Recent platform released from the Symbian Foundation amount to pretty much S60 5th Edition with extra funcionality and thus all those lovely apps that are installed on S60 handsets all over the world need not worry their pretty little heads. However, after 5th Edition we’ll basically see the end of the line for S60 as we’ve come to know it. In a interview with David Wood, Catalyst and Futurist at the Symbian Foundation, TamsS60 asked about what lay in store and was told that after 5th Edition there will an almost totally new development stack.

The Avkon API is going to be replaced by Qt, a UI toolkit. This is the important part because it means that current apps for S60 that rely on the Avkon API are going to break. The only things not using Avkon are pretty much low level stuff so this is likely to affect the majority of current S60 apps. The change will take place around the time of Symbian^4, which should be sometime in the second half of next year. Its probably not going to be pretty and it seems risky given how much importance is now placed on increasing a handset’s functionality through apps, but at the same time it’s probably best to get it done and out of the way so that Symbian can move forwards in an ever more competitive platform environment.