MWC 2010: Symbian^3 to be rolled out before the end of Q1
Symbian^3, the first fully open source release for the mobile platform will be “feature complete” by the end of Q1 2010, according to the Symbian Foundation, meaning that phones running the new operating system may be available sooner than first anticipated.
So far the transition to open-source seems to have bared tasty mobile fruit: Symbian will now include radio and music store integration, multi-touch, numerous widget pages and instances as well as 1080p output.
Better system resource management will improve multi-tasking capabilities on handsets running the new version of Symbian, while hardware acceleration will greatly improve the quality of games available.
Lee M. Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said that “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”.
Symbian’s move to an open-source model puts it into direct competition with Google’s Android. It’ll be interesting to see what fresh developers can bring to the Symbian mix.
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