Symbian^3 drops at MWC and is open source

By Shane McGlaun/Feb. 15, 2010 8:05 am EST

We have already talked a bit about the Symbian S^3 smartphone operating system. The new OS officially debuted at MWC and is available under the open source license agreement that covers the OS making it free to download and use.

The latest version of Symbian packs in some nice new features that will make it much more popular in the mobile phone arena. Symbian says S^3 will be feature complete by the end of Q1 2010 and offers lots of significant improvements over the previous OS version. Among the new features is support for HDMI out.

The OS also has music store integration in the radio with a buy it now button for easy purchases. Memory management in the new OS is improved with Writable Data Paging and the OS has a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture supporting OpenGL ES. Other features include 4G network support, one-click WLAN connectivity, various usability enhancements, and a new home screen with support for gestures and multiple pages of widgets.