You know that new Symbian user experience promised by Nokia next year? Want a sneak peak? Althoug h Nokia’s downloadable slide-deck from its Capital Ma rket Day event leaves out all the new UI visuals, fortunately the webcast has ‘em all. And if we’re not mistaken t hen that’s a wall-to-wall capacitive multitouch slate up there from Nokia’s conceptual studios. As Nokia tells it, the Symbian OS is not the problem, the UI is — and we agree. In 20 10 new hardware and tweaked software will reduce Symbian’s clutter, add multitouch input on “large capacitive displays,” minimize steps to requ est functions (2-taps to get to favorite music or video instead of 8, create an email account in 2 steps, not 4), significantly improve the browser experience, and make the entire UI 3 times faster than current high-end Symbian products while t aking scrolling to 60fps (up fr om 15fps used today). Notably, Nokia will remove more than 350 user prompts that make using Symbian so frustrating today. The user experience promises to be so good that Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, calls it “magical.” Us? Sweet, but it’s only slideware for now. Watch the rousing video after the break.

Update: We added a link to the 51MB PDF containing all the presentations. Bonus points for spotting our quote about the N900. [Thanks, Pasi] Nokia offers sneak peak at improved 2010 Symbian user interface

The miniaturized version of Nokia’s N97 began shipping to eager con sumers in Europe in late October, but for those unable to save their pennies in America while waiting for the N900, today’s the day to unload. As of right now, the (obviously unlocked) N97 Mini is shipping from both Dell and Amazon here in the States, with the f ormer offering it for $430 (after coupon) and the latter selling it for $479.99. Any takers? Or has the full-sized N97 already claimed that piece of your heart?

It’s Nokia Capital Market Day again which means that the boys from Espoo are fawning over investors and giving them a reason to stick around in 2010. And you know what? It su re sounds promising for gadget nerds. Why the optimism? Easy: Nokia is hell-bent on redefining the user experience of its Symbian devices. To quote CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, “In 2010, we will drive us er experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level.” To bolster th is proclamation, the very first bullet point listed under Nokia’s Devices and Services operational priorities is “improve our user experience” — some thing that would thril l us to no end if it happens.

The revamped Symbian UI is set to deliver on two “major product milestones” in the first and second halves of the ye ar. Nokia will also deliver its first Maemo 6 “mobile computer” in the second hal f of 2010 flanked by a significantly increased proportion of “touch and/or QWERTY devices” in its smartphone portfolio. It’s worth noting that all the discussion is around Symbian, just a single mention of Maemo and its “iconic user experi ence” in the forward lookin g press release. Developers w ill be happy to hear that Nokia will also continue to scale service s geographically while continuing to enhance its developer tools like QT4.6 announced yesterday. Financially speaking, Nokia expects to see the erosion of its average selling price slowed compared to recent years. That’s good as Nokia attempts to grow its margins. However, while Nokia expects mobile device volumes to be up approximately 10% in 2010 across the industry, it sees its own mobile device volume market share as flat in 2010, compared to 2009.

Be clear on this though: our incredibly frustrating S60 5th user experience was by far the biggest complaint we had when reviewing Nokia’s flagship N97 — having the most bullet points on a list of features is not what it takes to lure consumers anymore (if ever). If Nokia can better the best in class experiences carved out by Apple, Palm, and HTC with its Sense UI then consumer mindshare, and our hearts, will follow.

[Original image via Vladstudio]

Better sit down Maemo fans. If you expected Nokia to just kick its waning S60 5th OS to the curb in 2010 after positive reaction to the Lin ux side of its dual-platform smar tphone strategy, well, it ain’t gonna happen. At least that’s the word from a Reuters source with “direct knowledge of Nokia’s product roadmap” who says Nokia w ill on ly launch one new Linux smartphone next year. Driving the point home is word from a Nokia spokesman who declined comment on future plans but did add, “We remain firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice.” While this might sound like bad news to N900 enthusiasts given the vast number of handsets the com pany produces, keep in mind that Nokia’s recent cuts in global R&D headcount (550 employees in total) was justified by Nokia’s attempt to streamline operations to be in line with its “focused portfolio of future products.” In ot her words, it sounds like we can expect less handsets from Espoo as they scale back the variety of models produced. And if anything can be learned from the boys in Cupertino: it only takes one handset to change the game.

