Symbian^3
From Symbian Developer Community
Symbian^3 (pronounced Symbian three) is the second open version of the Symbian platform. It extends Symbian^2 in many ways, including graphics support for advanced layering and effects, full HDMI support for a great television playback experience and improved data performance - ideal for streaming high definition audio and video.
This page provides an overview of Symbian^3, picking out a few of the most interesting features to give you a flavour of what is available in the kits now and what is still to come. Highlights of Symbian^3 include:
- Simplifications across the UI for an improved user experience
- New features such as a podcast manager and an improved Homescreen
- Architectural improvements that speed up the user interface and improve the behaviour of network-aware applications
Here's a video from Nokia that gives you a peek at some of the more visual enhancements in Symbian^3:
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Status
Symbian^3 is currently open for feature submission and expects to be functionally complete before the end of Q1 2010. The in-development source code is available in Mercurial and kits are available for download (though they might not yet be totally stable). For more detail on the current status see the schedule for kits releases and the Release Plan.
As the release is not yet complete the information on this page can and will change and should be treated as a snapshot of features currently thought likely to make the cut. The current list of all features targetting Symbian^3 (pulled from the package backlogs and the source for the highlights described here) can always be found on the Symbian^3 feature list.
A full spec sheet for the platform as at Symbian^3 will be added here once Symbian^3 passes functionally complete.
Symbian^3 for Users
An improved user experience
There are a range of user experience improvements in Symbian^3, incremental enhancements that make Symbian-based devices easier and more enjoyable to use.
Single tap interaction model - no more "tap to select, tap again to action". Consistent roll-out of a "single tap" paradigm throughout the touch UI removes the need for double tapping anywhere in the user interface, delivering a more immediate and direct user experience. The implementation includes framework changes that allow 3rd party applications to benefit easily.
Multi-touch gesture support (for things like drag, flick and pinch-to-zoom) comes to many applications, including the Homescreen, Photos and the video player. Any application can integrate support for gestures by taking advantage of the framework and the set of gestures recognised can be customised and extended by device creators.
Better memory management, achieved through writeable data paging, leaves more free RAM for applications.
A faster UI - the Symbian^3 user interface uses the new graphics architecture to great effect to ensure that devices feel snappy and responsive.
The Homescreen Evolves
The Homescreen, starting point for all user interaction, evolves in Symbian^3. 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, the Homescreen now supports multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The number of Homescreen pages is limited only by available memory.
Want to show multiple email accounts or weather forecasts for more than one city? No problem, in Symbian^3 the Homescreen gains support for multiple instances of a native widget.
The Homescreen also gains an improved Widget Manager configuration interface that provides a rich UI for downloading new Homescreen widgets. Widgets gain the ability to extend their UI, for example when the user selects a widget. The extended UI can be any size and is displayed on top of other widgets as a floating element.
As in previous releases widgets can be created in either web runtime (using HTML, Javascript etc) or natively using Qt, C++ or standard C. Symbian^3 sees the addition of support for Adobe FlashLite widgets (so long as a FlashLite player is available in your device).
See the Symbian^3 Homescreen architecture and the Homescreen package backlog for further information.
More entertaining - HD video, smart remote controls, interactive radio, podcasts
There's a lot happening in Symbian^3 in the multimedia space:
HDMI Output: The latest phones can do almost everything your set-top box or PC can – only you can fit it in your pocket! But sometimes that pocket-sized screen just isn’t big enough – for example, showing your holiday photos and videos to family and friends, or watching a movie at home. Wouldn’t it be great if that pocket-sized screen could grow when needed – so it was big when you wanted it to be? With HDMI Output, this is easy – just plug your phone into your TV and see your movies and photos on a screen measuring feet, not just inches! And movies arent the end of the story - just think about the possibilities of big screen gaming.
Symbian^3 brings support for HDMI v1.3a and above plus HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). The Photos, Music Player and Video Player applications have been updated to output to HDMI when a connector is attached. See feature 876 for more details.
Full remote control for your music player: See track and artist names and browse your music collection direct from the screen on your Bluetooth headset or remote control. Change playlist without having to take your device out of your pocket. The technology behind this is v1.4 of the Bluetooth Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP v1.4) - a headset or remote with matching Bluetooth support will be required. Symbian^3 also brings stack-level support for a Symbian device acting in the "remote control" role to browse the media on any other player that supports Bluetooth AVRCP v1.4.
For further details see the Bluetooth Services package and feature 879.
Music store integration in the Radio app - making radio interactive. Ever heard a great song on the radio and wanted to know what it was or buy it then and there? The new "Buy now" button in the Radio app solves this problem by using RT+ RDS metadata to link through to the user's chosen music store, providing them with relevant info on the current song and artist and letting them make an immediate purchase if they wish to. Music store plug-ins can be supplied by a device creator or carrier or downloaded and installed by the user themselves.
For further information see the Radio package and feature 880.
Podcast management: The Podcasts app, new in Symbian^3, allows you to manage podcast subscriptions and automatically download new shows to a predefined schedule, integrating with the music and video players for playback. With the Podcasts app in place you'll always have something new to listen to.
Next generation graphics
A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture paves the way for a faster and more engaging user interface by enabling hardware acceleration of all graphics operations. Applications such as Photos take full advantage to enhance their look and feel, integrating effects such as fades and transitions between their various screens. Semi-transparent UI elements are supported, great for example when overlaying controls or notifications onto video during playback. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down. And all these features can scale to the capabilities of the hardware, allowing everything from simpler, cheaper phones to feature-rich, high-end devices.
See feature 176 and the Graphics package for further information.
Better data networking
One-click connectivity greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, doing the right thing without interrupting the user. It delivers a consistent and simple experience across all network-aware applications, streamlining the UI to remove all unnecessary prompts and dialogs. 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. See the One Click Connectivity page and feature 565 for more details.
Smart network management: Under the covers Symbian^3 delivers a new core data networking architecture (known variously as "Three Plane Comms" or "FreeWay"). An application is able to indicate that it has particular service requirements such as high bandwidth (eg for speedy video upload) or jitter control (eg for smooth streaming of internet radio). The system seamlessly balances each individual application’s needs to deliver the best possible overall user experience.
Core improvements: Symbian^3's new networking architecture and related optimisations also deliver throughput and jitter improvements to all data-enabled applications. This future-proofs the platform ready for the high bandwidth 4G networks that will roll out over the next few years. This industry-leading architecture provides a great basis for VoIP, audio and video streaming and efficient use of high bandwidth networks of all kinds.
For further information on Symbian^3's new networking architecture see the introductory article (and feature 217 to track delivery).
Symbian^3 for Developers
Qt 4.6 Application Framework
Availability of the Qt 4.6 application framework for Symbian^3 is a key step in the evolution of Symbian's application development environment - it will become the primary application framework in Symbian^4. Availability in Symbian^3 allows developers to start unleashing the power of this new runtime, to plan new applications and to start the migration of their existing applications. Where used, Qt application framework will sit alongside the Avkon UI framework, enabling both forward and backward compatibility.
Qt Smart Installer: for dependency management. We expect device manufacturers to include Qt in their S^3 products, but where they don’t we have added “smart installer” technology in S^3 which makes it possible to fetch and install the correct version of Qt automatically when a user attempts to download a Qt-based application. The Qt application framework will also be made available for earlier Symbian releases, including S60 3.1, 3.2 and 5th Edition devices. Developers can bundle “smart installer” technology with their applications to make the Qt installation process seamless to the end-user and opening up a huge market of exisiting Symbian device users to Qt developers.
Further info: See the Qt Technical Overview and the Symbian^3 FAQs.
Zeroconf
The Zeroconf standard (implemented as Bonjour by Apple) enables easy and automatic set-up of IP-based networks, dealing with issues such as address assignment and host name resolution. It also provides an extensible framework for service discovery, allowing clients to advertise and detect an arbitrary set of services. It can be used, for example, to discover printers, to share audio and video files between devices or to set up an ad hoc network for multiplayer gaming. The Zeroconf implementation within Symbian allows any application to add network sharing and service discovery features with minimal effort.
Further info: See the Zeroconf page
Symbian^3 for Enterprises
Remote contact look-up
Contacts in Symbian^3 is extended to provide a plug-in framework to allow easy integration of remote contact look-up for a variety of popular protocols. Any plug-ins available on a device will automatically integrate into the Contacts UI, allowing the directory service favoured by a particular enterprise to be easily integrated at run time whilst rolling handsets out to their workforce. Plugins for different protocols (Intellisync, Notes, MFE...) can be contributed or developed on a commercial basis by the parties that require them.
Further information: See the Contacts package and feature 438.
