Guide to Symbian S60 / Series 60 phones and games

Can I use S60 games on my Nokia phone?

The answer to the question above is "maybe". It depends on whether you have an S60-compatible phone, and whether you have the right version of S60 for the game you want to play.

To see if you can use S60 games on your phone, check whether your phone appears on the lists below.

(Please note that S60 3rd Edition is not backwards compatible, so S60 2nd or 1st Edition games will not run on S60 3rd Edition phones.)

Series 60 3rd Edition (aka S60v3)

LG KS10
Nokia 3250
Nokia 5500 Sport
Nokia 5700 XpressMusic
Nokia 6110 Navigator
Nokia 6120 Classic
Nokia 6121 Classic
Nokia 6290
Nokia E50
Nokia E51
Nokia E60
Nokia E61
Nokia E61i
Nokia E62
Nokia E65
Nokia E70
Nokia E90 Communicator
Nokia N71
Nokia N73
Nokia N75
Nokia N76
Nokia N77
Nokia N80
Nokia N81
Nokia N81 8GB
Nokia N82
Nokia N91
Nokia N92
Nokia N93
Nokia N93i
Nokia N95
Nokia N95 8GB
Samsung SGH-i400
Samsung SGH-i450
Samsung SGH-i520
Samsung SGH-i550
Samsung SGH-i560

Series 60 2nd Edition (aka S60 or S60v2 or S60v2.0)

Lenovo P930
Nokia 3230
Nokia 6260
Nokia 6600
Nokia 6620
Nokia 6630
Nokia 6670
Nokia 6680
Nokia 6681
Nokia 6682
Nokia 7610
Nokia N70
Nokia N72
Nokia N90
Panasonic X700
Panasonic X800
Samsung SGH-Z600
Samsung SGH-D720
Samsung SGH-D730

Series 60 1st Edition (aka S60 or S60v1 or S60v1.2)

Nokia 3600
Nokia 3620
Nokia 3650
Nokia 3660
Nokia 7650
Nokia N-Gage
Nokia N-Gage QD
Sendo X
Siemens SX1


Brief introduction to S60

Symbian S60 phones are a type of smartphone, which means a multitasking pocket computer with a phone built into it. Unlike normal phones, S60 phones can run many applications and games at once, as many as the on-board RAM will allow. Some S60 phones look just like normal phones, while others have large screens and full QWERTY keyboards.

Third party games or applications written for S60 phones can access the phone's hardware fully and directly, which means they can run extremely smoothly, and push the phone's hardware to its limits. Games or apps written to access hardware directly are known as "native applications", because they are designed specifically for the hardware they run on. This is very different to Java games or apps, which cannot access a phone's hardware directly or fully. Because they are non-native, Java games generally have much poorer graphics and less sophisticated features.

Almost all S60 phones are made by Nokia, but not all, and any manufacturer can buy an S60 licence if they wish to make S60 phones.

The platform used to be called Series 60, but the official name now is S60.


Some Frequently Asked Questions about Symbian, S60 and related topics

What is Symbian?

Symbian is the most popular phone operating system in the world, used in about two-thirds of all smartphones. The name isn't famous because it's not a consumer brand, but Symbian phones themselves sell better than all their rivals put together.

Symbian is made and owned by the Symbian company. The Symbian company is jointly owned by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens and Panasonic. Motorola was also a founding member of Symbian but no longer owns shares. However, it still has a licence to manufacture Symbian phones.

Symbian was developed by the famous British PDA company Psion, and was based on their earlier EPOC operating system. Some of the very earliest Symbian devices were labelled as EPOC-compatible.

You can visit the official Symbian site by clicking here.

What is Series 60 / S60?

S60 is the most common user interface on Symbian phones.

S60 is made and owned by Nokia, and used under licence by other manufacturers including Samsung and LG. S60 runs on top of the Symbian operating system, but they are separate products and in theory S60 could be used on top of a different operating system (though this has never actually been done).

