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Telecommunications Symbian OS upgrade promises better smartphones
Telecommunications Symbian OS upgrade promises better smartphones | Symbian OS upgrade promises better smartphones |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 02 April 2007 | |
  
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Symbian, claims that Version 9.5 of the Symbian operating system now offers on demand paging and automatic RAM defragmentation that can reduce average RAM usage by more than 25 percent, allowing for more concurrent applications, improving the user experience or enabling manufacturers to include less memory and reduce phone build costs. Other improvements are claimed to be faster device start-up time, and faster start-up time of popular applications such as browser, email and navigation by up to 75 percent. Symbian OS v9.5 introduces standardised support for digital TV and location-based services (LBS) making it cheaper and easier to bring these popular services to the mass market, according to Symbian. Also: "The introduction of a SQL database offers developers a well known interface for storing and retrieving high-cardinality application data," according to Symbian. This, together with integrated Posix on Symbian OS - helps developers port existing applications from the desktop or server environment to Symbian OS with minimal effort and in less time, according to Symbian. Also, Symbian smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 will support rich multimedia experiences with advanced camera features similar to standalone digital cameras. The 35 new camera features include support for tilt sensors, preset image enhancements, panorama stitching, and red-eye reduction. Symbian claims that, "with improved seamless connectivity to home computers, enabling the easy transfer of music, videos and images using MTP, one smartphone can replace several devices. In addition, with support for multi-standard digital TV (DVB-H, ISDB-T) and standardised LBS, the Symbian smartphone will bring true convergence to consumers worldwide." Symbian OS v9.5 offers contacts hosted in SQL, providing better support for large database search performances. Support for the new GEO property will encourage innovative use of meeting location with positioning/LBS. The interoperability of calendars with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes has been upgraded and support for Exchange ActiveSync Protocol (OTA) continues to deliver remote email, contacts and calendar synchronisation. The introduction of Brahmic script support in Symbian OS v9.5 "extends Symbian OS support of languages to cover 99 percent of the world's countries" and the support for global standards including HSPDA, HSUPA and DVB-H as well as ISDB-T, "makes Symbian OS the only true global mobile operating system powering both mass market and high-end mobile phones," Symbian claims Symbian is a joint venture between Ericsson (15.6 percent), Nokia (47.9 percent), Panasonic (10.5 percent), Samsung (4.5 percent), Siemens (8.4 percent) and Sony Ericsson (13.1 percent). Mobile phone manufacturers that have shipped Symbian smartphones in Q4 2006 are Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Motorola, Mitsubishi Electric, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp and Sony Ericsson. User interfaces designed for Symbian OS include Nokia's S60, NTT DoCoMo's MOAP user interface for the FOMA 3G network and the UIQ platform, designed by UIQ Technology. Symbian claims that 51.7m Symbian smartphones shipped to consumers worldwide in 2006 and that 110 million have been shipped since the formation of Symbian. In 2006 108 Symbian smartphone models were shipped by nine licensees through over 250 network operators worldwide. According to market researcher Canalys, Symbian's share of the Smartphone OS in 2006 was 72.5 percent.{moscomment} |
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