First Look At Symbian 4: “It Fills Me With Symbian Sympathy” [Video]

So the Symbian Foundation has finally gotten around to making videos of the screens that they had shown us earlier of the next version of Symbian — Symbian 4. And all it does is to show how old Symbian really is. The whole thing smacks of really third-rate touchscreen UI designs, the kind that you find out phones made by Samsung. I don’t think that’s a coincidence by the way and neither does Electricpig’s Ben. This Symbian trying its blood best to hold on to the fort that it has taken so long to build.

Make no mistakes though, Nokia and Symbian are still up there — trying really hard to sell really bad phones like Nokia’s N-series. I have people around me who use it and man am I ever appalled by them! They are fiddly, badly designed and are really convoluted when it comes to the UI. There’s a reason why they have manuals that are as fat as some of my music making gadgets. Symbian needs a touch up, with a truck load of face powder and makeup.

Coming to the videos, we do not get to see much. Only the photo gallery is shown in detail and very few other apps are shown off. It really looks like some of the light Linux distros in their early days. Call me out on that if you want to but I really think Symbian 4 is looking like Archos trying to make a touchscreen UI. I have nothign against Archos, it’s just that I find their UI really uninspired. However, if you want to experience what Symbian 4 might feel like, just pick up a TouchWhiz phone.

Now TouchWhiz is a fully developed offering, so it much more polished than what you see on the video but they do have some basic features in common. So far, from what I have seen, it looks no better than some of the OpenMoko stuff I have seen. The basic apps look poorly designed and there is not even a feeble attempt at rethinking some of the basic things. In fact, if I didn’t tell you in advance, you would think you are looking at really early videos of some version Android.

Okay, I will get it out of my system now — as far touchscren-based UI’s go, this one looks positively primitive. There, I feel much better now.

Symbian is actually a really powerful OS and one that still has some miles left in it. But if the Symbian Foundation and Nokia together refuse to pour money into research and UI development, the OS is doomed forever. It will be let down by its own guardians. Like I said to some of my twitter folks — the only thing that gives me hope for Symbian 4 is the fact that it has a long development cycle ahead.

Symbian 4 won’t in any of the new Nokia phones that will be coming out this year. Expect it to turn up in phones late next year. But even with the long development ahead, the start doesn’t really inspire anything in me expect sympathy for Symbian. I am well and truly filled with Symbian sympathy. I should may be compose a Symbian symphony. Never mind.

Thus over all, unless the Symbian Foundation get their act together and really make something that will wow us, it will be hard for them to remain relevant. Especially now that Nokia has abandoned Maemo, Intel Moblin and both joined forces to create Maeblon?

The main point here is that Nokia doesn’t have its full force behind Symbian and that sort tells us that even they don’t think it has much of a future.