Timetable for Future Versions of the Symbian OS Revealed

The Symbian Foundation is in the process of transforming the Symbian OS -- merging the S60 and UIQ user interfaces into the Symbian backend and taking the whole thing open source. A relatively concrete timetable for all this has been announced for the first time. 

The plan is to have two platform releases each year. Symbian^2, which will be based on S60 5.1, is expected to reach a functionally complete state at the middle of this year, and should be hardened by the end of the fourth quarter.  This means that the first devices based on Symbian^2 could be reaching the market around the end of this year -- depending on the integration plans, the level of customization, and the design choices made by manufacturers.

For those who aren't familiar with it, S60 5th Edition was developed by Nokia to power the first touchscreen-based S60 smartphones. It also offers support for a new screen resolution -- 640 by 360 pixels -- and haptic feedback.

This operating system is expected to be used by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, AT&T, LG and other phone makers.

Looking Ahead to 2010
Symbian^3 is scheduled to follow six months later -- reaching a functionally complete state at the end of 2009, and should be hardened by the middle of 2010, meaning models running it should be out around that time.

The feature set for Symbian^2 is already virtually frozen.  Most of the content for Symbian^3 is already agreed, but there’s room for contributors to make a difference.  The content for releases from Symbian^4 on is much more open for debate.

 Source: Symbian Foundation