…data throughput, says Clifford — all areas Symbian has been working to improve.
In the area of processing power and battery life, the company is putting symmetric multiprocessing into mobiles. "[This] means that you'll get far more of a graduated use of power and processing inside the device," Clifford explains. "It's never been on [mobile] devices so we are now putting this into our versions which will begin to hit the market over the next 18 months."
He adds: "The demand for battery power is rising probably one, two, three times faster than the capacity. So [battery life] is a lot about how smart can you be, rather than just more power, because that is not going to happen unless you start carrying very bulky products around."
When it comes to memory, he says Symbian has just put SQL Lite onto devices so "you can carry around the whole of Wikipedia on your device if you want to", adding: "Let's not constrain people through memory."
And on data throughput, Clifford says the company is looking towards 4G, LTE and WiMax, and has also rearchitected its IP stack (now called 'FreeWay'). The chief executive also points to Symbian's efforts — via its ScreenPlay tech — to improve the graphical experience for users and ensure UI effects are more easily integrated.
The point of all these tech investments, says Clifford, is to "get the OS out the way". "You do not want people sitting there waiting for the OS to do something. That's really the job of the OS — to be the traffic cop, directing all this stuff and not getting in the way."
But there are two sides to the usability coin — and Clifford stresses the importance of focusing on what the user wants and also thinking about market requirements.
The demand for battery power is rising probably one, two, three times faster than the capacity
He says: "We've always had a technical committee — so we've always met with our users on a regular basis. And we've also introduced a thing called market requirements [to ask what are the] market issues that we're solving here [?]… [to] make sure that we're all clear about this is where we're going, this is how we're doing it… Getting our engineering teams working very closely with our product management teams who are working very closely with our users is also one way of just making sure that user experience and that usability is kept to the forefront."
What's to come
Looking ahead, Clifford believes developments in mobile-screen technology could be a key development over the next few years: "One of the [mobile] technology frontiers of the next three to four years is the whole screen and display characteristics, and you could anticipate having miniature displays or miniature projectors which could begin to break out of the whole constrained screen size. So [a mobile could have] a mini projector, which means all I need to do is tip it up and all of a sudden I've got all of my photos [displayed full size]."
Asked which is the best mobile app he's seen, the Symbian chief reveals his sporty side: "I've just done a triathlon with my two boys [who are aged 17 and 15] and beat them… And I was talking to one of the Symbian guys — he is a very keen oarsman, a rower, and sportsman — and he was showing me this [sports trainer] app [which incorporates GPS]… You just click it on and it tells you how long you've been running for, what sort of terrain you've been running over, how many calories you've burned. Download it, get to play with it on your PC, share it with your friends. All of that stuff.
"And I think it's really nice. It's just one of those things where it is integrated with your life and it's not about running your life but it's about you being able to run your life better."
Whether the Symbian Foundation — and the open-source community who will contribute to it — will do a better job of integrating Symbian's various operating systems into one unified platform and managing the millions of lines of code remains to be seen.
