The Symbian Foundation today unveiled the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform, the first entirely open source release following the platform’s transition to an open source license on 4 February, 2010, which was the largest of its kind in history.

S^3 is expected to be “feature complete” by the end of Q1 and the release will include: significant usability and interface advances, faster networking, acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics in games and applications, HDMI support (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), music store integration, an improved user interface with easier navigation and multi-touch gesture support, a feature-rich homescreen, and the ability to run even more applications simultaneously.

Members of the Symbian community, including device creators, network operators, hardware technology providers, professional services companies and application developers are already engaged with S^3 and the first devices using the platform are expected to ship as early as Q3 this year.

Simpler: Some notable improvements are coming that benefit all applications. Consistent roll-out of a “single tap” paradigm throughout the touch UI means no more “tap to select, tap again to action”. Navigating the UI just got easier. One-click connectivity benefits all network-aware applications, greatly simplifying the process of connecting to the Internet. New global settings allow you to configure platform-wide behaviour, for example managing transition between cellular and WLAN networks.

Faster: A new 2D / 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. This framework also opens the door to a whole host of new effects and transitions in the UI. In parallel the core data-networking architecture has evolved to accommodate the differing needs of network-aware applications. This improves the experience of using web-based services, whether uploading large videos fast or listening to internet radio on a jitter-free stream.

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Better: Well, this list could go on for a while so I’ll just pick a couple of examples. The Homescreen, starting point for all user interaction, picks up a few new tricks. Find that you can’t squeeze all the widgets you need onto one page, or want separate pages for personal and work widgets? No problem, in Symbian^3 the Homescreen will support multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. Want to show multiple email accounts or weather forecasts for more than one city? No problem, in Symbian^3 the Homescreen supports multiple instances of a widget. Widgets themselves gain the ability to extend their UI, popping up a larger window when selected.

There is also a host of improvements around entertainment. Platform support for HDMI opens the door to watching HD movies on a big TV screen without a Blu-ray player. It could also make on-phone gaming a whole new experience – just plug your Symbian-powered device into your wide screen TV and off you go. The FM Radio app gets interactive, using broadcast metadata to integrate music stores via “More info” and “Buy now” features. Topping this off, a new Podcasts app makes managing podcast subscriptions a breeze and ensures

S^3 introduces major advances, which include:

• HDMI support 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.
• More efficient memory management due to Writeable Data Paging allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient 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. Users, developers and device creators will all benefit greatly from the visual enhancements and smooth transitions that will significantly improve the look-and-feel of their applications and services. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down.
• The industry-leading networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, provides next-generation Internet experiences on today’s devices. Consumers will benefit from the architecture's ability to 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 behaviour, 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.
• The Homescreen takes a big step forward with support for multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The widget manager makes discovery and download of new widgets simple and support for multiple instances of a native widget means that consumers can monitor multiple weather forecasts, news feeds, social networking accounts or multiple email accounts simultaneously through a common interface.
  

Lee M. Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said: “S^3 is another huge milestone in the evolution of our platform. Now that it is fully open source, the door is open to individual contributors, device creators and third-party developer companies, as well as other organizations, to create more compelling products and services than ever before. We have enjoyed significant momentum since we completed S^2, with companies including Sun, Nokia, Ixonos, Comarch and Accenture, among others, contributing to S^3. We are now looking to build on this momentum and remain on course to complete S^4 later this year.”

The developer experience has also been greatly improved. The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits and the runtime in S^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1. The Web Runtime support provided in the platform remains a key part of the developer story, allowing web developers to directly re-use their skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX to create Homescreen widgets and standalone applications.