We've already gotten quite a few glimpses of gen Symbian user interface, but this week David Rivas, VP of Technology Management at Nokia, revealed some more in a demo in San Francisco.
Demo video taken by folks over at PhoneDog.com showed off a nice array of eye candy and some actually useful bits, like support for capacitive screens, multitouch, gestures, multiple desktop filled with widgets and advanced graphics effects that are scheduled to be in the release later this year.
S^3 is another huge milestone in the evolution of Symbian platform. Now that it is fully open source, the door is open to individual contributors, device creators and third-party developer companies, as well as other organizations, to create more compelling products and services than ever before.
Taking us on a detailed tour of the OS’ enhancements, David starts off with the multiple homescreens, showcasing how to customise widgets, add and remove apps as well as adding new pages.
Although running on a laptop, the OS boasts some serious graphics improvements over previous versions, David suggesting a leap from 20fps to 60fps. This is clearly evident in the music player with the addition of easy to use scrolling through cover artwork.
The Symbian^3 (S^3) platform demo!
It doesn’t end there, as David also showcases multitasking, multi-touch (on both capacitive and resistive displays) and hints to over 100 usability improvements.
S^3 is expected to be “feature complete” by the end of Q1 and the release will include: significant usability and interface advances, faster networking, acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics in games and applications, HDMI support (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), music store integration, an improved user interface with easier navigation and multi-touch gesture support, a feature-rich homescreen, and the ability to run even more applications simultaneously.
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