Antti Vasara, the company’s VP technology sales and marketing with responsibility for S60, revealed the plan at the Nokia Mobility Conference in Monte Carlo.
Mr Vasara told delegates at the event: We are now starting the process to expand Series 60 to 640×320 [wide screen displays with] pen input and platform security. This will happen in the next 18 months or so. We will see Series 60 software launches where these features become part of the product. Then it will be three to six months before products come to market.
What Mr Vasara neglected to say publicallly was that the planned extension of the S60 platform will mean the end of its multimedia-focused sibling, Series 90. Series 90 and Series 60 will essentially converge. There will be only one platform and that will be called Series 60, Mr Vasara told ComputerWire.
Nokia’s thinking in converging the two platforms follows ongoing efforts by Symbian itself to rationalize the operating system, which has so far spawned five variants distinguished largely by different user interface characteristics but with numerous differences under the surface.
These include Nokia’s S60 and S90, Series 80, as used in Nokia’s Communicator devices, Symbian’s own UIQ and the NTT DoCoMo-specific FOMA interface.
To date S60 has been restricted to relatively conventionally-styled candy bar or clamshell handsets. Adding support for wide, touch-screen-based devices in a unified platform will help improve the integrity of Symbian as a mobile device platform, improving its attractiveness to developers while providing more design freedom for hardware licensees.
This route (albeit in reverse) has already been taken by Symbian’s UIQ technology subsidiary. UIQ is currently preparing an updated version of its own Symbian variant to allow one-handed, pen-free data entry as well as the touch screen interface it has been associated with to date.
S60 developers want as wide as possible convergence. A platform where they can innovate. Developers are the acid test for whether you’re talking bullshit or there’s real momentum there, said Mr Vasara.
Series 60 is going into categories that matter. The mass market and [now] the high end where we can truly create converged PDA-type devices. We excel in developing only one platform covering all form factors.
Ironically, Nokia’s intention to wind down development on a standalone S90 came on the same day that the company announced the first commercially-targeted device to use the Symbian software.
The Nokia 7710 supersedes the stillborn 7700. Nokia binned the 7700 prior to a touted launch earlier this year due, at least partially, to a design rethink. The 7710 is both smaller and more conventional in appearance than its forebear, while maintaining the characteristic 640×320 display.
Interestingly, given its parentage in consumer-oriented handsets and multimedia devices, Nokia expects the evolved S60 to provide additional momentum for smart phones in the enterprise space. Improved security and lower cost models such as the 3230, announced earlier this week, should help drive adoption.
Furthermore, Mark Luhtala, of Nokia Enterprise Solutions, said major applications and infrastructure ISV partners such as IBM and Oracle were beginning to turn their attention towards S60 after having previously concentrated their efforts on S80. S80 looks set to remain a distinct Symbian flavor for the time being.
The Nokia 7710 is expected to debut in China and other parts of Asia later this year before taking its European and African bow in the first quarter of 2005. Nokia said the release will be accompanied by the launch by a number of broadcasters of Visual Radio services to support the device. Visual Radio supplements analogue radio broadcasts received by the device with relevant information and interactive services carried over GPRS.
