S60 Open to new features

Seems Russell was very right some time ago when he wrote about QVGA: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008974.html

Some developers might be annoyed that double-resolution had such a short life-time in S60. But I guess less resolutions is better, and 3rd Edition forces to do scalable UIs anyway.

Now we are just waiting for those lovely HVGA and VGA screens :)

Why dropping 352x416 screens?They are so beautiful,especially in E60.

Add me to the list of people disappointed at the loss of 352sx416. While I recognize the advantages of supporting a limited number of resolutions, Nokia's most likely lost a customer of the E70 - if FP1 drops support for that phone's screen resolution, developers still in the process of porting their apps to v3 may skip E70 compatibility completely if they know the screen resolution is a dead end. Maybe announcing that part of FP1 before the E70 is widely released was a bad idea...

Fully agree, "small is beautiful"... :)
IMHO, there might be still some features that can be dropped.
One more trend that we usually: bigger software tends to have more "bugs". I think this is also a challenge for S60 platform as it is getting bigger and bigger.

I think one of the reasons of dropping double resolution is to support "more standard" resolutions only, i.e. QVGA, HVGA and VGA.
The aspect ratio between QVGA and double are not the same (1.33 versus 1.18). This makes development not easy for some cases.
Once again, I don't know the exact reasons of dropping double resolution, just guessing... :)

I am also very very upset that my favorite E70 phone will stuck with S60 3.0 and no FP1. :( Hope there will be a replacement for it soon with HVGA/QVGA.

I'd like to believe that the E71 (or whatever the successor to the E70 will be called) would have HVGA resolution, but given the expense of that screen I doubt such a device would be in my price range. :( My guess is it'll have QVGA, negating one of the (IMO) best features of the E70 - the high res screen.

There's a reason most Windows Mobile devices have QVGA screens - anything larger is prohibitively expensive. The 352x416 resolution could've been a competitive advantage for Nokia - higher resolution than comparable WM5 devices for the same money.

Antony was correct. Resolutions should be standard QVGA, VGA etc. That is one reason behinnd. Other reason is to simplify work in our side and developer side.

Andrey was concerned that Nokia E70 will stuck with 3rd Edition and no FP1. Anyway Feature Packs can not be installed afterwards to the phones. Platform can't be upgraded by user. 3rd Edition is always 3rd Edition and 3rd Editon FP1 phones have always FP1 no more.

I like a lot about 352x416 resolution but difference is not that visible compared to QVGA if screen size is small. If screen size is over 3 inches 90% more pixels would be nice to have but then you actually would like to see HVGA or VGA, I would assume.

And finally I want to emphasize that this change doesn't necessarily reflect to product implementations. As seen there are and will be also non standard resolutions such as 208x208.

Thanks for the news. I can't understand why Nokia launched an S60 phone with 208x208 screen while standardizing the screen sizes. Is it because they're going to stop development of S40 and develop S60 phones only? I have my reasons but I don't know about the idea behind this decision.

With the QVGA, HVGA and touchscreen support, I'm more confident in seeing the new Communicator line of phones(or should I say Multimedia Computers :-)) using S60, as well as a Nokia 7710 replacement. That's what I'm expecting to see around November.

Of course, supporting more standard resolutions is on the best interest for the future. But Nokia, don't forget to also mention another reason why you cut down the screen resolutions: because ordering custom res LCDs is more expensive. When the world is using QVGA and the bulk of the taiwanese ODM market is producing those instead of your custom ones, that's gotta hurt you financially.

Ridiculous. With every upgrade, developers have to re-write their apps. Now again, for the 5th time in the short history of S60.

Why not support ANY resolution, by vectorizing the whole UI, like Microsoft is doing in Vista with Windows Presentation Layer?

I agree with Mr Pink...

I understand that you should stich with standard resolutions like VGA and QVGA letting go of 176x208 and double, but by supporting something like the 208x208 your argument becomes contraditory.

Alexandre, 208x208 is not a standard S60 platform resolution. We, as a software vendor, are not controlling final product implementations. S60 scalable UI framework makes possible to use other than standard resolutions but then manufacturer has to do extra work to get it done and tested.

Maybe it's good to tell about overall system... So there is a unit in Nokia which makes a S60 software and licenses it to manufacturers. Licensees LG, Lenovo, Samsung and Nokia(= Nokia's business groups Mobile Phones, Multimedia and Enterprise solutions) use this software and can add or change functionality, like resolutions.

This is very confusing for consumers.

