Symbian has signed a licensing agreement with Scalado for its mobile imaging software. Symbian says that Scalados solution for Symbian OS will significantly improve Symbians imaging performance for higher megapixel images. It will deliver faster rendering, scaling and rotation and superior image editing features, with the added benefit of reduced memory consumption. Importantly, Scalados patented Random Access JPEG technology allows imaging operations to occur while the image is in compressed form, greatly reducing RAM consumption.

Retroactive to Symbian OS v9.3 and v9.4, the three year licence ensures benefits for end-users and handset manufacturers alike and is free of any additional royalties. End users will enjoy higher usability, while handset manufacturers will see a cut in hardware costs, says Symbian. Under the terms of the deal, Symbian and Scalado will create a joint team of skilled imaging and camera engineers to enhance and extend Symbians camera and imaging offering.

“Consumers today expect mobile phone cameras to perform just as well as digital still cameras,” says Scalado CEO, Mats Jacobson. “Building on our existing long and fruitful partnership, this new initiative sees Symbian and Scalado working together to ensure that the leading mobile OS will deliver the beauty of high quality and high speed image handling, with full connectivity and sharing options to consumers.”

Jrgen Behrens, Executive Vice-President, Marketing at Symbian, says the agreement will benefit both handset vendors and end-users, reducing cost and memory consumption in handset development, and offering advanced image handling capabilities in high megapixel camera devices to end-users.

“Its another great demonstration of our commitment to offering the best mobile technology possible in Symbian OS and to helping the mobile industry succeed, says Behrens.”