First of all, let me say Congratulations! to Series 60 for the big improvement to the new generation, Series 60 5th Edition. Today I will bring you through this great thing. (All images in this blog entry were captured from Series 60 5th Edition SDK Emulator)

First Opening

  When you launch device for first time, same as earlier version, you have to select region and set date/time.

  Welcome to Active Idle screen!

  This theme is too bright. I don't like it, so let me change the theme...

  OK! Much better! It's nice looking now. ^_^

  User Interface

  Generally, user interface doesn't change much. It still has Status Pane at the top of screen and Softkey Pane at the bottom of screen but there is one additional pane above the Softkey Pane. It contains some amount of menu icons for the application.

  Let see what is the icon in that Menu Pane mean. (I'm not sure that in official it's called Menu Pane or another)

  Swirly Button

     Familiar? Yeah, now swirly key has been moved to active idle screen already.

  Dial Keypad Button

     Bring up the Dial Keypad.

   Profiles Button

     Open Profiles application.

 Basic Applications

  Press Swirly Button, the familiar menu screen will appear.

  Familiar but much more fantastic, right? ;) Now, Let touch some icon to launch application. The first one I'm going to show you is...Contacts.

  Now, let create new contact by press the right most button on Menu Pane or Options -> New Task. (In my opinion, it's quite user friendly. It's very similar to S60 3rd Edition. I don't need to learn anything.)

  Type in the name in First Name box by touch at First Name field.

  Huh?!? What's that. Oh, it's the new input method called Alphanumeric Keyboard. Actually there are 4 input methods in Series 60 5th Edition. I will write about them in the next part.

  Umm, it supports so many languages. Very interesting...

   Fill inthe First name and Mobile phone number and then press Done.

   Result

   Now I try to add my thumbnail to my contact information.

   Nice UI! I like it.

   Next application I'm going to show you is... Calendar.

   There is additional area at the lower of screen. This area is used for showing the calendar entries.

   Next app is Gallery.

   You can notice that there are so many major changes of Gallery from the S60 3rd Edition. Every entries have been showed in Grid.

   The thing that I like most of Gallery application is you can Edit Image.

   You can add effects as you want. Cool! I like this feature much.

   One more thing that is very interesting is wmv file is fully supported.

   Next is Camera. Camera UI come in the landscape view like in S60 3rd Edition.

   So many effects still be there.

   Music Player

    The buttons are so big. It's very user friendly for touch based UI.The interesting thing in Music Player application is you can seek through the file using the timeline at the center of screen.

    Last one, Web Browser.

    (Sorry that I opened my native language website so the text inside may be unreadable)

    I must admit that I'm very impressive on this generation of Web Browser. It can render nearly perfect (or may be perfect already!)

    You can zoom in/out easily using your finger.

    This new generation of Web Browser come with many interesting options and user friendly UI.

    Let see what you get when you change screen mode to Full Screen and Landscape mode. Very great!

    This is the most important factor for me to buy Nokia 5800. Big Screen, Perfect Rendering. Wow!

Input Methods

    This will be the last part I will write about Series 60 5th Edition.The Input Methods. As I said above, there are 4 input methods in Series 60 5th Edition. Let's see one by one.

Alphanumeric Keypad

  It's on screen keypad. You are still able to use T9 in this mode.

Mini QWERTY Keyboard

   It's a small QWERTY on screen keyboard. This is the only mode that you can see the application while typing. While you press any key in keyboard, there will be some popup called Character Preview show above that key. This will help you to type more accurate.

   One more thing about this mode is you can move on screen keyboard anywhere you want using the top right button on on screen keyboard.

Full screen QWERTY Keyboard

   When you select this input method, the screen will change to landscape mode automatically.

   In my opinion, it's the most suitable input mode for touch based UI like Series 60 5th Edition.

   By the way, there is Character Preview in this mode too.

Handwriting

   Touch Screen and Handwriting are always come along. ;)

Wow, this is quite long article (and quite hard for me to write it with my bad English skill. ^^")

Hope these information is useful. :)

Good luck, Series 60!

- Sittiphol Phanvilai