April/May 2007

The latest version of the Symbian operating system for smart mobile phones, version 9.5, has introduced various enhancements that supporters believe will reinforce its lead in the market.

Gartner reports that Symbian already has a 70 per cent share of the smartphone market, and predicts that worldwide smartphone shipments will rise from 73.6 million last year to 159 million next year.

Symbian says the new version places less stress on the memory, processor and battery. This translates into faster device start-up time and faster start-up time of popular applications.

'Demand paging' and automatic RAM de-fragmentation are said to be able to reduce average RAM usage by more than 25 per cent, allowing for more concurrent applications, better user experience or a memory and cost reduction by suppliers.

 

Symbian OS v9.5 introduces standardised support for digital TV and location-based services (LBS), which is expected to accelerate take-up of these services.

Version 9.5 sees the introduction of a SQL database, offers developers a well-known interface for storing and retrieving application data. There is also enhanced support for digital cameras, and improved connectivity to PCs.