The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) was a

software platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying ...

for

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

that runs on top of the

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...

operating system. It was created by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

based on the 'Pearl'

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

in November 2001 and first shipped with the

Nokia 7650 The Nokia 7650 is a 2.5G consumer-oriented smartphone belonging to the fashion and experimental ( 7xxx) series. It was introduced in Barcelona on 19 November 2001, and was described by CEO Jorma Ollila as the company's most important launch of th ...

smartphone. The platform has since seen 5 updated editions. Series 60 was renamed to ''S60'' in November 2005. In 2008, the

Symbian Foundation The Symbian Foundation was a non-profit organisation that stewarded the Symbian operating system for mobile phones which previously had been owned and licensed by Symbian Ltd. Symbian Foundation never directly developed the platform, but evangelis ...

was formed to consolidate all the assets of different Symbian platforms (S60,

UIQ UIQ (formerly known as User Interface Quartz) was a software platform based upon Symbian OS, created by UIQ Technology AB. It is a graphical user interface layer that provides additional components to the core operating system, to enable the deve ...

MOAP MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform) is the software platform for NTT DoCoMo's Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA) service for mobile phones. It has a closed user interface, so third parties cannot develop software for native appl ...

), making it

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. In 2009, based on the code base of S60, the first iteration of the platform since the creation of Symbian Foundation was launched as S60 5th Edition, or Symbian^1, on top of Symbian OS 9.4 as its base. Subsequent iterations were named Symbian^2 (Japanese market only) and

Symbian^3 Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

. The S60 software was a multivendor standard for smartphones that supports application development in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

MIDP Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is a specification published for the use of Java on embedded devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. MIDP is part of the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) framework and sits on top of Connected Limit ...

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

and

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...

. Its

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

was called Avkon UI. S60 consists of a suite of libraries and standard applications, such as telephony,

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information manag ...

(PIM) tools, and

Helix A helix () is a shape like a corkscrew or spiral staircase. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helices, ...

-based

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

players. It was intended to power fully featured modern phones with large colour screens, which are commonly known as

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. Originally, the most distinguishing feature of S60 phones was that they allowed users to install new applications 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. Certain buttons are standardized, such as a menu key, a four way joystick or d-pad, left and right soft keys and a clear key. S60 was mainly used by Nokia but they also licensed it to a few other manufacturers, including

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, Personal computer, personal computers, ...

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered a ...

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Sendo Sendo was a British manufacturer and supplier of mobile phones founded in 1998 and based in Birmingham. The company went into administration in June 2005 and its technology was bought by Motorola. The company specialised in low-cost handsets aim ...

Siemens Mobile Siemens Mobile was a German mobile phone manufacturer and a division of Siemens AG. Siemens sold Siemens Mobile to the Taiwan-based BenQ in 2005, subsequently becoming BenQ-Siemens and succeeded by Gigaset. The last Siemens-branded mobile phones, ...

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. I ...

Solstice A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countr ...

and

Vertu Vertu is a British-based manufacturer and retailer of luxury handmade mobile phones, established by Finnish mobile-phone manufacturer Nokia in 1998. Concept According to ''The Economist'', the concept was to market phones explicitly as fashio ...

. Sony Ericsson notably was the main vendor using the competing

Symbian interface. In addition to the manufacturers the community includes: * Software integration companies such as

Sasken Sasken Technologies Limited (formerly Sasken Communication Technologies Limited) is an Indian multinational technology company, based in Bangalore, India, which provides product engineering and digital transformation services to global custom ...

, Elektrobit, Teleca, Digia, Mobica, Atelier.tm * Semiconductor companies

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Freescale Semiconductor Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embed ...

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...

* Operators such as

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...

and

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

who develop and provide S60-based mobile applications and services * Software developers and independent software vendors (ISVs).

Editions

There have been four major releases of S60: "Series 60" (2001), "Series 60 Second Edition" (2002), "S60 3rd Edition" (2005) and "S60 5th Edition" (2008). Each release had an updated version called ''Feature Pack'', sometimes known as ''relay''. Each runs on a different Symbian version.

