Usability enhancements across the user interface include the adoption of a direct “single tap” interaction model, making it much easier to complete common tasks on a device, the Symbian Foundation says. Multi-touch support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom” forms the basis of a gesture framework that can be extended and leveraged by the developer community.

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The Homescreen now supports multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The widget manager simplifies discovery and download of new widgets. Also, support for multiple instances of a native widget means that consumers can monitor multiple weather forecasts, news feeds, social networking accounts, or multiple e-mail accounts simultaneously through a common interface.

“We have enjoyed significant momentum since we completed S^2, with companies including Sun, Nokia, Ixonos, Comarch and Accenture, among others, contributing to S^3 (Symbian^3). We are now looking to build on this momentum and remain on course to complete S^4 later this year,” said Lee M. Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

The organization also says that the developer experience has been greatly improved. The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits. The runtime in Symbian^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1. The Web Runtime support provided in the platform remains a key part of the developer story, allowing Web developers to directly reuse their skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript, and AJAX to create Homescreen widgets and standalone applications.

Symbian Foundation