Nokia Preps Symbian Upgrades, Dual-core Phones

After Symbian Foundation announced that it will turn itself into a licensing body only, Nokia had taken over the charge for developing the Symbian platform further. At the International Mobile Internet Conference (IMIC) in Beijing, Nokia announced that four to five upgrades for Symbian OS will arrive in the next 12-15 months, reported PC World. These new Symbian updates are aimed to change the way the Symbian UI homescreen works and to add a fresher look for the user interface. In terms of hardware, Nokia looks forward to roll out 1GHz mobile CPU laden smartphones in the coming year as well.

Till date, Nokia had been using same ARM11 600Mhz or 680MHz mobile CPUs on its smartphones. Gunther Kottzieper, senior manager at Nokia China, at IMIC Presentation showed a slide on hardware front that clearly listed the company's plans of using 1GHz mobile CPU and better graphics chip for smartphones due in the second or the third quarter of next year. Going a step ahead, Nokia announced the plans to release dual-core mobile processor based smartphones with "true zoom camera" functions in fourth quarter of 2011 or sometime in early 2012. By then, other handset makers too might roll out dual-core processors based smartphones. 

On the Symbian software front, more than 50 enhancements would be added with four to five upgrades as promised. A slide labeled Nokia Symbian 2011 Focus Areas noted that a new look and feel for UI, more flexible home screen, updateable HTML5 browser, and better software update experience are being planned for the second and third quarter of next year. 

Though Android has been a late entrant in the mobile phone game, it has significantly won many accolades and also managed to draw attention of Symbian-based handset makers like Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. In a way, it was slowly getting necessary for Nokia to totally re-do the Symbian UI to make it appear fresh and more intuitive. RIM has revamped the BlackBerry OS UI with the 6.0 version of the mobile operating system. 

Even Android 2.3 Gingerbread update that brought a slicker and faster UI to Android phones was released last week. On the other hand, Microsoft changed the way Windows Phone 7 OS looks and functions. In short, the competition to keep the UI more intuitive and bring better hardware bearing smartphones is pushing Nokia to adopt the changing trend.