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Q&A v9.3 , Interview with Jørgen Behrens, VP Product Management & Strategy
1. What did Symbian announce today?
Today, Symbian announced the availability of Symbian OS v9.3, the latest evolution of the worldâ??s leading smartphone operating system. The announcement reinforces Symbianâ??s drive to stretch the smartphone category into the mass-market as well as deliver advanced features to converged mobile devices. Symbian OS v9.3 will allow handset manufacturers and network operators to get the best and most differentiated phones to market faster, cheaper and more easily.
2. What is Symbian OS v9.3?
Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest software update from Symbian. It builds on the success of the v9 family as a robust, secure, open and standards-based OS for smartphones.
3. What are the improvements from the last version?
Symbian OS v9.3 includes incremental enhancements in line with market requirements related to phone performance, reduced time-to-market for handset vendors and cost-effective service deployment.
The headline enhancements from v9.2 to v9.3 are as follows:
- WLAN support native in the OS
- Improved performance characteristics
- Flexible configuration of Symbian components to support faster variant creation
- Improved system tracing and logging to aid software integration
- Better and more accessible test tools included in the Symbian Verification Suite.
4. What are the benefits of upgrading to v9.3?
This depends on which version of Symbian OS a licensee is upgrading from. Overall benefits for this product include:
- Enhanced performance ensuring smartphones work as quickly, with better quality features, as mid-range phones
- Reduced time-to-market through improved tools library, customization and reference designs
- Support for WiFi
- Enterprise use of WiFi
- Important basis for IP convergence and bearer mobility applications
- Enhanced capabilities for operator services
- Firmware over-the-air (FOTA) provisioning reducing cost of ownership
- HSDPA support
- IPSec enhancements for UMA (VoIP)
- Native support for Push To Talk
- Java JSR 248
- Platform security improving stability and robustness of the system and providing much-improved protection against malware and viruses.
- Improved graphics capabilities including improved performance for 3D games (vector floating point)
5. Is v9.3 available to customers now?
Pre-releases have already been made available to our licensees and the final product will be available to them this month.
6. When will the first products based on Symbian OS v9.3 be in the market?
Symbian OS licensees currently have phones based on Symbian OS v9.3 in development, with product launches anticipated in early 2007.
7. Will end users notice any tangible benefits from v9.3?
There will be noticeable performance improvements in all v9.3 phones including better start up times, memory management, which end users will notice when booting their devices, switching between applications and through general use. Symbian OS v9.3 supports WiFi for manufacturers who choose to include WiFi as a feature.
Overall, v9.3 is a software release that is primarily focused on enabling Symbian licensees to get phones out to market in the shortest time possible. Ultimately, consumers will benefit because licensees will be able to get more phones out to market quicker, meaning a wider range of phones will be available for consumers to choose from.
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