The Symbian platform is an open source operating system for mobile devices which was created by merging and integrating software assets possessed by Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, and Sony Ericsson.
According to the Boy Genius Report, David Wood – Symbian Founder Catalyst and Futurist – has talked about the end of Avkon and the dawn of Qt as far as UI elements are concerned.
This change means that Symbian will find itself donning a fresh new UI very soon. Developers will have to update their current collection of apps to be compatible with this new UI. This change is much-needed as the S60 launched long back and is definitely in need of freshening up.
David Wood said that the UI toolkit Qt will replace S60’s legacy Avkon API by the time Symbian^4 hits. This is expected to occur in the latter half of 2010. Therefore, most current S60 apps will not exist except for those applications which don’t use Avkon UI elements. This may give rise to some issues, as there is a huge installed base of S60 users and apps.
This new UI is sure to be a hit among Symbian users worldwide.