Software features of Nokia S40 5th Edition

Mobile-review have posted a very in depth and interesting article focusing on Nokia's S40 5th Edition. Here is the conclusion.


What next?
The conclusions we made in our review on the S40 3rd edition a year ago still hold true. Nokia’s major task for today is deeper integration of S40 platform with its elder sibling – S60. Obviously, they can’t make them identical functionality-wise, but many features will keep popping up in S40. This way, pretty soon we will see the standard libraries for GPS over Bluetooth support. This literally means the system’s ability to handle external receivers. Multitasking for Java-applications and default apps also makes one of the top-priority areas for the company (similarly to Sony Ericsson’s products).

Brief conclusion
For the time being, S40 fifth edition is one of the most fetching platforms on the market, offering very flexible user settings. At the same time, it has its own flaws and often not-very-consistent menu layouts, but as we know nothing is perfect. But let us note that even in spite of that, the fifth edition is one of the market’s best offerings both thanks to Nokia’s strength and the feature pack it retains.

But the toughest competition will unfold between Sony Ericsson’s A200 and Nokia’s 5th edition. And in light of the full compatibility of Java apps between these two platforms, they seem like the best ways to go for developers. Motorola’s solutions are quite interesting as well; however they can’t boast such a great pack of goodies in terms of interface, even though the company is currently doing its best in this field. Samsung is also taking the interface to the top positions on its priority list, but having some trumps up its sleeve (Living World, MegaSearch), the company seems to be lagging behind when it comes to the core functionality. Technically, the way Java is implemented in Samsung-branded phones feels like 5-6 years old, which severely restricts the functionality of its solutions, doing them no justice. At present the gap is pretty much tiny, but if they won’t manage to do a major leap up during this year, it will turn into an abyss that will throw Samsung back.

That being said, S40 5th edition is one of the market’s finest offerings, which will make its way to most Nokia-branded phones, becoming the most widely adopted platform across the market.