Rich Fiscus
15 Feb 2010 6:58
The latest version of the Symbian smartphone platform was unveiled today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Named Symbian^3, or S^3 for short, it is expected to be completed by the end of March.
The first devices featuring S^3 should start shipping from Nokia in the third quarter of this year.
New features in Symbian^3 include a multi-touch interface, integrated online music store support, HDMI output capabilities at full HD (1080p) resolution, and a new graphics architecture which takes advantage of hardware acceleration.
Nokia has also released a video previewing what Symbian^3 will look like.
Despite competition from newer platforms such as Apple's iPhone OS and Google Android, Symbian continues to make up about 50% of the global smartphone market.
S^3 is a combination of the Symbian operating system, recently released as open source, and a software platform similar to those offered by Apple and Google.