Symbian has announced the launch of Symbian OS v9.5, the latest evolution of its Smartphone OS. Symbian says that the latest version brings high performance features designed for richer consumer and enterprise experiences, as well as significant savings to phone build costs and time-to-market, delivering a truly scalable mobile operating system for the global market.
Symbian OS v9.5 is the result of continued deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, made up of leading handset vendors, and its user interface platform partners MOAP, S60 and UIQ. With over 110 million Symbian Smartphones shipped, high Smartphone growth in developing markets, and increasing mass market requirements, Symbian says its addressable market is broadening across segments and regions.
Symbian OS v9.5 is backward compatible with all versions of the v9 family, and includes the several key enhancements. It delivers performance improvements, with reductions in requirements on memory, processor and battery, enabling Smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 to run on feature phone hardware. Key memory optimisation features including demand paging and automatic RAM de-fragmentation can reduce average RAM usage in excess of 25%, allowing for more concurrent applications, for an even better user experience,or enabling licensees to include less memory and reduce phone build cost.
These features help to deliver substantial benefits in the areas of performance and power usage, including faster device start-up time, faster start-up time of popular applications such as browser, email and navigation by up to 75%, and improvements on battery life.
Symbian is also continuing to improve time-to-market for handset vendors, system integrators and developers. Symbian OS v9.5 introduces standardised support for digital TV and location-based services (LBS) making it cheaper and easier to bring these popular services to the mass market.
The introduction of a SQL database offers developers a familiar interface for storing and retrieving high-cardinality application data. This, together with integrated P.I.P.S. P.I.P.S. is POSIX on Symbian OS – helps developers port existing applications from the desktop or server environment to Symbian OS with minimal effort and in less time.
Symbian smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 will support rich multimedia experiences with advanced camera features similar to standalone digital cameras. The 35 new camera features include support for tilt sensors, preset image enhancements, panorama stitching, and red-eye reduction.
And with improved connectivity to home computers, enabling the easy transfer of music, videos and images using MTP, says Symbian, one Smartphone can replace several devices. Symbian OS v9.5 also offer support for multi-standard digital TV (DVB-H, ISDB-T) and standardized LBS.
Symbian is driving the market by anticipating consumers mobile lifestyle changes says Symbian Executive Vice President, Jrgen Behrens. This means enabling even richer experiences and seamless multi-tasking to make the most of tomorrows technology. Further, by lowering phone development cost and shortening time to market, Symbian OS v9.5 delivers on the promise of bringing the Smartphone lifestyle to the mass market.
Todd Kort, Principal Analyst at Gartner adds:
By reducing hardware requirements which enables cost reductions of devices, many Symbian Smartphones will become even more affordable and Symbians addressable global market will expand. At the same time, Symbian will also help handset vendors deliver much richer multimedia capabilities, driving growth in the higher-end of the mobile market. With more than 70% market share, the launch of Symbian OS v9.5 and the burgeoning Smartphone market, Symbian is well positioned to continue to drive the Smartphone into the mass market.”
Gartner forecasts that worldwide Smartphone shipments will reach 159 million units in 2008, up from 73.6 million in 2006. 