CalDAV support
The Calendar application in Symbian^3 has been enhanced with support for the CalDAV protocol (RFC4791) thanks to a contribution from Sun Microsystems. CalDAV enables a user to access scheduling information on remote servers. This is "more than just synchronization", allowing you to view up-to-the-minute busy/free information for colleagues' calendars and resources also on the server - i.e. full group scheduling with support for multiple calendars. This support will give Symbian^3 devices a new level of interoperability with popular calendaring services.
Further information: See the CalDav page and feature 796.
Symbian^3 for Device Creators
Symbian speaks your language
With 40+ localisations contributed to Symbian^3, the Symbian platform perfectly adapts to language, preferences and culture across markets worldwide.
SHAI phase 1
The Symbian Hardware Abstraction Interface (SHAI) makes it cheaper and easier to adapt the Symbian platform to new hardware, both by thinning down the adaptation layer (the code that a hardware vendor must write) and by providing a more consistent and industry-standard set of adaptation interfaces. This lowers the cost of device creation and leaves more energy to be focussed on creating innovative products.
SHAI delivers incrementally up to and including Symbian^5. In Symbian^3 existing adaptation APIs are reviewed and some approved as good enough to become a part of SHAI directly, providing confidence in forward compatibility as SHAI continues to roll out.
Further information: See the SHAI page and feature 218.
Multicore (SMP) phase 1
Symmetric multiprocessor (SMP, or "multicore") hardware, based on architectures such as ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, is coming to mobile. With it come the twin promises of more powerful devices and better battery life.
Multicore devices are designed to provide a path to increasing the amount of available processing power in a device without increasing battery consumption. It has been proven in other architectures than ARM that running a number of relatively low-spec cores can provide a similar level of processing power to a single high-spec core but with a greatly reduced energy budget. This opens the way for much more powerful mobile devices that can still live within the battery usage constraints inherent in the mobile world, and of mobile devices similar in processing power to those of today but with markedly better battery life.
Support for SMP delivers incrementally into the Symbian platform across Symbian^3, Symbian^4 and Symbian^5 (see the SMP proposal for further details). The first phase, in Symbian^3, delivers a prototype SMP nano kernel suitable for hardware bring-up and to test the robustness of the rest of the system when running in an SMP environment. In addition the Core OS layer of the platform will achieve "SMP safe" status, having stability in an SMP environment as good as that for a single core environment.
SMP phase 1 is targetted primarily at hardware manufacturers, device creators and middleware and UI package owners.
Further info: See the SMP page, feature 286 and the release plan (the latter for status on "SMP safe" testing).
Writeable data paging
Demand paging is a kernel-level feature focussed on efficient use of memory, allowing multiple applications to run at the same time without driving up the cost of devices by physically adding more (relatively high cost) RAM to the hardware. The demand paging support already present in Symbian^2 allows libraries (such as running applications) to be "paged out" from RAM to (relatively cheap and available) storage memory when they are in the background and not actively running. This "paging out" in turn allows available RAM to be focussed on the actively running applications without having to shut other applications down. From the user's perspective this leads to a much more responsive system when switching between a number of running applications.
Writeable data paging, new in Symbian^3, builds on existing support by allowing the in-memory data associated with applications (and other libraries) to be paged out to storage memory along with the libraries themselves. This improves the level of memory efficiency that demand paging can achieve, effectively freeing up more memory at any given time for actively running applications.
Further info: See the Kernel and Hardware Services package (work complete here as of pdk3.0.b)
Support for hardware acceleration of cryptographic algorithms
The security sub-system in Symbian^3 has been enhanced to allow device creators to integrate hardware acceleration modules to improve performance of cryptographic algorithms. This is particularly valuable in intensive real-time use-cases such as streaming audio or video over a secure link, where bulk data needs to be encrypted and decrypted in real time. Allowing this cryptographic work to be handed off to dedicated hardware frees the main processor for other tasks (for example keeping high bandwidth video streaming super-smooth) and making the device more responsive for users.
Further info: See the OS Security package (work complete here as of pdk3.0.b)
Further information
If you'd like to see all features that have been flagged for Symbian^3 there are a few places you can look: The integration plan, the Symbian^3 feature list (migration into Bug Tracker is ongoing so this list is incomplete) and the script that concatenates all package backlogs together into a big spreadsheet are all good places to start. If you still have a question, check if we've answered it in the Symbian^3 FAQs.
The Symbian^2 spec sheet covers the baseline functionality upon which Symbian^3 is built.
If you'd like a broader view you should mosey on over to the Symbian platform roadmap.
You can also check out the pages for other Symbian releases:
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