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The WDN Symbian DevZone - Week 1... A Look at OS Version 7
by Richard Bloor, April 1, 2002
Welcome to the first regular weekly update in WDN's Symbian DevZone. Every
week I will be bringing you the best coverage of the Symbian community including
interviews with key players, vendor profile, news, product reviews, technical
background and more.
In this first column I thought it would be appropriate to bring you up to date on
developments around the OS and the announced smartphones it will be powering.
It's now 9 months since the launch of the Nokia 9210. Based on v6 of the OS it
continues the Nokia 9000 series of communicators, replacing the GEOS operating
system found in the 9110. Briefly attaining number one spot in the European PDA
market for the 3rd quarter of 2001 it now takes third place behind multi device
vendors Palm and Compaq. Nokia have already announced an update, due in the
middle of this year, which boosts the processor performance and onboard memory.
It also sees the addition of VPN support and enhanced multimedia capabilities
including a Macromedia Flash player. These improvements are probably also part
of the preparation for the US model, the 9290, which is due to ship later this year.
Nokia 9210
In November 2001 Nokia announced the 7650. Based on v6.1 of the OS (which
added GPRS, WAP 1.2 and additional Bluetooth functionality) it is very much
targeted to take advantage of multimedia messaging with its built in camera.
The most significant part of the announcement is that although the base OS is
Symbian the user interface is all Nokia, more particularly their Series 60 UI. Nokia
differentiate their phone interfaces into 5 series, with the top 2, 60 and 80, being
based on the Symbian platform, series 80 incidentally is the interface of the Nokia
9210. Series 60 is also more than just an interface, it is a complete smartphone
reference design. In March this year Nokia announced jointly with Texas
Instruments that they would be making a complete hardware reference design
available for OEMs.
Nokia 7650
The version of the Symbian OS for small smartphones, originally named Pearl, was
always intended to be shipped without a reference user interface, meaning that
Symbian's licensees would have to build their own. In part this appears to have
been driven by the view that these devices need to allow the vendors to distinguish
their brands. Whether it was also driven by the desire of players like Nokia to
expand their business into platform licensing we will never know.
Almost immediately on the public release of Series 60 it was announced that
Matsushita were evaluating it. More recently there have been strong rumors that
Samsung have licensed Series 60 and are already working on a phone. If this proves
to be true I would expect the earliest announcement is likely to be made at the
Symbian Developer Expo later this month.
The latest news sees an update to the OS. Version 7 does not make any startling
changes to the core of the OS but does extend the capabilities of v6.1 in several
important areas, including:
MMS and EMS messaging standards
support of IP v6 and IPSEC
MidP Java support and
the addition of EDGE and CDMA telephony standards.
The inclusion of CDMA is probably the most surprising addition. Symbian and the
majority of its licensees had, up to version 7, been strongly aligning themselves to
GSM and its enhancements as the only supported telephony standard. It may
simply have been driven by the need for CDMA in Nokia's deal with Samsung but
equally could represent a wider push to license the OS to manufactures in the Far
East who lean more heavily towards CDMA.
Perhaps the other most significant change is that the Device Family Reference
Designs (DFRD) have now completely gone. Originally launched in support of v6
the DFRDs split the target smartphones into three categories, communicators
(Crystal), Mediaphones (Quartz) and smartphones (Pearl). With the exception of
Pearl each had a strong set of interface guidelines. Now the user interface
components in the Symbian OS define only enough policy to provide a standard
reusable set of interface components, opening up the opportunity for each vendor to
develop their own unique interface.
The second announcement from 3GSM was the introduction of UIQ, an updated
version of the Quartz reference design user interface. While this move seems
strangely at odds with the toolkit approach to user interface presented in the v7, UIQ
is described as highly customizable.
Two weeks after UIQ was previewed came the announcement of the first
smartphone to use it, the SonyEricsson P800, due for launch later this year.
Unkindly referred to by one commentator as "my first SonyEricsson" probably
because of the powder blue color of the publicity machine it clearly illustrates why
the DFRDs were too limited. The original Quartz user interface used either a pointer
or directional keys for navigation. The P800 incorporates a thumb wheel for
navigation, both horizontally and vertically. The P800, like the Nokia 7650,
incorporates a digital camera. Interestingly the phone keypad can be completely
removed.
SonyEricsson P800
The next few months should see the announcement of several other new phones.
Although no clear intentions have been signaled by the other Symbian OS licensees
the rapid improvement in GPRS services, including Vodafone's recent roaming
announcement, should have cleared the way for phones from other vendors, such as
Fujitsu, Kenwood, Matsushita (Panasonic), Motorola, Sanyo and Siemens.
If you would like a little more background on the history of the Symbian OS then
please check out the article "Introduction to the Epoc Platform"
(www.wirelessdevnet.com/training/EPOC/EPOCOverview.html) that was
originally posted in June 2000. This article covers the history of Symbian, from its
roots in the Psion PDAs up to the launch of Symbian and developments leading up
to the release of v6.
To wet your appetite for future columns I am currently working on features which
will include:
- Metrowerks' CodeWarrior development tools
- NeuVoice's speech engine and SDK
- a profile of Digia and a review their Symbian testing tool, Digia AppTest
- and of course commentary on all the latest news and development.
Finally if your company is developing hardware or software for the Symbian OS or
you have any questions or queries about the Symbian OS that you would like to see
covered in future columns please drop me a note at rbloor@wirelessdevnet.com.
About the "WDN Symbian Guy" Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor has 16 years experience in the IT industry. His earlier
work was largely in design and development of commercial and
manufacturing systems but more recently has focused on
development and test management of government systems.
Richard Bloor is the Mobile Applications champion at System
Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at rbloor@wirelessdevnet.com.
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