The last time I use phone running on Symbian OS is early last year. It is Sony Ericsson P990i which runs on Symbian S60.
Forget the older S60.There is now Symbian S^3 which was released last month during MWC 2010 at Spain. It does have all the traits the other smartphone OS had including fast scrolling vertically and horizontally, beautiful UI, pinch to zoom , multitasking and etc. For Nokia which owns Symbian, with apps from Ovi Store, Symbian S^3 has the potential to be the huge hit with the right strategy.
But for other smartphone vendors, the adoption of this OS is likely going to be slow. Most will prefer to be ‘wait and see’ stance to see if Nokia itself successful in marketing Symbian S^3 phone such as Nokia X10 to the world.
But many will still skeptical about the new OS. For one including myself, I have always want the OS in my smartphone to get upgraded whenever new version coming out, instead of buying new phone. That doesn’t happen to my old Sony Ericsson, and that’s one thing that should be carefully considered when you plan to buy Symbian based phone in future.
Not to stuck with only Symbian^3 version, Symbian S^4 project has already in pipeline. The demos are already out showing the homescreen and photo UI concept. Not many impressed with that, but as this is just the concept, it could be modified according to the feedback received.
Symbian existence as an open source smartphone OS has rocky path. Other than to compete with proprietary OS such as iPhone, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 Series and WebOS, the main threat comes from Android, an open source mobile OS as well, backed by Google. Android proven to be one of the most innovative mobile OS in recent years with it’s phone being adopted by almost all phone vendors and dominating the market once conquered by Symbian. Symbian has to move fast and innovative as well to stay relevant.
Symbian S^3
Symbian S^4
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