The Nokia vice president Purnima Kochikar has just released an open letter to developers, revealing the company's plans about their Symbian^3 platform. Apparently the Finns are planning to continue releasing new smartphones running on Symbian^3 as well as regular updates for the OS itself.
Those new devices should bring 1GHz+ CPUs and faster GPUs to Symbian^3. Kochikar also says that the company will make full use of its expertise in location-based services and imaging to make its new Symbian^3 smartphones more attractive.
Of course, its the UI that's currently holding the Symbian lineup back, but Nokia plans to do something about that too. There are several updates that should dramatically improve user experience in the pipeline. The first one is pretty major, delivering a brand new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons (picture above), a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps.
That first update should come some time in the summer. In fact, several of its components have already made their way to the Nokia C7 Astound that should hit T-Mobile US in a week.
Unfortunately, once again we did not get the answer to the most important question - how long will the Symbian^3 support last? Apparently Nokia will only be able to answer this once they enter the WP7 market and see how things go there.
On some markets such as India, China, Turkey and Russia, the Symbian^3 smartphone platform will continue to be marketed alongside Windows Phone 7.
Of course, its the UI that's currently holding the Symbian lineup back, but Nokia plans to do something about that too. There are several updates that should dramatically improve user experience in the pipeline. The first one is pretty major, delivering a brand new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons (picture above), a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps.
That first update should come some time in the summer. In fact, several of its components have already made their way to the Nokia C7 Astound that should hit T-Mobile US in a week.
Unfortunately, once again we did not get the answer to the most important question - how long will the Symbian^3 support last? Apparently Nokia will only be able to answer this once they enter the WP7 market and see how things go there.
On some markets such as India, China, Turkey and Russia, the Symbian^3 smartphone platform will continue to be marketed alongside Windows Phone 7.