;Series 60 1st Edition: The devices' display resolution was fixed to 176×208. The

Siemens SX1 The Siemens SX1 is a GSM mobile phone running version 1.2 of the Series 60 platform for the Symbian OS. It was the first such smartphone from Siemens following its licensing agreement with Nokia for the use and development of Series 60. Though un ...

meanwhile had 176×220.

*Version 0.9 was the original and first shipped with

. *Version 1.2 (marketed as Feature Pack 1) first shipped with

Nokia 3600/3650 The Nokia 3650, sold in North American markets as the Nokia 3600 (triband GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz), is a smartphone from Nokia announced on 6 September 2002 as the successor to the Nokia 7650. It runs Symbian OS Series 60 (version 1.2). A ver ...

in 2003.

;Series 60 2nd Edition: Also known as S60v2. *Version 2 was the original and first shipped with

Nokia 6600 The Nokia 6600 is a smartphone introduced on 16 June 2003 by Nokia, costing approximately €600 when released in October 2003. It was Nokia's high-end model of the 6xxx Classic Business Series. At the time of release, it was the most advanced ...

. *Version 2.1 (Feature Pack 1) first came with

Nokia 6620 The 6620 is a smartphone created by Nokia, announced in 2005, running on Series 60 2nd Edition and the Symbian operating system. It was the first EDGE-capable phone for the Americas' market. It is a version of Nokia's 6600 smartphone for the N ...

. *Version 2.6 (Feature Pack 2) first came with Nokia 6630. *Version 2.8 (Feature Pack 3) first started shipping with Nokia N70 in September 2005. FP3 now supports multiple resolutions, i.e. Basic (176×208), and Double (352×416). The N90 was the first Series 60 device to support a higher resolution (352×416).

;S60 3rd Edition: S60v3 uses a hardened version of

Symbian OS Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian ...

( v9.1), which has mandatory code signing. In S60v3, a user may install only programs that have a certificate from a registered developer, unless the user disables that feature or modify the phone's firmware through third-party hacks that circumvent the mandatory signing restrictions. This makes software written for S60 1st Edition or 2nd Edition not binary-compatible with S60v3. *Version 3 was first introduced with

Nokia N91 The Nokia N91 is a smartphone produced by Nokia as part of their Nseries line of portable devices. It was announced on April 27, 2005 along with N70 and N90 as the first three Nseries devices. The N91 ran on Symbian-based S60 3rd Edition (the ...

in 2005. *Version 3.1 (Feature Pack 1) first shipped with

Nokia N95 The Nokia N95 is a smartphone produced by Nokia as part of their Nseries line of portable devices. Announced in September 2006, it was released to the market in March 2007. The N95 ran S60 3rd Edition, on Symbian OS v9.2. It has a two-way sli ...

. *Version 3.2 (Feature Pack 2) first shipped with Nokia N78. :In 2006, a "Designed for S60 Devices" logo program for developers was launched. The logotype can be used with conforming programs regardless of them being native Symbian or Java.

;S60 5th Edition: In October 2008 Symbian^1, also known as S60v5, was launched as the first OS under the Symbian Foundation, based on the S60 code so therefore also called S60 5th Edition. Nokia skipped the number 4 as they traditionally always do (due to

East Asian East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea a ...

tetraphobia Tetraphobia () is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit . It is a superstition most common in East Asian nations. __TOC__ Rationale The Chinese word for "four" (, pinyin: sì, jyutping: sei3), sounds quite similar to the word for "de ...

). S60 5th Edition runs on Symbian OS version 9.4. The major feature of 5th Edition is support for high-resolution 640×360 touchscreens; before 5th Edition, all S60 devices had a button-based user interface. S60 5th Edition also integrates standard C/C++ APIs and includes Adobe Flash Lite 3.0 with S60-specific ActionScript extensions that give Flash Lite developers access to phone features like contacts, text messaging, sensors and device location information (GPS). Despite the introduction of S60 5th Edition, the 3rd Edition continued to be marketed new as well, as 5th Edition is specially designed for, and exclusively available on touchscreens. *Version 5 was first introduced with

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a smartphone part of the XpressMusic line, announced by Nokia on 2 October 2008 in London and started shipping in November of that year. Code-named "Tube", it was the first touchscreen-equipped S60 device by Nokia – ...

in 2008. :S60 5th Edition was the last edition of S60. It was succeeded by Symbian^2 (based on

) and Symbian^3 in 2010.