You can visit the official S60 site by clicking here.

What is Series 40?

Series 40 is the interface used by Nokia's normal phones. Despite the similar name, Series 40 (aka S40) is absolutely nothing to do with S60 or Symbian. Series 40 phones cannot multitask and cannot run any native applications except the ones that come built into the phone.

What is UIQ?

Most Symbian phones use S60 as their interface, although many of them use a totally different interface called UIQ. UIQ is made and owned by the UIQ company, which is jointly owned by Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

What is Series 80?

Some older Nokia Communicators used a Nokia-designed interface called Series 80, which ran on top of the Symbian OS. Series 80 has now been phased out, and new Communicator models (starting with the Nokia E90) use S60 instead. The very oldest Communicators used a completely different operating system and interface called GEOS, which is nothing to do with Symbian, Series 80 or S60.

What is Series 90?

The Nokia 7710 touchscreen phone used a Nokia-designed interface called Series 90 running on top of Symbian. Series 90 was also used by a never-released prototype called the Nokia 7700. Series 90 was abandoned in favour of making S60 more flexible, and the latest version of S60 includes support for many different screen sizes and touchscreens too (though no touchscreen S60 model has yet been released).

The Series 90 interface was redeveloped into a new Linux-based platform called Maemo, which Nokia uses in their Internet Tablet series. The first tablet was the Nokia 770, followed by the N800 and most recently the N810. The tablets have no phone hardware, but they can connect to the internet through a Bluetooth phone or through a wifi router, and can use internet phone services such as Skype through their internet connection.

What about Nseries and Eseries?

Nseries and Eseries are purely marketing brands, they are not any kind of technology. There is no fundamental difference between S60 phones which are Nseries, Eseries or numbered.

Of course individual models will have differences, for example the N95 has built-in GPS while the N76 doesn't, but those differences are purely model-by-model rather than brand-by-brand.

The idea that Nseries and Eseries phones are always superior is incorrect, for example the Nokia 6120 Classic (a non-Nseries S60 phone) has a much faster processor than the Nokia N73 (an Nseries S60 phone) or the Nokia E61 (an Eseries S60 phone).

The reason these different brands appeared is largely to do with the structure of Nokia as a company. For the past few years, Nokia's phone division has operated as three units: Mobile Phones (who make the numbered models), Enterprise (who make the Eseries models) and Multimedia (who make the Nseries models). This structure is ending in 2008 however, and the three divisions are due to unify and become Nokia Devices. The reason for these separate brands will disappear, though the brands may continue as they're now rather popular.


What about N-Gage?

A little secret Nokia doesn't really publicise: N-Gage and S60 are effectively the same thing.

The first generation of N-Gage was made up of the N-Gage and N-Gage QD. These were completely standard S60 1st Edition phones, with absolutely no special gaming hardware at all. In hardware terms they were almost identical to other S60 1st Edition models such as the Nokia 3650, though the N-Gage and QD did have slightly more RAM than most S60 phones at the time.

First gen N-Gage games were essentially just S60 1st Edition games with a special DRM system to prevent them being run on non-N-Gage phones. Software pirates who removed this DRM system managed to successfully run first gen N-Gage games on non-N-Gage S60 1st Edition and 2nd Edition phones such as the Nokia 3650, the Nokia 6600 or even non-Nokia S60 models such as the Siemens SX1 and Sendo X.

The reason N-Gage games generally looked much better than other S60 games is that the N-Gage games had relatively high production budgets. Nokia and other game publishers put a lot of money into making N-Gage games, far more than independent S60 game publishers do, so the N-Gage games looked a lot more sophisticated. N-Gage games pushed the S60 hardware much closer to its limits.

The upcoming Next Generation of N-Gage is based on the current S60 3rd Edition platform, and all Next Gen N-Gage phones are S60 3rd Edition models. Next Gen N-Gage games will technically be S60 3rd Edition games. You can find out more from the All About N-Gage Next Gen N-Gage FAQ.