We all knew that the Mobile World Congress this year was going to be unlike any of the earlier years. At the MWC we expected further details on the iPad, the unveiling of Opera Mini for iPhone, and even a glimpse at Windows Mobile 7. But what we had not expected was a surprisingly amazing move by The Symbian Foundation.
The Symbian Foundation transitioned to an open-source license earlier this month (February 4th 2010). This move made us all expect greater things from Symbian in the near future. But nobody expected Symbian to unveil the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform so soon, at the MWC. They did exactly that.
S^3 is the first open-source release by The Symbian Foundation after their transition. The company promises that S^3 will be complete by the end of the first quarter and provide amazing options to maximize the potentials of our cellphones. Major improvements have been made to the user-interface to make cellphones friendlier to use. For instance, cellphones will be able to automatically switch from cellular to WLAN when a connectable free WLAN network is available. A better 2D and 3D architecture and an improved Homescreen also add to the overall user-interface.
Perhaps the best feature is the HDMI support which phones will be able to provide their users. Smartphone users will be able to plug in their phone directly into their HDMI televisions and watch high definition movies without the need of an external Blu-ray player.
Apart from new devices which will support this platform, S^3 will be also back-compatible with existing devices back to S60 3.1. The staff over at the Symbian Foundation has already been using S^3 for quite some time now. They believe that S^3 will bring forth a revolution in the way we use our cellphones; by the looks of the offered features, we can only support that claim.
We are eager for the first quarter to end so we can get our hands on the feature-complete S^3. One can only wonder that after such advancements, what will S^4 have to offer which the Symbian Foundation plans to complete later this year.
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