Versions and supported devices

Many devices are capable of running the S60 software platform with the

. Devices ranging from the early

running S60 v0.9 on Symbian OS v6.1,Forum Nokia Device Specifications for S60 models
(operating system information)Sony Ericsson Satio Press Release
(information about S60 version) to the latest

Samsung i8910 Samsung GT-i8910 Omnia HD is a smartphone manufactured by Samsung Electronics, first announced at MWC 2009 on February 18, 2009. The device was the first phone capable of playing and recording 720p HD video. It runs on the S60 5th Edition (Sym ...

Omnia HD running S60 v5.0 on Symbian OS v9.4. In Symbian^3 the version of the revised platform is v5.2. The table lists devices carrying each version of S60 as well as the

version on what it is based. Note that new devices since Symbian^3 May be capable of upgrading to later systems, such as Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle. Therefore, you may see a device being listed more than once.

is now progressing through a period of organisational change to metamorph into an

software platform project. As an OS,

originally provided no

(UI), the visual layer that runs atop an operating system. This was implemented separately. Examples of Symbian UIs are

;

Series 60 The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) was a software platform for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' user interface from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at ...

; Series 80; Series 90 and

. This separation of UI from underlying OS has created both flexibility and some confusion in the market place. The Nokia purchase of Symbian was brokered with the involvement of the other UI developers and all major user interface layers have been (or have been pledged to be) donated to the

foundation who will independently own the Symbian operating system. The new

has announced its intent to unify different Symbian UIs into a single UI based on the S60 platform. (Announcements made in March 2009 indicated this would be the S60 5th edition with feature pack 1).

Symbian Anna

On 12 April 2011, Nokia announced Symbian Anna as a software update to the Symbian^3 release. Three new devices (500, X7 and E6) were announced which will have Symbian Anna pre-installed. Symbian Anna will be available as a Software Update for Symbian^3 based devices as well. Most Significant updates that come with "Anna" are * Portrait QWERTY with split-view data entry * New Icon Set * New internet browser with an improved user interface, search-integrated address field, faster navigation and page loading. * Updated Ovi Maps (search public transport, download full country maps via WLAN or Nokia Ovi Suite, check-in to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare). * Java Runtime 2.2, Qt Mobility 1.1 and Qt4.7.

Symbian Belle

On 24 August 2011, Nokia announced Symbian Belle (later renamed Nokia Belle) as a software update to the Symbian Anna release. Three new devices (603, 700 and 701) okia 600 is cancelled and is replaced with Nokia 603were announced which will have Symbian Belle pre-installed. Symbian Belle was available as a Software Update for Symbian Anna-based devices as well. Most Significant updates that came with "Belle" were * Free-form, differently-sized, live widgets * More homescreens * Improved status bar * Dropdown menu * Modernised navigation * New apps * Informative lock screen * NFC devices * Visual multitasking

Symbian Carla and Donna

In November 2011, Nokia announced the Carla and Donna updates. Carla was expected to be released in late 2012 or early 2013 and feature a new web browser, new widgets, new NFC capabilities and Dolby Surround audio enhancement. Donna was going to be a dual-core processor exclusive, and was planned to be released late 2013 or early 2014. In May 2012 a Nokia executive claimed that Carla and Donna were cancelled, and that Nokia would instead only release Belle Feature Pack 2 later in 2012, lacking many of the new features that were planned for Carla and Donna.

Legacy

In February 2011, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft to adopt

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It received multiple large upda ...

as Nokia's primary operating system, leaving further Symbian development in question. Nokia has promised support for Symbian and its newer devices until at least 2016, but no new Symbian devices will be released after

Nokia 808 PureView The Nokia 808 PureView is a Symbian-powered smartphone first unveiled on 27 February 2012 at the Mobile World Congress. It is the first smartphone to feature Nokia's PureView Pro technology, a pixel oversampling technique that reduces an im ...

. On 29 April 2011, Nokia announced that it would transfer Symbian activities to

Accenture Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentur ...