07 July 2009

Symbian^2 Is In Final Stage Of Development
And Is Going To Be Available For Testing Soon

According to the Symbian Foundation's "catalyst and futurist" David Wood, Symbian will release the first beta version of its open-source mobile operating system within the next few weeks, and expects that first devices powered with the foundation software will hit retail during the first half of 2010.

The first Symbian Foundation OS with the code name Symbian^2, for which the source code is available on the Mercurial repositories on the Symbian developer website, is expected to reaches functionally complete state and begin beta testing by end of this month.

Wood admitted the process of creating Symbian^2 has proven longer than anticipated but he also said that since December, work has been accelerating and that Symbian^2 will add more of what we have seen in the latest Symbian devices, including a user interface that can be customised by the users themselves, and more elaborate touch features.

"This is the kind of engineering issue that will come up naturally when open-sourcing a very large software system," Wood said. He adds that developers are already reporting bugs, which the foundation hoped for: "I am hoping that this isn't going to deter the package owners from moving their code quickly into open source. I am hoping they're going to say " The good news is that the person who has reported these bugs hasn't just said there is a bug, but also how to fix it."

The Symbian Foundation is also working hard on the Product Development Kit (PDK), which phone makers will use when building phones based on the operating system. They can get it today, but it is not as polished as the Foundation would like, according to Wood. Every two weeks a new version of the PDK is to be released, and Wood expects to have a significantly evolved kit in about a month.

Key features of Symbian^2 release includes:

• Support for multiple form factors, resolutions and input methods;
• Customisable home screen supporting embedded widgets and other personal content.

Symbian^2 is particularly suitable for device manufacturers who have already been working with previous versions of Symbian OS technology.  Device manufacturers who are relatively new to the Symbian world are expected to use Symbian^3 in their first commercial shipments.

Foundation coders are working hard on rewriting the OS code, designing an elegant user interface and unifying S60, UIQ and MOAP platforms in order to deliver a next-gen open-source OS called Symbian^3 which is expected to reach a functionally complete state at the end of this year, and should be hardened by the middle of 2010.

Symbian^3

Symbian^3 will be part of a complete ecosystem offering of all the software needed to quickly create a wide range of winning mobile devices - including state-of-the-app mobile phones, and lots more.

Symbian^3 is expected to reach Functionality Completed in week 04 2010, and to be Hardened by week 26 that year.

Key features of this release include:

• Integrated support for seamless composition of hardware-accelerated content into UI elements (this incorporates “Screenplay” technology);
• An integrated high performance communications architecture enabling a performance level typical of wired internet (this incorporates “Freeway” technology).

Symbian^4

Planning for Symbian^4 is at an earlier stage.  It follows Symbian^3 by around six months.

The following technology contributions are expected to be fully integrated for Symbian^4:

• Qt optimised for the Symbian platform - Qt is a well-liked application and UI framework;
• A new “Orbit” extension library for Qt, which contains more than 50 widgets tailored for mobile user experience, and which will provide a replacement for the existing “Avkon” widget set;
• A new “Direct UI” interaction and navigation logic, combined with finger-optimised layouts offering excellent touch and hybrid-device user experience;
• The application suite re-factored and re-written to take advantage of Qt APIs, Orbit widget, and Direct UI.

Elements of this combined offering will of course be available for experimentation ahead of their full integration in Symbian^4.

For more information: More details of the Symbian release plans are increasingly available on the beta Symbian developer website.