will bring a new DirectUI user interface. A whole new experience of smart mobile operating system.

3. The new UI will stand head to head with other modern smartphone operating system (iPhone, webOS, Android, Maemo).

4. Among Symbian^4 UI featuers are :
- multiple home screens with different wallpapers (also available in Symbian^3)
- context sensitive toolbar
- easy multitasking with task-switcher icon
- more to come!

5. Symbian Foundation will release more information in due course. Meanwhile, you can take a look at The Symbian UI Brainstorm blog for some really cool ideas regarding Symbian UI.

Source : http://twitpic.com/photos/OlyG

2. “We will continue to invest in Symbian as our dominant smart-phone platform in the foreseeable future,” said Nokia Chief Executive Olli Pekka-Kallasvuo.

3. “Let me be clear. Symbian is our platform of choice. Today, and in the future,” added Dr. Kai Oistamo, Nokia Executive Vice President, Devices.”

4. During the presentation from Dr. Kai Oistamo, some screenshot mockups of what is to be believed as the redesigned Symbian^3 UI made an appearance. You can view the video HERE.

5. AllAboutSymbian and Engadget did some coverage and pretty much summed everything up.

6. I want to share what I think of the new mockup. I understand this doesnt mean anything because what we see now are only mockups and designs. Not the real thing running on real hardware and available for public. But what the heck I am excited to see Symbian’s overhauled.

Symbian^3 UI Multiple Home Screens

My comment
- Probably, this is Symbian^3. It does look similar to the current homescreen implementation on Nokia N97 and N97 Mini (both are Symbian^1).
- The little dots at the bottom of the screen indicates the multiple screens and which one is displayed.
- The left softkey area is still labelled as “Options” and the right softkey is labelled “Calls”. Meaning it is still using design reference from S60.

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Home Screen Landscape

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Home Screen Portrait

My comment
- This looks like a new home screen for Symbian^4.
- Notice how the battery and network indicator are placed together on the top-left to optimise screen real estate and give space to Application launcher (aka S60 Menu), and a dropdown arrow which indicates a sensitive context menu which will change according to applications.
- The widgets on the home screen also looks more organic and blends with the system. They comes in different sizes and shapes and different levels of transparency. This, together with the multiple home screens reminds me a lot of Maemo 5 on N900

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Photo Gallery Portrait

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Photo Gallery Landscape

My comments
- The photo gallery shows some interesting concepts. Notice the “Back” button on the top right? It reminisce me of UIQ 3′s back button
- The Application launcher shortcut is not displayed. Probably to make more space.
- There’s also a dropdown arrow next to the “Back” button, probably will be used to host options and menu.
- 4 shortcuts to the most used functions are present. This includes sharing, or posting it to online services. Meaning direct access without digging into menu.
- The display is also optimised and you can see photos inside photo for easy browsing and jumping from one photo to another.
- The landscape screenshot mockup shows the battery and network indocator are grouped together to the left of the screen and the 4 shortcuts.

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Music Album Browser

Concept - Probably Symbian^4 UI Video Player

My comments
- The music player looks like implementing the popular Coverflow idea made famous by Apple
- This kind of thing require more powerful graphics technology. I guess, Symbian’s Screenplay is used.
- The Video player, also has some special laver for controlling buttons. Probably the controls only appear when the video is paused or when the screen is touched.
- I’m not saying this is good or bad but designing a new and intuuitive and iconic User Interface is not an easy thing to do. Nokia, among others, should be applauded with its effort in redesigning Symbian’s UI.

Final thought
1. It’s great to see Nokia emphasizing on it’s long term Symbian support

2. From the mockups, there’s not much to be excited. But I can see some design consistencies and unified philosophy. This is important to make the UI consistent in all aspects.

3. Again, please bear in mind that what we see now are just mockups. From now to the end of 2010, there’s a plenty of time and things may change.

4. These mockups are showing touch screen UI only. Which is great but I think, there are many things that Nokia and Symbian have not revealed to us public.

5. I believe Nokia and Symbian are also cooking a new UI for non-touch smartphones.

Oh my… The next 1 year gonna be very interesting with regards to the Symbian world…

- Asri al-Baker

2. But how true, this assumptions are? What do they base their observations from? Does an outdated UI qualify to be a dinosaur? Or, If it’s not made by Americans it’ll be doomed? Or if it doesnt become American media-darling, it will fail? Why choosey?

3. To be honest, I am a little bit disappointed by the way media portrayed Symbian. I mean, lets look at Windows Mobile for example, it’s market share is going south, the UI is still ugly and stupid, but nobody makes noise about it like they did with Symbian. Why the silence?

4. The old Symbian (under Symbian Limited) is dead. That might be true (depends on how you look at it), and the new Symbian (under Symbian Foundation) hasn’t shown it’s strength yet. Why kill it?

5. The new Symbian OS & UI (under the name Symbian ^4) will be made available in the market somewhere in the end of 2010 (if everything goes as planned). Nothing is concrete about the new UI untill a real device is released. Why make noise?

6. There are millions of legacy Symbian smartphones in the world at the moment. Ranging from S60, S60 3rd-Edition, S60 5th-Edition, MOAPs, UIQ, UIQ3. These are still used by millions of people (regular people, not geeks), in their daily lives. Why they still use Symbian?

7. In many parts of the world that is not Geekland, people took years to change their phones for many reasons, price and technology are among them. These people will only change phones when they lost the old one or it is hit by a truck! Why so strange?

8. Symbian Foundation is working very hard to continue Symbian’s proven legacy and to break new grounds with new technologies. For example, EKA2 is one of the best kept secret by phone manufacturers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson but it is now opened, fully opened and accessible for others to take a peek into it and see why Symbian is more advanced and more efficient than any other mobile OS in existence. Others can learn a lot. Why nobody make noise about it?

9. iPhone and Android, said to be the new mobile OS that will bury Symbian to the ground, has not yet reached the said momentum. I cant see any Android powered device sold openly in my place. What?

10. If something is not born yet? How can you kill it? The new Symbian is NOT yet available in the market and people are already saying it’s dead, it’s dying, it wont survive, yada yada yada… Come on people, back to reality please….

- Asri al-Baker

2. I dont know why or how but it seems that everybody is picking on Symbian nowadays.

3. Someone has got to do the job of bearing the torch and defend Symbian. And Lee is doing it great.

4. The piece at The Register talks among others about how Google could be the bigger threat. But they missed some points.

5. How come something that has not been proven yet can be considered as a threat? Say whatever but Android is new. And it’s not proven as a robust OS unlike Symbian.

6. Oh well… It’s all about the media aint it… You have to be media darling to get attention, no?

Source – AAS

2. Bear in mind that this is NOT the final or official Symbian UI developed by Symbian Foundation that uses Qt. This is just a concept from developers.

3. The company developing this concept is Tieto. They also attended SEE09 to demonstrate their techonologies.

4. The concept UI is running on an existing S60 5th Edition (Symbian ^1) smartphone.

5. Lets hope more goodies will be made available for Symbian

2. Clearly, both Symbian and Maemo have a lot to offer.

3. The new Symbian Foundation OS is not yet released. So, IMHO, it’s unfair to compare a product that is still in development with a finished product.

4. Whatever it is, read it with a pinch of salt…