Is S60 Saying Goodbye to its Webkit-based Browser?
Love it or hate it, the S60 Browser can be found on more smartphones in the world than any other browser. It was the first Webkit implementation to be so widely adopted and it played an enormous role in opening the eyes of the masses to "real web on a mobile phone". As other popular browsers such as Opera Mini and mobile Safari (also based on Webkit) have adopted the concept of displaying real web content as well, the S60 Browser has remained essentially static as far as end user experience is concerned. Today we learn that we’re not the only ones with our eyebrows raised. Eric Seidel of Webkit recently posted an open inquiry to Nokia after noticing that no one had checked in on the S60 project in over eight months. The response he received from Nokia didn’t provide any specifics, but a Nokia employee kindly closed all related bug reports and noted that if any additional cleanup was required he could be contacted. So where does that leave the S60 Browser? Obviously Nokia isn’t leaving the mobile browser game any time soon. After all, Nokia is an Internet Company now. Can we expect a new breed of browser on S60 handsets in the not-so-distant future?
[Via atmaspheric endeavors]
Who cares? Unless you live in Europe I guess.
@Wifiguy: there ARE a bunch of us here in the States that use S60 phones, but whatever.
@Zach: if they go anywhere else, I’m willing to put money down on Mozilla’s mobile offerings.
-olly
Nokia IS using Mozilla’s offerings – the N810 (and N800’s newest firmware) default browser is Mozilla-based.
olly – Nokia has so much invested in the S60 Browser so it would be quite an interesting move. At the same time, it would be FANTASTIC if they did go that route.
An interesting aspect to your thought: Last year when Mozilla announced its intention to hit mobile platforms, a very critical post went up on the S60 blogs (here). I wonder if that sparked some comms between the two companies…
I’m in the U.S. and have a s60 phone but don’t really see them that much. What kind of s60 phone do you have?
As someone who’s been interacting a *lot* with the Nokia Browser and WRT team in Boston, the browser is *not* changing.
Nokia’s strategy is clearly around the S60 WebKit browser and the Nokia Web Runtime (same basic codebase). The reason nothing’s been checked in is because they’re not done with the browser. S60 V3.5 will ship with an improved browser, and Nokia will release their code changes when they ship the new browser. That’s all. No different than what Android’s doing with their WebKit-based browser, really.
now i just purchased an s60 series device the n95 north and the browser is of the best i’ve ever browsed on, of course your going to find all the knock offs possible, and im pretty sure nokia is trying to keep tight lips on whats next for symbian in general, just like RIM is giving little by little on os 4.5 but its still the best browser for mobile phones by far