Nokia had shown off some mockups of the Future of Symbian in 2010 during its Capital Markets day back in December.
Now here are some screenshots of Symbian 4 UI Concept which were posted on the Symbian Community
Here is what is being presented as the benefits of the Symbian ^ 4 Concept
The S^4 user interface primary objective is to simplify the S60 user experience by:
– renewed layouts
– context menu support for list items
– flattened command distribution with elimination of ‘tunneling’ Options commands
– Applications Library replaces Main Menu
– four user-facing libraries: Contacts, Music, Photos, Applications
– Homescreen supports irregularly shaped Homescreen widgets, free placement of Homescreen widgets, and improved move and delete functions for Homescreen widgets
– guidelines for autosaving content reduce Save commands
– improved task switcher minimizes Exit commands and provides improved visual access to backgrounded ‘continuous experience’ applications (e.g., music playback, active call, etc.)
– prompts to users minimized
– redesigned Control Panel and settings/personalization information architecture
– refocused Power menu includes master volume and vibra on/off controls
– interaction and layout patterns applied to all applications
What’s interesting is Nokia is comparing the UI with Android , WebOS and iPhone platform and trying to explain how the UI is different.
Quoting from the Doc
User interface design solutions that exist for other operating systems are similar in the following respects:
– HTC Hero and Motorola Droid, both on Android, have a Homescreen with movable Homescreen widgets; however, each has one multi-panel homesceen page, whereas Symbian Foundation has independent unique pages
– Palm Pre’s WebOS eliminates Exit commands, but instead of saving state and releasing memory it keeps applications running
– iPhone has a flattened application library; however, it is displayed to the user exclusively as a manually organized grid, whereas the Symbian Foundation application library is an alpha-ordered list with multiple filtered views.
The home screen is expected to allow resizable widgets. The Photo application is seen above.
The Application Chrome is transparent
Nokia and Symbian are inviting feedback from Developers and Users about the concept