The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) is a software platform for mobile phones that runs on Symbian OS. It was created by Nokia, who made the platform open source and contributed it to the Symbian Foundation. S60 has been used by mobile device manufacturers including Siemens mobile, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung.[1] Sony co-created the software with Nokia. Symbian (all Symbian products) is the most popular smartphone OS on the market by 37.6% of the sector’s total sales, with 111.6m handsets sold in year 2010.[2]
In addition to the manufacturers the community includes:
S60 consists of a suite of libraries and standard applications, such as telephony, personal information manager (PIM) tools, and Helix-based multimedia players. It is intended to power fully featured modern phones with large colour screens, which are commonly known as smartphones.
The S60 software is a multivendor standard for smartphones that supports application development in Java MIDP, C++, Python[3] and Adobe Flash. Originally, the most distinguishing feature of S60 phones was that they allowed users to install new applications after purchase. Unlike a standard desktop platform, however, the built-in apps are rarely upgraded by the vendor beyond bug fixes. New features are only added to phones while they are being developed rather than after public release. Certain buttons are standardized, such as a menu key, a four way joystick or d-pad, left and right soft keys and a clear key.
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There have been four major releases of S60: "Series 60" (2001), "Series 60 Second Edition" (2003), "S60 3rd Edition" (2005) and "S60 5th Edition" (2008).
Many devices are capable of running the S60 software platform with the Symbian OS. Devices ranging from the early Nokia 7650 running S60 v0.9 on Symbian OS v6.1,[6][7] to the latest Samsung i8910 Omnia HD running S60 v5.0 on Symbian OS v9.4.[8] In Symbian^3 the version of the revised platform is v5.2.
The table lists devices carrying each version of S60 as well as the Symbian OS version it is based on.
| S60 edition | S60 version number |
Symbian OS version number |
Devices[6][7][8] |
|---|---|---|---|
| S60 1st Edition | 0.9 | 6.1 | |
| S60 1st Edition, Feature Pack 1 |
1.2 | 6.1 | |
| S60 2nd Edition | 2.0 | 7.0s |
|
| S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 1 |
2.1 | 7.0s |
|
| S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2 |
2.6 | 8.0a |
|
| S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 3 |
2.8 | 8.1a | |
| S60 3rd Edition | 3.0 | 9.1 |
|
| S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 |
3.1 | 9.2 |
|
| S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 |
3.2 | 9.3 |
|
| S60 5th Edition (Corresponds to Symbian^1) |
5.0 | 9.4 | |
| Symbian^2 |
|
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| ''Symbian^3 (or PR1.0,1.1,1,2,Symbian Anna) |
5.2 | 9.5 |
|
| ''Symbian^3 (or Symbian Belle) |
5.3 [9] | 101 [10] |
Symbian is now progressing through a period of organisational change to metamorph into an open source software platform project. As an OS, Symbian OS originally provided no user interface (UI), the visual layer that runs atop an operating system. This was implemented separately. Examples of Symbian UIs are MOAP; Series 60; Series 80; Series 90 and UIQ. This separation of UI from underlying OS has created both flexibility and some confusion in the market place. The Nokia purchase of Symbian was brokered with the involvement of the other UI developers and all major user interface layers have been (or have been pledged to be) donated to the open source foundation who will independently own the Symbian operating system. The new Symbian Foundation has announced its intent to unify different Symbian UIs into a single UI based on the S60 platform. (Announcements made in March 2009 indicated this would be the S60 5th edition with feature pack 1).
On April 12 2011, Nokia announced Symbian Anna as a software update to the Symbian^3 release. Three new devices (500, X7 and E6) were announced which will have Symbian Anna pre-installed. Symbian Anna will be available as a Software Update for Symbian^3 based devices as well. Most Significant updates that come with "Anna" are
On August 24 2011, Nokia announced Symbian Belle as a software update to the Symbian Anna release. Three new devices (603, 700 and 701) [Nokia 600 is cancelled and is replaced with Nokia 603] were announced which will have Symbian Belle pre-installed. Symbian Belle will be available as a Software Update for Symbian Anna based devices as well. Most Significant updates that come with "Belle" are
In February 2011, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft to integrate Windows Phone 7 as their Primary OS, leaving further Symbian development in question. As a part of this plan, Nokia announced on April 29 2011, to transfer symbian activities to Accenture along with 3000 employees. Timelines for transitions are still not clear. For other alternatives to Symbian, see Symbian.
For historical alternative user interfaces for Symbian (UIQ, series 80, series 90), see history of Symbian.
Symbian Belle
Symbian Belle – the facts, the features and the pictures
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