Adding insult to Sony Eri csson’s injurious bottom line, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U shops (the UK’s largest mobile phone retailers) have halted sales of the SE’s Symbian-powered Satio handset after a high number of customer returns and complaints. A “software glitch” reportedly causes Sony Eri csson’s flagship device to power down when users try to access certain applications — unfortunately, the issue can’t be patched via an over-the-air update. A little digging into CPW dis cussion forums reveals multi ple complaints of freezes, crashes, under-performing batteries, and bizarre interface behavior. Both the Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U will off er “new phones” to customers fed up with their Satio. Richard Dorman, senior marketing manager at Sony Ericsson, concedes the issue and assures us that it should be sorted by Christmas. Until then, you can still purchase the handset directly from Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile… but really, why would you? The Satio’s not the only dubiously-speced 12 megapixel cameraphone on the market. [Thanks, ugotamesij]

Considering the proliferation of 3G, WiFi, in-home broadband, and front-facing cameras on phones, you’d think that there’d be far more obvious ways to bridge video c alls between phon es and PCs — but alas, it’s virtually impossible, particularly in the States where carriers have a complete aversion to the topic. Enter Fring — one of the mobile industry’s VoIP pioneers that has spread its love from Symbian to almost every smartphone platform worth mentioning ov er the years — which is stepping out today with a new build for S60 handsets that offers video support through Skype. The way we see it, this is great news for a couple of reasons: one, Skype is one of the few videoconferencing syste ms with widespread traction, and two, this suddenly makes front-facing cams useful to a whole swath of Nokia users on networks (ahem, AT&T and T-Mobile) that don’t offer video calling themselves. Whether we actually use it is another story altogether, but hey, it ’s cool to have it if we absolutely must see your beautiful face face right now in stunning low fidelity. Follow the break for a video demo.

We wer e promised a preview of Sony Ericsson ’s Symbian-sporting Satio sibling, and indeed here we are, looking at the machine-translated Kurara analysis courtesy of Eldar from Mobile Review. He pulls no punches in his introduction by noting that the new handset will offer little in terms of specs to trump the Samsung i8910 HD, and sketching out the t ough market it’ll have to compete in once the Nokia X6 comes out and starts grabbing market and mindshare alike. As to the phone itself, he describes the 8.1 megapixel camera as an “inexpensive” unit and lets the sample photos and 720p sample video shot with it speak for themselves. Battery life was found to be “lacking,” though we congratulate SE on electing to use a 3.5mm headphone jack and MicroSD memory expansion over its own proprietary formats. Overall, the Kurara was “pleasant to use,” but lacked the necessary wow factor and its fate, says Eldar, will depend on ju st how keenly Sony Ericsson wants to price it.

Soon, you’ll need more than two hands to count the number of Android phones on the market. At this rate, it seems inevitable that the number of phones running Google’s open source operating system will eventually outnumber the number of iPhones, which run Apple’s proprietary (and closed) operating system.

It’s a situation that has many observers thinking back to the 1980s, when IBM introduced its PC and eclipsed Apple in market share by betting on open platforms. In the end, Apple was left with a respectable business, but a single-digit morsel of the PC market share. (The Mac has since crept up to 9.4 percent, according to IDC.)

How could Google draft more customers into the Android army and diminish the iPhone’s market share? Focus on the iPhone’s weaknesses, of course. The iPhone’s lack of background-processing capability (i.e., the ability to run multiple third-party apps at once) could push multitasking professionals toward Android. And the notoriety of iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the United States, AT&T, could compel consumers to embrace Android phones carried by Verizon, which has a bigger network and a better reputation for service.

Then there’s the App Store. Despite harboring upward of 90,000 apps, and letting a few developers earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Apple’s App Store approval process has been roundly criticized for being opaque. Apple has rejected some apps submitted by third-party developers for unclear reasons. Programmers complain it’s difficult or impossible to communicate with the secretive Cupertino, California, company.

Did we mention the App Store is overcrowded? In a way, that’s a plus for consumers: the more choices, the better. But it can be a headache for third-party programmers, who have difficulty getting exposure for their apps in an increasingly cluttered space. The flaws of the App Store could drive away the people who create the element that makes the iPhone so appealing — its wealth of apps furthering the capabilities of the handset.

There’s a lot at stake. Research firm Gartner this week stated that worldwide smartphone shipments would grow 29 percent year over year to 180 million units, exceeding notebook shipments. That would suggest smartphones are shaping up to become the next major computing platform — and the companies who control the dominant platforms stand to gain billions in revenue.

Still, most analysts and developers polled by Wired.com aren’t too worried about Apple’s prospects in the smartphone space.

“This is not going to be a space with two giants,” said Raven Zachary, a technology analyst and owner of iPhone app-development house Small Society. “It’s going to be a healthy competitive environment for some time to come.”

