1. SYMBIAN PLATFORM
ROADMAP OVERVIEW
Hamish Willee
Consultant
Symbian Foundation

2. What I’ll be talking about…
• Symbian Foundation and platform
• The Roadmap
• Evolving the Developer Experience

3. The most widely used mobile platform today (and it’s open)
Used in 47% of smartphones worldwide
79 million handsets shipped in 2009 (330million+ total)
Over 100,000 man years of development.
Source: Canalts 2009

4. What are we and who owns us?
• What is the Symbian Foundation?
– We’re an open source software project
– We’re led by our members
• Unique in that our processes are
transparent, both technically and in terms
of governance. We are inclusive. Plans
are shared and anyone can help shape
our direction.

5. Open source
• Biggest proprietary to OSS project ever
• Whole platform available under OSS
licence from Symbian^3
– Mostly EPL. Some under compatible license (e.g. LGPL)
– Anyone can access the source code
– Anyone can build on it, make things with it and sell what they make
without paying a royalty to the owner of the source code
– People can contribute code back to the platform
• Symbian^2 still partially SFL

6. Growth and momentum
New contributors to the roadmap every month
The future
Day 1 June End 2009

7. The Symbian Platform Roadmap
February 2010
We are building a truly open mobile platform.
http://developer.symbian.org/roadmap

8. So what’s new in February?
Hot news
developer.symbian.org/roadmap
On the 4th February Symbian completed conversion of
the Symbian platform to fully open source licenses,
Fully open removing membership as a barrier to engagement.
The tool chain will follow during H1 2010.
A new app for the platform, Podcasts allows the user
Podcasts to easily download podcasts and manage
app subscriptions. It is being contributed into Symbian^3
from an existing open source project.
New web More details are becoming clear around Symbian^4.
Contribution proposals submitted in January include
browser
plans to re-architect the browser and the web widget
and web runtime environment to build both on top of Qt and
runtime take advantage of the latest Webkit.

9. Now H1 2010 H2 2010 H1 2011
The first platform release hosted by the Symbian Foundation
http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian^2
S^2 Kits Complete Handsets
available Now From H1 2010
Evolution across the platform, a big step forward in user experience
http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian^3
S^3 Kits Complete Handsets
available Q1 2010 From H2 2010
A revolution in user experience, built on Qt
http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian^4
S^4 Kits Complete Handsets
Q1 2010 Q3 2010 From H1 2011
February
2010
Notes: “Complete” equates to functional completion.
“Handsets” dates are a guide based on a typical 3-9
month gap between “Complete” and first handset
shipment. Actual device shipment dates are the domain of
device creators.

10. User experience
Developer experience
Device creator experience
1 The roadmap – evolving experiences
S^1 S^2 S^3 S^4 S^5
2 The roadmap – release summaries

11. Evolving the user experience
Making Symbian devices delightful to use
S^3 S^4
Devices Devices
From H2 2010 From H1 2011
Easier to use: Single tap across the UI, A fresh new
support for gestures such as pinch and flick look for all
applications,
Faster: ScreenPlay uses hardware
based on Qt.
acceleration to deliver a blazingly fast UI
Direct access
Watch HD movies and play games on TV via
to key
HDMI
functionality
Improved Homescreen: Multiple pages, and beautiful
new widget manager, more powerful widgets effects and
transitions in a
New app: Podcasts streamlined
user interface
Radio app: “Buy now” from music stores
One click connectivity makes connecting
to the internet a breeze

12. Symbian^4 UI refresh
A whole new look, a whole new feel
New user experience built on Qt
Integrated menu frees up valuable screen space
New toolbar provides direct access to commands
Long touch unlocks context-specific actions
Beautiful effects and transitions
A complete refresh of the app suite
Coming in S^4
Devices
From H1 2011
Sneak peak: http://qt.gitorious.org/uiemo/uiemo-preview

13. Evolving the device creator
experience devices
Making it easy to make
2010 2011
S^3 S^4 S^5
Writeable Data Paging
Improved memory management enables better
performance on low cost hardware
ScreenPlay
Take full advantage of graphics hardware
acceleration to deliver a fast and engaging UI
Localised to 40+ locales
A great basis for targeting markets worldwide
SHAI
Making hardware adaptation cheaper and easier,
getting devices to market more quickly
Multicore
Supporting the next generation of hardware
platforms

