Nokia to overhaul the Symbian interface completely and go dual-core in 2011

One of the new Nokia management's decisions was to streamline Symbian development, and update the platform much faster. Nokia's CTO said back in October that there will be no Symbian ^3 or ^4 anymore - as soon as steps like changes to the user interface are ready, they will be rolled out to all phones, thus bringing incremental improvements faster, rather than waiting for a final, all-encompassing release. Nokia is "doubling efforts" on Symbian by introducing Qt, the common developers' environment for both Symbian and MeeGo, and modern browser technologies to the aging mobile OS.

The project is well under way, it seems - Gunther Kottzieper, one of Nokia's senior managers, made a slideshow presentation yesterday at the 2010 International Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, that revealed Nokia's plans for 2011. A big Symbian update is coming in early 2011, to address more than 50 areas of concern, including a new browser with a more user-friendly interface, which is maybe the biggest Symbian^3 drawback. By September of next year, Nokia plans to introduce a slicker user interface, with more flexible home screens, an HTML5 browser, and a coherent way to update the Symbian software. Basically, it's what Nokia's mobile OS needs to become relevant again, since the platform's core is pretty robust already.

In parallel with updating Symbian to a more 2011-looking interface, Nokia will charge on the hardware front as well. By September the Finnish giant will have moved on to 1GHz chipsets and more graphics memory. Dual-core CPUs, and something called "a true zoom camera", which is most likely optical zoom on a smartphone, will be coming to Nokia devices in the last quarter of 2011, if Nokia can pull it off, or early 2012.

Great news for Nokia owners, too bad that we will maybe have to wait until September of next year for the new devices, but Nokia N8, Nokia C7 and Nokia E7 will have to suffice in the meantime. Maybe the Nokia E7 delay is due to the company trying to ship it with the updated Symbian out of the box. Here's to hoping.

via BGR