S60 (software platform)

The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) is a software platform for mobile phones that uses Symbian OS. S60 is currently amongst the leading smartphone platforms in the world. It is developed primarily by Nokia and licensed by them to other manufacturers including Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung.

In addition to the manufacturers community includes

• software integration companies such as Elektrobit, Teleca, SYSOPENDIGIA, Mobica,
• Independent Software Vendors such as Sasken,
• semiconductor companies Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Broadcom, Renesas, Freescale
• software developers and
• operators Vodafone, Orange who develop and provide S60 based mobile applications and services.

S60 consists of a suite of libraries and standard applications, such as telephony, PIM tools, and Helix-based multimedia players. It is intended to power fully-featured modern phones with large colour screens, which are commonly known as smartphones.

The S60 software is a multivendor standard for smartphones that supports application development in Java MIDP, C++, and Python[1]. An important feature of S60 phones is that they allow new applications to be installed after purchase. Unlike a standard desktop platform, however, the built-in apps are rarely upgraded by the vendor beyond bug fixes. New features are only added to phones while they are being developed rather than after public release.

These are a few common features in S60:

• It supports Java (J2ME MIDP 2.0 commonly, but varies from phone to phone) applications and Symbian C++ applications.
• Certain buttons are standardized, such as left and right select, Menu, Clear, and Input Settings.

There have been three releases of S60: "Series 60" (2001), "Series 60 Second Edition" (2004) and "Series 60 3rd Edition" (2005).

In S60 1st Edition, the devices' display resolution was fixed to 176x208. Since 2nd Edition Feature Pack 3, S60 supports multiple resolutions, i.e. Basic (176x208), QVGA (240x320) and Double (352x416). Nokia N90 was the first S60 device to support a higher resolution (352x416). Some devices, however, have non-standard resolutions, like the Siemens SX1, with 176x220. Nokia 5500 has a 208x208 screen resolution, and the Nokia E90 with its wide 800x352 inner display.

It is noteworthy that software written for S60 1st edition (S60v1) or 2nd edition (S60v2) is not binary compatible with S60 3rd edition (S60v3), because it uses a new, hardened version of the Symbian OS (v9.1).

In 2006, a "Designed for S60 Devices" logo program for developers was launched. The logotype can be used with conforming programs (Symbian or Java).

It is expected in 2008 that the 5th edition of S60 will be announced, the major feature being touch support. There will be no 4th edition due to the fact that the number 4 in some Asian countries sounds similar to the word death.

The most obvious advantage of S60 over S40 is the multi-tasking capability. You can open several applications at the same time.

See also

• List of Nokia products
• Microbrowser
• Windows Mobile
• Mobile Development
• Mobile game
• UIQ, another Symbian-based platform.
• Android (mobile phone platform), an open-source mobile platform by Google.

External links

• S60 is managed by Nokia and includes a list of S60 products
• Document explaining differences and portability between various editions and feature packs of S60 - pdf
• Forum Nokia - S60 developer site
• My-Symbian - Symbian OS and S60 news and software centre
• SymbianOne - Symbian OS and S60 developer site
• Tommi's S60 application blog - Insider news and tips on S60
• All About Symbian - S60 news and information site
• Symbian Freak Website for smartphone users, with a smart phone discussion forum
• Symbian S60 Freeware - Recent freeware applications for Symbian S60
• SymbianWorld – A blog about S60 with tutorials, games, applications, news and more
• Howard Forums S60 Section - Popular S60 discussion forum
• Howard Forums S60 Wiki - Howard Forums S60 Users' Wiki