Hey, good on Samsung for trying to make their own OS. I’m sure it will be wonderful for them. It saves them from having to, I don’t know, use Android? But what’s with all the Nokia Series 60 font usage in the UI?
These screenshots, which are floating around right now, show some of the UI elements of the new OS, Bada. The font they’re using is approximately (or exactly, I’m not a font scientist (fontographer?)) the same font used on most Series 60 Symbian phones.
Considering Samsung used to use Symbian it’s not a far reach to think that their UI team just hung on to some bad habits but S60 brings up a lot of bad memories for people.
Or could the worst be happening and is Samsung building Bada on top of Symbian, which is now ostensibly open source? We’ll ask, but we probably won’t want to know the answer.
Whats wrong with Symbian?
Well S60 is the world’s most popular and familiar UI layer so it’s not a bad idea copying it.
Not a fontologist, but I have been a designer, and specifically a software designer, for many years.
It’s not the same face as the Symbian phones, just similarly stretched. I didn’t check many letters past “a” and “g” – the latter is distinctly different, and a good letter, usually, to check first. Lower case g’s in these shots have full loops, Symbian’s lower case g has the hook descender, like the letters I’m typing now.
It looks like they’re trying to look like Symbian, though.
Oh, and both of these faces are variants on the most ubiquitous sans face in the world, just like the iPhone’s system face and Zune’s system face and Android’s system face.
It’s kinda hard to escape Helvetica.
Bada is based on a linux kernel.
From what I’ve heard, the Bada frameworks and applications can run on top of either Samsung’s proprietary SHP operating system/platform, or a customised Linux distribution.
I believe that they won’t be porting the Bada frameworks and applications to the Symbian Platform, although I don’t see why it shouldn’t be technically possible to do so.
Given that they’re still a Symbian Foundation member company, and that they recently reaffirmed their commitment to the Platform, I can’t see them ceasing the production of Symbian Platform-based devices. (In fact, they recently sponsored a widgets competition, for what it’s worth).
Disclosure: I don’t work for the Symbian Foundation, or claim to represent them, although I happen to be an active community member, have written for their blog, and have contacts within the Foundation.
I would say these shots might not be true because most of the smartphones made by samsung now come with AMOLED screen and amoled screens work better with black backgrounds and samsung would prefer to make their OS with black backgrounds rather than colourful backgrounds.
Oooh – SRS sound processing
This looks justs like Samsung’s current OS and the iPhone OS mashed together, yes?
Yep. And I like it.