14. Evolving the developer
experience
What does the Symbian platform offer to developers?
Web Runtime Qt
Widely used across many platforms and loved by
The easiest way into developing for mobile devices – developers, Qt is an extremely powerful and easy to use
WRT allows web developers to directly re-use their skills application framework.
in HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX to create
Homesceen widgets and stand-alone applications It becomes the primary application framework in S^4,
bringing all of its advantages to Symbian app developers
WRT is heavily reworked in S^4 to run on top of Qt and everywhere
take advantage of the latest Webkit. S^4
S^4 Qt Mobility APIs will provide an ever richer Qt-based
S^4 also sees extended support for the evolving W3C experience
widget standards.
Rich Middleware A Powerful OS
Symbian is a great platform for powerful applications that Designed from the ground up for networked mobile
take full advantage of the opportunities of mobile. devices, the Symbian platform is efficient, scaleable and
secure.
Its breadth already includes the leading location
subsystem and there’s lots more coming in S^3… FreeWay and One Click Connectivity deliver an
awesome networking experience to applications
Integrate gesture support into your app UI
S^3
ScreenPlay allows applications to take full advantage of
Make use of sensors such as accelerometer
graphics hardware acceleration to provide a great-
S^3
Set up peer-to-peer networks with Zeroconf looking UI
Easily integrate web services using the Social Mobile Writeable Demand Paging leaves more memory free
Framework for running applications
S^4

15. Qt
New application and UI framework
“Cut development time by nearly 50%”
“Reduces code by more than 50%”
“Deploy 50% faster because of better code maintainability”
Google Earth VLC KDE
94% 76%
“Qt meets or exceeds my “Qt has increased my
100,000+ developers expectations” productivity”
5000+ companies working with Qt
Widely used Loved by developers
Animations … Physics … Transitions
Kinetic scrolling … 3D effects
Gestures … Multitouch
Integrated Modular Scales to fit
Webkit architecture hardware
rendering allows easy capabilities
engine extension
Strong architecture Delivering stunning effects

16. Qt
New application and UI framework
Up to and S^2 S^3 S^4 and beyond…
including
Devices Devices Devices
From H1 2010 From H2 2010 From H1 2011
Qt adopted as the primary
runtime for applications
Qt runtime integrated
Qt runtime available to into Symbian^3 kits
and available for UI Extension for Mobile
download and install
inclusion in devices provide enhanced Qt-
based controls
Platform applications
ported to Qt and Uiemo

17. Social mobile framework
So much stuff to share, so many sites, so little time.
See friends’ tweets through your phonebook <Your favourite web
Surf their photos from your gallery services here>
Your web life available in any app, right where you
want it
Symbian’s Social Mobile Framework S^4
A core set of libraries that ease integration of web
services into applications
An extendable framework allowing adaptors for
individual services to be added
Brought to you by:

18. More than just C++ and widgets
• Python
– Now part of the platform!
• Flash
• Java ME
• Others…

19. Get involved
http://developer.symbian.org/
http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.ph
p/Wild_ducks_project

20. Roadmap highlights
Evolving experiences
S^3 S^4
Complete: Q1 2010 Complete: Q3 2010
Devices: From H2 2010 Devices: From H1 2011
Easier to use: Single tap across the UI, one click
An ever better user
connectivity, support for gestures such as pinch and
flick A fresh new look for all applications,
experience
Faster: ScreenPlay for UI acceleration based on Qt.
Watch HD movies on TV via HDMI Direct access to key functionality and
New app: Podcasts* beautiful effects and transitions in a
streamlined user interface
Radio app: “Buy now” from music stores
Homescreen: Multiple pages, new widget manager
Qt available in kits: embrace the future of app development
platform for
developers
Qt becomes the primary native runtime
A richer
ScreenPlay: Graphics hardware acceleration
FreeWay: High bandwidth networking Social Mobile Framework brings easy
Zeroconf: Easy network sharing web service integration
Improved memory management (WDP)
creators
Helping
device
Localised to 40+ locales
SHAI
February
Multicore 2010

21. Thank you!