The king was on his final legs – Symbian as soon as dominated the smartphone world, however the introduction of the iPhone adopted by the arrival of Android spelled the top for the platform. Nevertheless, it could not go mild into that good evening.

Symbian is the core of the OS and there have been a number of person interfaces constructed on prime of it. Collection 60 is maybe the best-known amongst them – it made its debut with the Nokia 7650, which was not solely Nokia’s first digicam cellphone, but additionally the first mass-market Symbian cellphone (there have been some area of interest telephones earlier than it).

Nokia 7650, the primary mass-market Symbian cellphone

For probably the most half, Collection 60 ran on telephones with a show between 2 and three inches. The UI was constructed round a D-pad, which was used to navigate between components on the display, and several other good buttons, which triggered context-sensitive actions.

There was additionally the Collection 80, utilized in QWERTY-packing Communicator telephones from Nokia, however the Finns primarily used S60. None of these Communicators had a contact show, anyway.

There was additionally Symbian UIQ, which was constructed for PDA-style gadgets. We revisited that department of Symbian again in our Sony Ericsson P910 Flashback. UIQ was designed for touchscreens – resistive touchscreens that have been meant for use with a pointed stylus extra so than a finger (a finger, particularly a fingernail, labored more often than not, although).

Sony Ericsson P910

Quick ahead to 2008 and we get to Symbian Collection 60 fifth version or because it was later known as, Symbian^1. This one was a Symbian UI constructed for contact, however as a substitute of drawing inspiration from the now-dead PDAs like UIQ did, third version cribbed from the iPhone. We’ve already mentioned the the explanation why it failed in our Nokia 5800 retrospective – bolting contact on prime of a D-pad primarily based UI simply didn’t work.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was a serious push in the direction of contact UI – a failed one

In the present day we wish to deal with what got here subsequent, Symbian Anna, which arrived a 12 months after the launch of Symbian^3 (Symbian^2 launched solely in Japan). Anna was unveiled in early 2011 alongside the Nokia X7 and Nokia E6. The E6 was a bar cellphone with a QWERTY keyboard (and a 2.45″ contact show), however the X7 was all contact (4.0″ show).

Even higher, homeowners of sure older Nokias would obtain Anna as an replace, that was the case for the Nokia N8 and E7. The Nokia C7 and C6-01 acquired it too.

Nokia E6 • Nokia X7 • Nokia C7 • Nokia C6-01

We up to date our Nokia C7 assessment to cowl all the brand new options – let’s go over them collectively. Actually, this feels extra like rediscovering the constraints of older Symbian as a substitute. Was it actually that unhealthy? Sure, it was.

Maybe the 2 largest upgrades that got here with Anna over ^3 have been the brand new keyboard and the brand new browser. “That’s it?” it’s possible you’ll be considering. Properly, an image is value a thousand phrases, so right here it goes: the portrait keyboard of Symbian^3 is on the left, the one from Anna is on the fitting.

Portrait keyboard: Symbian^3 • Symbian Anna

In case it nonetheless isn’t clear, what you’re seeing on the left isn’t an app that’s sharing the display with the keyboard. No, that is the textual content enter interface – it lined the entire display and confirmed a panel for textual content and the keyboard beneath. In distinction, Anna’s keyboard (like several sane OS right this moment) simply appeared on the underside half of the display, obscuring a part of the app but additionally leaving the opposite half seen.

And sure, the one portrait possibility in ^3 was a digital T9 keyboard. In case you needed QWERTY, you needed to go in panorama mode.

Panorama keyboard: Symbian^3 • Symbian Anna.

That is what we imply by contact options being bolted on prime of a non-touch OS. The textual content enter interface made sense when telephones had 2.6” shows with 240 x 320px decision, it simply wasn’t value it to separate such a display between textual content and app.

It was worse than it may appear too, since multi-touch wasn’t supported which means that you just couldn’t hit a number of keys even on the total QWERTY keyboard in panorama mode – and when you sort with any kind of velocity, you’ll do exactly that. Multi-touch wasn’t obtainable in Anna both.

As talked about earlier, the opposite massive improve was the browser. Within the early days of cell Web there was this factor known as WAP, which was very restricted. Finally as screens acquired higher, CPUs acquired sooner, RAM elevated and cell information acquired faster, telephones ventured into the true World Extensive Internet, the one which PCs have been shopping. However this required a brand new era of browser to get the total expertise.

The browser UI was redesigned to depart as a lot of the display to the web page – the standing bar/URL discipline have been on prime, there was a again button within the backside left nook and a menu button within the backside proper. Talking of URLs, you possibly can sort one in and not using a foolish textual content enter UI masking up your entire display.

The much-improved Symbian browser

Tabs have been supported as have been new net applied sciences like HTML5. Flash nonetheless wasn’t fairly there – the Symbian browser may solely do Flash Lite 4. This gorgeous a lot excluded enjoying Flash video games and watching YouTube movies within the browser (you had to make use of the app).

The Symbian Anna homescreen

There have been different enhancements too. For instance, Symbian had supported dwelling display widgets for some time at this level, even a number of dwelling screens. Nevertheless, navigating between them wasn’t as fluid as on Android – you’ll swipe to the facet, then the sliding animation would play out. With Anna (like on Android), the homescreen would instantly observe your finger.

Nokia additionally polished the e-mail app, the calendar app and the Ovi Maps app. It modified the icons to the still-popular squircle form too.

Issues have been trying good – effectively, trying higher – however Anna was nonetheless effectively behind Android. Former Symbian customers like Sony Ericsson and Motorola had converted to Android, it was simply Nokia that stored the previous OS going. The Finnish big had much more enhancements within the pipeline, nonetheless, these wouldn’t be sufficient both.

Do you bear in mind Symbian Anna – and is it an excellent reminiscence or a foul one? We could have a better take a look at that adopted it Symbian Belle subsequent week.