Relatively young, the mobile platform ecosystem is a new kind of beast in the technology world. Unlike the PC industry — where Microsoft conquered the operating system market, claiming roughly 90 percent market share to date — the mobile space has multiple companies fighting for their fair share of the pie. Some of those players include Research In Motion, Palm, Symbian and Microsoft.

With an early start, Microsoft did have a chance to dominate the mobile landscape. The software titan launched its first mobile OS back in 1996: Windows CE, which served as the foundation for the Windows Mobile OS shipping with some smartphones today. However, in terms of market share, Windows Mobile has been in steady decline. In 2008, its market share dropped to 14 percent — down from 23 percent in 2004.

With 49 percent market share, Symbian is currently the dominant force in the smartphone platform space, according to Gartner. Gartner predicts Symbian will retain its dominance, and the firm is especially optimistic about Android: Gartner predicts Android will leap to 18 percent market share (up from 1.6 percent to date). Meanwhile, the firm has a less optimistic outlook for Apple: 2.9 percent growth by 2012, giving the company 13.6 percent market share.

These numbers lead Joe Wilcox of BetaNews to declare that “iPhone cannot win the smartphone wars,” in an article that has sparked much debate in the tech community this week. He argues that Android, which is expanding onto other mobiles devices in addition to smartphones (such as Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” e-book reader) is poised to conquer this space.

“Another ‘everyone else against Apple battle’ is coming, with Android looking to be the better OS around which an ecosystem grows and thrives,” Wilcox wrote. “There’s a Star Wars metaphor here somewhere. Apple lost out to DOS/Windows because of the attack of the PC clones. Now the droids are coming for iPhone.”

Tero Kuittinen, an MKM Partners telecom analyst, disagrees, and he isn’t as optimistic about Android because of its bumpy start.

“The key point about Android is the first few models haven’t really been doing great,” Kuittinen said in a phone interview. “Based on that there’s no real evidence that the demand of Android phones is rampant.”

Kuittinen noted that European customers already seem “cautious” about Android because of the sluggish, buggy experience of the earliest Google phones.

Other than technical issues, Google has many areas to address before posing a serious threat, such as offering a compelling music substitute for Android smartphones to battle iTunes, Kuittinen said. Google is just getting started with a music solution: The search giant on Wednesday launched a new music-search feature, which automatically searches for playable music tracks.

Andreas Schobel, co-founder of Snaptic, which develops apps for both Android and the iPhone, said the Android OS has a lot of catching up to do in terms of user interface.

“The UI still sucks; it’s just not being able to pinch, not being able to use gestures, that makes it rough,” Schobel said. “It’s getting better, but it’s still not there yet.”

However, Schobel foresees a division occurring between consumers who opt for Android and those who stick with an iPhone. He noted that Android stands a chance to win over productivity-focused users due to its ability to handle multiple apps simultaneously, which the iPhone cannot do. He added that Android’s open API enables developers to easily create “mash-up” apps that can seamlessly integrate social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter into any app.

Though Android might become a popular platform for productivity, the iPhone will still be the primary handset for gaming, Schobel predicted. Game developers are more attracted to coding a game for the iPhone, because they’re programming a game to work with a specific piece of hardware and take full advantage of its graphic chip — an effort that would not be easy with an open platform like Android, an OS designed for multiple phones using different types of hardware.

In any case, Schobel said Android is gaining momentum fast, and Apple must continue to innovate in order to stay ahead of the smartphone OS curve.

“People on Android are going to be pushing forward in such a feverish pace, and Apple is going to have to start doing stuff really soon,” Schobel said.

Just what determines who “wins” a smartphone platform war? That’s subjective. Wilcox bases his argument purely on market-share numbers; whoever gets the biggest slice of the pie wins by his definition.

But Zachary said the iPhone is still a winner at its current size, and he’d be happy if it one day grew to grab 25 percent of the mobile-platform market share — not a dominating number.

In a space that’s crowded with several players, a definitive loss would be the complete failure and disappearance of a company. Zachary and Schobel are both betting Palm will be the first to go. Palm’s WebOS runs on the Palm Pre, and the company currently possesses 0 percent market share, according to Gartner, who predicts WebOS’ market share will only grow 1.4 percent in the next three years.

The company’s smartphone market share continues to shrink, and Zachary said he previously thought Palm would eventually be acquired by a larger company, such as Samsung, to develop mobile operating systems in-house. However, because Google hands out Android as a free, open source OS, this decreases the value of Palm as an acquisition target.

“Who I’m really scared for is Palm,” Schobel said. “They’re dead.”

See Also:

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com