Symbian^3 is OPEN !!!

When the Nokia N8 arrives, it will be Nokia’s first device to run Symbian^3, the Symbian Foundation’s newest mobile platform, and their first entirely open source release.

If you’ve used a Nokia smartphone in the past 10 years you’ve used Symbian, the platform that powers Nokia’s smartphones, as well as those of several other device manufacturers. With more than two-fifths of the worldwide smartphone market share, Symbian is by far the world’s most used smartphone platform. To understand just how dominant Symbian is, that means that out of all the smartphones in the world, a little less than half run Symbian, and the other half run a mobile OS from one of about four major competitors. During Q1 of 2010, roughly 260,000 Symbian devices were shipped globally every day: an average of just over 3 phones a second. Symbian^3 is the next evolution of the Symbian platform, introducing improvements and features such as HDMI support, touch gestures, and multiple, 3D-accelerated home screens (a more comprehensive feature list can be found here).

The Benefits of Being Open

Right now, you must be thinking, “Great, but how is any of this of benefit to me?” Essentially, by becoming open source, the Symbian platform will be able to evolve and improve more quickly than has been possible in the past, as anyone in the world will be able to suggest and contribute modifications or improvements to the platform. Symbian already multiple programming languages and application environments, including Qt – now it will be easier than ever to write programs for Symbian, as programmers have access to the system’s complete source code. For one, this will allow them to integrate their programs into the platform in ways not possible in a closed system. Also, by reading the source code, programmers will be able to create more cohesive and elegant code.

An open-source approach allows users to be more pro-active with their devices as well. For example, as Ovi Suite is currently Windows only, many users find it difficult to sync data between a Nokia phone and a Mac/Linux machine. Now that the codebase is open source, someone will be able to come along, look at the operating system’s sync mechanisms, and write their own solution to interface Symbian and the personal information manager of their choice.

When the Symbian Foundation released its entire codebase as open source (tens of millions of lines of code) a full four months ahead of schedule, it was an amazing feat. Here at Nokia, we’re excited about the experience that the new open source Symbian^3 platform promises to deliver on our new Nokia N8 device.

Reasons you will love Symbian^3

We’re often told not to believe everything we read in the newspapers. When it comes to smartphones, you can see why. Certain devices, it seems, are always in the news. But is the huge amount of media coverage a reflection of their sales? The simple answer is no. In the 2nd quarter of 2010, Symbian smartphones had a whopping 47.2% of the market. More Symbian devices are being shipped than ever. According to the research company Gartner, over 80 million Symbian devices were sold worldwide in 2009. Whatever way you look at it, Symbian is the world’s most popular mobile operating system.

A labour of love

Symbian^3, the latest version, was officially completed on June 17th. In the months since, Nokia’s brainboxes have been busy testing and refining to ensure it works brilliantly in the soon to be released Nokia N8 and the devices to follow. According to the Symbian Foundation there are more than 250 new features in this latest release, all of which are documented at the Forum Nokia Library. There are hundreds of pages to get through, but rather than have you trawl through them, we’ve found three developments that we think will make you fall in love with Symbian^3.

Graphics you’ll adore

Everyone loves fantastic graphics, and the Symbian^3 delivers with new graphics architecture that combines hardware acceleration and speedier software. That means an even more responsive interface, with cool added features like kinetic scrolling that’s sure to dazzle your buddies when you show off your phone. Add to that the fact the interface is programmable and you can expect developers to go crazy creating fantastic themes and apps to make your phone unique.

Multimedia you’ll lust after

Now more than ever before, our devices are multimedia centres. Symbian^3 takes this to a whole new level by supporting output to HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). Imagine, you’ll be able show your pics or videos on television and hear sound on Dolby Digital Audio. Steven Spielberg eat your heart out! And that’s not all: the music player includes a home page widget for faster control of your song list and there’s a new Fusion Player for stored and streaming video.

Multitasking you’ll cherish

If, like us, you never seem to have enough hours in the day, you’ll know how important Symbian’s multitasking is. Well, with Symbian^3 your life is set to get even more efficient. Thanks to improved memory, you can run even more apps at the same time without running out of space. Plus, you’ll be able to use an ‘Alt-Tab’ style task switcher to move between the applications you’ve got open.

Lets see what's coming .

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