New Version of Symbian OS Announced

Symbian Limited has just announced a new version of its very widely used operating system for smartphones. 

The most significant new features in Symbian OS 9.3 are native support for Wi-Fi wireless networking and USB 2.0 on-the-go.

It also offers shorter start-up times for phones and key applications as well as improved memory management, resulting in more responsive devices.

For the most part, though, Symbian OS 9.3 is an incremental upgrade to the previous version with no major improvements.

It is fully backward compatible with previous versions in the v9 family. Licensees of this operating system already have phones based on Symbian OS v9.3 in development, with product launches anticipated in 2007.

More about Symbian OS 9.3 is available on its the Symbian  Limited web site.

More About the Symbian OS

The Symbian OS is at the heart of the majority of smartphones shipped worldwide. However, it's quite possible that a great many of the people who are using this operating system are unaware that they are doing so.

This is because the Symbian OS provides the "backend" a smartphone needs, but does not include a user interface. Licensees of this operating system must come up with that on their own.

Still, if companies choose, they can license a pre-made UI. That's what Nokia's S60 and S90 are, and Symbian  Limited makes one too, called UIQ.