DirectUI>> http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Prop/Direct_UI

YouTube QtStudio channel worth checking out>> http://www.youtube.com/user/QtStudios

Of course do not get hung up on any UI look and feel as the real thing might be very different ;) These are demos but show what Qt can do- so just use your imagination a little.

See lots of interesting comments on Nokia and Symbian Foundation, some healthy speculation and some very valid fustrations- Suffice to say anyone within Nokia shares those fustrations too and we are working to address them.

I can say there is a lot going on at Symbian Device within Nokia, some of which will be visible soon, some later, all very very positive. So the message is don’t give up on Nokia as we are definitely awake :)

Please also bare in mind, the SF presentations and version show what frameworks are being contributed (register on SF web site if you want more info), but of course not what Nokia is actually doing with the underlying UI and user-experiences. The latter is driving the SD whole organisation.

I wish I could say more as it is exciting, so apologies that we have been very quiet.

Cheers,

Kevin

I like where Maemo 5 is with the UI somewhat. It’s very S60 like in terms of look (color and icon wise), which is nice, but it doesn’t support portrait orientation, and is missing a lot of the things that really have nothing to do with the UI but have to do with aspects of applications (no equalizer, MMS, voice dialing, wtf?) and a complete lack of call send/end buttons and a menu button. That doesn’t work for me. The dashboard button makes up for the Symbian key sort of, but it’s still not there.

How about this: Multiple homescreens, up to 5, with one that looks like the N97′s widget homescreen that’s just for widgets if you want it to be, all of them fully customizable, with a feature that lines things up making the screen look neat and organized. My homescreen with all my contacts would act like the contacts bar on the 5800 XM, whereby tapping on a contact brings up a screen showing your activity with them, allowing you to call them, go to your threaded SMS feed with them, or whatever. The Symbian key stays and continues to double as your menu key/task manager key, but when you press and hold it to bring up the task manager, it gives you a Maemo 5 Dashboard look. Shrink the status bar area (signal and battery status area) down to the size of the Androids, keeping the ability to tap on it to bring up shortcuts to things seen there. Give us the ability to choose whether or not things in the menu are in list form or icon form. Rearrange the Settings sub menus yet again. Get rid of double tap to open things, and add tap and hold for an options menu to pop up. That’s all I want. Is that too much to ask?

I think there needs to be someone in Nokia and Symbian who needs to be brave enough to go against the grain of their products and stand and say ‘let’s figure out what users truly want.’

However, strategically, perhaps Nokia/symbian does not want to re-capture the upper ends of the market in these few years(let that to apple and samsung i guess). In that case, the symbian v3 is good enough. However, eventually in the next 5 to 10 years, more and more people will emerge from the lower rungs of the market to better phones and that is when Nokia’s market share will fall inexorably if it does have have the users’ interests in mind.

For me, i have given up on the symbian v5.

It’s true,
UI is face of OS,
it tells many thinks to normal users.

i hope symbian will work on this or they will be doomed.
Nokia must take some serious changes in S60.

In the end, I think that Maemo is probably the way forward for Nokia (well, I should say it SHOULD be the way forward, but I’m sure it won’t be) – but if Symbian wants to survive, they at the very least should be TALKING to the Maemo UI guys since from what I’ve seen of the n900 interface it’s much better than what Symbian has shown so far. Having a new UI out in 18 months? That a lifetime in the tech world!

-olly

Nokia needs to get Qt for S60 our of beta as soon as possible and get the Qt libraries in firmware upgrades to their phones. If that happens I think we will see a deluge of new applications.

On the user interface front Samsung and Sony Ericsson seem way ahead of Nokia in the UI department. This will probably continue because TouchWiz and the new Sony Android UI will probably be ported over if they continue to make Symbian powered phones.

It pains me to say it but, I think that Nokia needs to do some *restructuring* in the departments responsible for their user interface designs. The excuses given by Nokia executives for the UI and the resistive screens (it was designed this way for Asian markets) are transparently weak. If I were CEO of Nokia I would simply buy eico design, the Chinese company that designed the Meizu M8 user interface. That phone is endlessly mocked, but this design firm was able to create an interface that equals the iPhone at least in appearance. Just go here http://www.eicodesign.com/case/22.html (text in Chinese) and look at the onscreen keyboard. The world’s largest cell phone company was incapable of this and may not have anything that looks like it for years! The saddest thing is that they obviously didn’t care about backwards compatibility because of all the broken Symbian 3rd apps.

Right now the N900 is receiving a ton of hype and buzz, but just wait until the reviewers get the device in their hands and realize that it only operates in landscape and that the screen is resistive yet again. The X6 is also getting a lot of buzz because they are finally releasing a phone with a capacitive screen, but unless they have completely redesigned the onscreen keyboards it’s going to be a huge disaster.

Nokia needs to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fast. Their CEO needs to stop hanging around with Dave Stewart and save all the money they are spending on record company licenses and just buy Spotify.

Anyway, enough ranting. I feel like an Apple fan in 1996.