Symbian^4 Developer Overview
From Symbian Developer Community
Symbian^4 (pronounced Symbian four) is expected to be functionally complete in the second half of 2010, supporting devices shipping 2011 onwards. Symbian^4 has a big focus on user experience including Direct UI - a complete makeover of the touch UI - and widespread enhancements to the application suite. Highlights of Symbian^4 are expected to include:
- A whole new touch-based user experience
- Enhanced applications
- Qt adopted to revolutionise application development
This page provides an overview of Symbian^4 from a developer's perspective, picking out a few of the most interesting features to give you a flavour of what is to come.
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Status
The Symbian^4 release is currently at a pretty early stage. A kernel taster kit (targetted at kernel contributors and hardware adaptation developers) is available now and full kits (targetted at app developers and platform contributors at large) are expected during Q3 2010 - see the schedule for kits releases and the Release Plan for the latest on availability.
As the release progresses we will update this article to maintain it as a window into what's most exciting in Symbian^4. The information here can and will change as development of Symbian^4 progresses and should be treated as a snapshot of features currently thought likely to make the cut. If you'd like to see a list of all features currently flagged for Symbian^4 then please visit the Symbian^4 feature list.
S^4 for App Developers
New User Experience
Symbian^4 will deliver a whole new user interface for Symbian devices. The on-screen layout of applications will be updated and navigation will be streamlined to provide a simpler and more fluent user experience. The suite of platform applications themselves is being re-designed and re-organised to support this elegant and accessible paradigm, features being grouped to maximise ease of use. The user interface will take full advantage of Symbian's powerful graphics architecture to incorporate visually appealing effects such as transparency and transitions. This all adds up to a winning user experience for devices based on Symbian^4 that will reflect well on all applications.
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Under the covers the Symbian^4 user experience is built on Qt and Orbit. This makes it very easy for developers to write new applications and update those already available to take full advantage of this new paradigm - giving users a broad choice of good looking and easy to use applications with which to customise their devices.
In Symbian^4 the application updates focus on supporting touch and hybrid (touch + keyboard) device types.
Qt
The Qt 4.6 application framework was first made available as a part of the Symbian platform in Symbian^3. In Symbian^4 Qt becomes the standard environment in which all native applications are written and run. In addition Symbian^4 delivers Orbit, a set of Qt-based UI widgets that make it easy to create an attractive application that takes full advantage of the underlying power of the Symbian platform.
Qt majors on making applications easy to develop and maintain, pairing simple and powerful programming paradigms up with a strong tool chain. Qt also has very strong cross-platform credentials, allowing both code and skills to be re-used with ease.
The deliverables in S^4 comprise Qt 4.7 and the mobile-specific Orbit UI libraries. In addition all platform applications are being ported over to Qt in S^4 as a part of the work that delivers the new user experience.
Further info: Developing with Qt
Web Technologies
The Symbian Web runtime brings the power of Web 2.0 to the Symbian platform. Developing applications has never been easier: HTML, CSS and JavaScript combine to enable rapid application development. JavaScript extensions - including PhoneGap - provide access to core device functionality such as camera and contacts.
Further info: Developing using web technologies
Native C++
Qt becomes the primary native runtime in Symbian^4 - it is expected that Qt will cover all the needs of more than 80% of app developers. For the other 20% Symbian's native C++ APIs are still available and can be accessed from within Qt-based applications.
Note that compatibility with the legacy Avkon UI framework is not expected to be maintained.
Other runtimes
- Standard C - Symbian^4 maintains support for a wide range of standard C interfaces, enabling easy porting of existing C-based assets
- S^4 includes JRT, enabling execution of Java-compatible applications
- Python is not included in standard kits but is available to developers and can be bundled with Python-based apps
- Silverlight for Symbian is available from Microsoft and Flash Light is coming soon from Adobe
S^4 for Home Screen widget developers
The Home Screen in Symbian^4 gains support for widgets of any size and shape. This provides widget developers more opportunity than ever to deliver great extensions to the platform.
S^4 for Device Creators
Multicore (SMP)
Symbian^4 includes a product-quality SMP-enabled kernel with support for advanced power management. S^4 makes a viable basis for a multicore product, though you should note that additional contributions are required to ensure that the entire platform passes "SMP safe" testing.
Improved Hardware Abstraction (SHAI phase 2)
The Symbian Hardware Abstraction Interface (SHAI) makes it cheaper and easier to adapt the Symbian platform to new hardware, both by thinning down the adaptation layer (the code that a hardware vendor must write) and by providing a more consistent and industry-standard set of adaptation interfaces. This lowers the cost of device creation and leaves more energy to be focussed on creating innovative products.
SHAI delivers incrementally up to and including Symbian^5. Symbian^4 is slated to "SHAI approve" the graphics hardware abstraction interfaces introduced in S^3 and may extend to cover other areas also.
Further information: See the SHAI page.
See also
- The Symbian^4 feature list
- Overviews for Symbian^1, Symbian^2 and Symbian^3
- Symbian platform versions and SDKs
- The Symbian platform roadmap
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