Following the announcement of Symbian Foundation this morning and the probably acquisition of Symbian Ltd by Nokia, BLT.se now reports that UIQ has plan to layoff more than 50% of its staff (200 out of 375 people) (thanks to AAS for the news).
Does this means that the "Symbian Unified" platform will be S60 ? While it is the platform which runs on the most devices thanks to the strength of Nokia, I hope that this won't be the case. I mean, I dream of a unified platform, but if I had to choose one, I am not sure I would have chosen S60. It lacks so many concept introduced in UIQ3 (like building blocks, layout managers, etc...) which helps to make the life of developer so easy. Of course, you can have flexible design in S60, but you need to code every behaviour at each new developement. This is probably the price to pay for maintaining source code compatibility with S60 2nd Edition applications (which is a good thing, but who cares today, even Carbide.c++ does not support the platform anymore...).
So let's hope that there will really be a unified platform but that it takes the best of the two environments. Let's now wait for further announcement from Sony-Ericsson and Motorola... (finally, after two boring years, something is going to happen in 2009!).
The link to the Swedish newspaper BLT is corrupt. Here is the link to the actual article:
http://www.blt.se/nyheter/karlskrona/200-varslas-pa-uiq-i-ronneby(707934).gm
The white paper about Symbian Foundation (available here: http://www.symbianfoundation.org/files/WhitePaper.pdf ) indicates that the unified platform will be S60 with selected parts of UIQ and MOAP integrated.
I'm hoping that some of the UI architecture from UIQ is taken over into S60. Although it isn't the fastest to run, the UIQ UI stuff is much easier to code for than S60 in my experience. If they could integrate it and improve it's speed then things would really be looking up
I supsect a lot of the 'UIQ technologies' may be touch-screen stuff though.
IMO, the building block architecture of UIQ is so different from S60 3rd, that it would cause breaking the S60 API. And as they promise backwards compatibility to S60 3rd, I have doubts that any of the good stuff from UIQ is taken to the new UI. Also, Nokia has been working on the touch version of S60, so why they would abandon that (which is compatible with S60) and switch to UIQ touch stuff, which is tied to UIQ controls too.
True
It would be nice if they had some UIQ stuff there, but you have a good point.
As for the touch stuff, I was thinking more along the lines of the underlying touch recognition as that is something that can be difficult to tune and get usable, especially starting from scratch. If they are getting their hands on UIQ touch recognition code, they may decide to integrate parts of that to speed up the development of S60 Touch rather than to scrap it completely. I doubt they would take the higher UI control stuff, although it would be nice if they did (as stated previously
).
It's all pie in the sky for now though. The initial Symbian Foundation stuff will be S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) all available through the foundation until they have a 'unified' platform available for release.
Is there any word called disparition ??
Yes there is:
(http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=disparition&gwp=13)
Dictionary:
Disparition
n.
Act of disappearing; disappearance.
But I must agree its not very common, most would probably would have written simply "disappearence"
Hey thanks
.
I had just typed the word in my dictionary and it said word does not exists.
Later I found out its meaning, sorry for asking such a stupid question
Once again thanks.
That what's happen when a french guy writes english stuff.... he tends to use french words.
Nice! After ONLY a dozen of years, s60 and UIQ, which are the SAME system with different GUI, will be... the same system!!???
We had to wait 2008 to eventually get an O.S. which shows different interface (touchscreen or softkeys) depending on the device it is mounted on... Sad, very sad.
(of course you know that a Symbian program without GUI runs fine both on s60 and UIQ platform, do you?)
2008?
UIQ3 came out 2005, and support both touch and key devices.
Your comments are also a bit silly, UIQ and S60 has never tried to be "the same system", they just license the same OS.
This is nothing different from a host of other phone systems out there, a lot of "normal phones" use the same realtime system, but with completely different systems built on top.
With "mobile linux" the case is even worse, with about a dozen different UI layers ontop of "the same system"
Google tries to fix it with android
Ofcourse it works fine with the same program if you don't use any of the system specific libraries.
The only reason you are exposed to this mess is that they decided to open the system up for 3rd parties. (which is a good thing)
Windows mobile is an exception, but this is because microsoft run the PC model for making their phone system too, and this has a lot of different consequences, some good, some less good...
Apple has a completely different corporate structure and have control over everything from start to finish, which gives them a huge complexity reduction advantage. Also, their strategy and expertise is to not do any innovation on their own, but wait for others to try stuff out and then pick the "good stuff" and package it to a great looking product.
They've had a huge advantage in waiting to enter the market until now.
Also, I see noone else but you mention the word "already", I don't think anyone thinks its "already".
But I totally understand why it has taken this long...
Of course it is nicer with a unified system, specially for the 3rd party, but it puts quite different requirements on the structure and workflow of the companies involved compared to how phones have traditionally been made. (all phones, not just smartphones)
I hope they manage to implement it well.
I reckon UIQ is on its way out. There are barely a few UIQ phones in production and UIQ phones had a lot of issues like hanging while an application is in use and power issues etc,Probably not entirely the fault of the system but also the hardware (read SonyEriccson phones), combined failure. They should have made better phones.
There is no use to extend UIQ into the new unified GUI System since UIQ is already a buggy system.