E70 has just hit stores and now I'm reading that the resolution it has won't be supported by feature pack 1, which will start shipping to license holders during the next two months?

Does this bode well for S60 apps on E70 and others with the same resolution?

The amount of 3rd edition apps is already really low in number.

Won't most developers just skip first release of 3rd edition completely and start going for 3rd edition feature pack 1 version?

If so, what does this mean for phones with the 'deprecated' screen resolutions?

No more new software? Less compatibilty? Less s60 software to choose from?

I'm _really_ confused and putting my S60 phone purchases on hold until somebody can really explain this to us the consumers.

Remember, we are not developers, we don't read roadmaps or understand the ramifications of all the support deprecation decisions.

We just need clear guidelines as to what will work and what will NOT work in the near future of the lifetime of our recent purchase.

Please understand that I'm not against the above decisions per se, I just need to understand what it means to me as a S60 phone user.

And please don't say "it means nothing, everything will work". I've heard that way too many times (and the recent 2dnd edition to 3rd edition move wasn't very painless for consumers).

----We just need clear guidelines as to what will work and what will NOT work in the near future of the lifetime of our recent purchase.

Please understand that I'm not against the above decisions per se, I just need to understand what it means to me as a S60 phone user.----

Hal, don't panic! :-)

What Jouni is saying is that the people who make Series 60 have no control over what their customers (the hardware makers) do with it. If you sell a product to a customer, the customer is always free to ignore the instructions that come with it.

The S60 people have decided to standardise S60 to QVGA, HVGA and VGA because these are the sizes most commonly used in portable devices so it saves everyone money if S60 supports these standards. It means the same factory can make screens for all kinds of devices instead of just S60 ones.

The vast majority of S60 devices will use these resolutions, otherwise there'd be no point in S60 switching to these standards.

Ultimately, if a manufacturer really really really wants to, they can ignore the advice of S60 and go for a non-standard screen size, as Nokia did with the 5500.

BUT... if you look at the 5500, it's not being sold as a smartphone at all, the official Nokia site about it doesn't even mention S60 or Symbian or the word "smartphone" anywhere, not even in the tech specs (they just talk about an "easy-to-use grid menu" and Java support).

As far as Nokia is concerned, the 5500 is just another phone, and not a smartphone, even if us technology fans know what's really under the hood.

I doubt whether Nokia has any intention for there to be third party support for the 5500, it's being sold as a normal phone and the S60 side simply seems to be a way for them to include existing apps like Nokia's own browser and music player.

All of the latest S60 devices which are actually marketed as smartphones and mention software support in their specs now use QVGA, HVGA or VGA. It's these resolutions you should go for if you want to ensure that your S60 device has third party software support.

So I won't be buying E70, because there's no guarantee of 3rd party S60 software support due to the "double resolution" (352x416) not being supported in fp1 (and I don't know how software makers will react).

And this is a phone that has only just recently started selling.

Ok, well it's Nokia's loss, not mine.

That HTC hermes is looking all the more enticing as I ponder this. At least that platform isn't constantly being broken and impossible to develop for >:)

Nokia has mentioned that S60 3rd Applications will be run on 5500. (URL: http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,91795,00.html Digital Services: Java and Symbian applications available from Nokia Software Market )
I think 3250, N80, N91, E60, and E70 will have no problem when S60 3rd Edition FP1 is out. The scalable UI will fit all resolutions.

In my opinion, if you develop an app by using S60 3rd FP1 SDK and you do not invoke any new S60 3rd FP1 specific APIs, this app can also be run on 3250, N80, N91, E60, or E70. The scalable UI mechanism will settle the resolution problem ideally. I think that The only effect of this change is that phone manufacturers can not develop and produce phones with 176x208 or 352x416 screens any longer by using S60 3rd FP1.

Consequently, I think that change has NO effect on any S60 3rd phone users.

That's too bad. I've have been waiting for a phone like N70 but with 352x416 resolution and a much faster processor.

At the moment I own a Nokia N70 and think it is a very good phone, but it needs a faster processor and better screen resolution. QVGA is not good enough in my opinion.

I'm beginning to sound like a stucked CD-player: QVGA is great, even when compared to 352x416. At least check out the screen on N73 or N93 before making the judgment. Those screens are _big_, crisp and clear. Very unlike the 352x416 screens, which are too small.

About the processor speed, N93 contains the next faster one but we have seen that even with the same processor for example N73 feels faster than N70 because of S60 3rd Edition (ie. Symbian 9 with EKA2 kernel).