Get set for the Symbian S^3 platform

The Symbian Foundation has taken the wrappers off the first purely open-source version of its smartphone OS: Symbian S^3.
It's expected to be "feature complete" by the end of March, and could appear in smartphones in the third quarter of this year.
Improvements include an iPhone/Android-esque homescreen that lets users splash their widgets (so to speak) across several pages, flicking between them at will. There's also a built-in widget manager to find new ones, and the ability to install single widgets several times - for example for two different social networking accounts or news feeds.
HDMI support is also native to S^3, so users of its handsets can plug their devices into a TV and watch HD movies. There's also music identification and store capabilities built into the S^3 radio, so people can tag songs and then buy them from whatever store is available.
S^3 has also tightened up its memory management to allow more apps to multi-task at the same time, including on less high-end devices. Meanwhile, its graphics architecture is fully down with hardware acceleration and OpenGL ES, which should prove a boost for rich Symbian games and multimedia apps.

But - and this may be the biggest new feature from developers' standpoint - S^3 also promises 'one-click connectivity for all applications... without interrupting the user'. No more scary warning pop-ups when apps try to connect to the internet!
"S^3 is another huge milestone in the evolution of our platform," says Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams. "Now that it is fully open source, the door is open to individual contributors, device creators and third-party developer companies, as well as other organizations, to create more compelling products and services than ever before."
Even so, the Foundation is already looking ahead. "We are now looking to build on this momentum and remain on course to complete S^4 later this year," says Williams.

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