Symbian 3 and 4 Progress

Jan 12, 2010

Development is moving forward on Symbian, a mobile phone operating system that is largely under free licensing. Version 3 should show all its planned features by the first quarter of 2010.

As developer Victor Palau writes in the Symbian blog, 30 of the 43 new features are already in the code. Among the functions that have been missing in Symbian and will be part of the next version are some desktops. Up to now Symbian mobile phones had rudimentary home screens and then only with the option to display bookmarks for applications. Things have moved along from there. HD videos and song recognition familiar to iPhone apps were added. Hardware accelerated graphics are also noticeable in the camera function. CalDAV support and integration of Qt 4.6.1 in the Symbian 3 SDK are further features.

Developers also addressed the double-click function found in many touchscreen menus that works inconsistently in some mobile phones by introducing the Single Tap solution.

Qt for Symbian is available under LGPL in the repositories of the Symbian Foundation. The Symbian Product Development Kit (PDK) named S3 PDK3.0 already has Qt. While Symbian 3 is approaching completion, Symbian 4 is already in the works. Symbian provides an overview of the future version in their features list.

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