MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — Hot on the heels of announcing that it has become completely open-source and free, the Symbian Foundation has unveiled the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform, aimed at supporting advanced smartphone functionality – a heretofore weak link for the platform, which is the engine behind most Nokia devices.
Symbian – and by extension, Nokia – has seen a dwindling market share thanks to an unwieldy developer process and the inability to power iPhone-killer type form factors. It’s aiming to change all of that this year in a dramatic bid for a big piece of the smartphone pie. It joins Microsoft Corp. and Nokia’s other initiative, the Linux-based MeeGo platform announced today with Intel, in revamping for relevance in an iPhone and Android-dominated world.
New functionality includes HDMI support, which enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player. Music store integration embedded within the radio enables users to identify a song and learn more about it. The addition of a “buy now” button, which links with the user’s chosen music store, makes purchasing easy. It’s also bumped up the multi-tasking experience, especially on mid-range hardware.
A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the hardware acceleration available to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down.
The networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, can seamlessly balance each individual application’s needs regarding factors such as bandwidth, latency and jitter. This improves the consumer’s experience of network-dependent applications and Internet services like VoIP and media content streaming.
One-click connectivity for all applications greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, without interrupting the user. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behavior, for example, ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to WLAN when a free WLAN network is available.
Usability enhancements across the user interface include the adoption of a direct “single tap” interaction model, making it much easier to complete common tasks on a device. Multi-touch support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom” forms the basis of a gesture framework that can be extended and leveraged by the developer community.
