At the same time with the launch of 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia has also lifted the veil on its latest mobile platform: Symbian S60 5th Edition. Built on the world's most used mobile OS, the new platform is the first to come from Nokia with full support for touchscreen devices and tactile feedback.

When mentioning the new Symbian OS, Nokia talked about “S60 device manufacturers,” hinting at the fact that it was not the only producer to build S60 5th Edition smartphones. Samsung is probably also among the companies to embrace the new OS, since it has released until now quite a few Symbian S60 handsets.

Touchscreen support aside, Symbian S60 5th Edition also brings advanced sensor technology, Adobe Flash Lite 3 and new image / video editors. There is also full support for non-Latin languages, which makes any S60 5th Edition handset more friendly towards the Asian markets.

"S60 5th Edition's new features and added functionality significantly enhances the products that intend to provide rich multimedia and Internet experiences for consumers,” declared Senior Vice President of S60 Software at Nokia, Lee Williams. “Intuitive sensor technologies, interactions via touch, and tactile feedback creates delight and excitement for consumers and unparalleled innovation opportunities for developers and Internet content providers. With this release we will see manufacturers create and extend their portfolio of products with new types of devices addressing a broader range of consumer needs."

Vice President of Forum Nokia, Tom Libretto, added, "The versatile developer support offered by S60 5th Edition enables developers to write applications in a range of languages that they are already very familiar with. That familiarity and being able to arm developers with the tools and technologies that best suit their needs will allow for further innovation of new applications and services, not only for S60 5th Edition, but also for S60 3rd Edition Feature Packs 1 and 2."

Symbian S60 5th Edition will be integrated by Nokia into the open source OS that the Symbian Foundation is developing, so it looks like, by 2010, we're going to have a full-touch Symbian UI, customizable and offered for free.

Until then, though, you can experience the S60 5th Edition in the next few months, after Nokia 5800 XpressMusic becomes available for the rather affordable retail price of 279 Euros (390 USD). The handset will bring, among lots of other cool features, a wide 3.2-inch TFT display with an unusual 360 x 640 pixel resolution, accelerometer, advanced music capabilities, a 3.2 Megapixel auto focus camera and an 8GB memory card.