Introduction to Symbian OS v9

Symbian OS v9, which has been recently announced, is a major evolution of the Symbian platform and is a first step towards mass-market smartphones. The main focus in this new release is :
   more multimedia (more music, more imaging, more gaming)
   more business
   more security
   more standard C++
   more speed and battery life
   less expensive phone

While all this sounds great, this is to the price of a little compromise: binary compatibility has been broken. Which means that an existing application won't run on Symbian OS v9 unless it has been specifically recompiled for this version (and reciprocally: a Symbian OS v9 application must be recompiled using an older SDK to be able to run on current phones).

Here are a few details we could get on Symbian OS v9. A lot more will probably be announced next week at 3GSM in Cannes....

More Multimedia

The user interface framework has been enhanced to enable richer User Interface with themes, animations, effects... The first snapshot we got from UIQ 3.0 looks really promising and no doubt that Series 60 will also take benefit of this. The audio capabilities are not left behind with the long awaited multi-channel audio support and the stereo bluetooth headset support. Add the support of USB mass storage and full OMA DRM 2.0, and you will get the ultimate phone for the music lover.

Imaging support has been enhanced and number of pixels of the camera is not more limited.

More business

Enterprise users have not been left away. The new Symbian OS v9 incorporate several new features of interest for big companies and operators.

The first one is the new device management framework. Whether you like it or not, your boss may now be able to access and configure remotely your phone (over-the-air diagnostics, re-programming, application installation/deinstallation). Symbian OS v9 is compatible with core OMA Device Management v1.1.2 services as well as OMA Client Provisionning v1.1.

IMAP mail support has been slightly enhanced, allowing you to filter and sort your mail by name.

Calendaring application can now accept meeting invitations from MS Outlook and Lotus Notes.

More Security

With the increasing popularity of the Symbian platform, the year 2004 has seen the birth of wireless malware. While none of the Cabir, Skulls, Velasco where really dangerous, Symbian Ltd has taken the threat seriously and introduced a new security framework:
  sensitive APIs are only available to certified applications
  some APIs are available silently to certified applications but require manual user confirmation for the others (ex "Do you allow the running application to send a SMS ?").
  Most (60%) of the APIs remain freely accessible to every applications.

Technically speaking, each process will have a set of "Trusted Capabilities". Each of these defining a access right granted to the application (access network, access user personal data, access Bluetooth,...).

The second security feature is called data-caging. This prevents unauthorized access to date written on the file system and will be implemented at two different levels:
  system directories won't be accessible anymore to applications (unless you have very high capabilities).
  each application can create a secure directory to store its sensitive information (registration information, credit card details,...) and other applications won't be able to access it.

To develop applications that makes use of the protected APIs, one will need a developer certificates that allow the application to access the APIs on a predefined set of phones. This certificate is unfortunately not free (Symbian Lts is aiming at less than 50 Euros but you also need a ACS Publisher Id which is 400$ / year]) : hoobyists and students will probably have to stick to "free" APIs....

The move to this new security framework will not be totally transparent. And if Symbian claims that 50% of the API have been untouched by this changed, that leaves another 50%... According to Martin Grauballe, those changes will fall into two categories. The first will be to replace APIs, such as the inter-process communications API, which have been removed with secure alternatives. The second will be smaller changes to account for the "securitization" of other APIs.

More standard C++

A real good news is the move to the new ARM ABI. This may sound like a joke without a little bit more explanation as this is one of the two reasons (with the security framework) that are responsible for the binary compatibility break.

Here are the good news:
  standard C++ RTTI support
  standard C++ exception support
  static data will be allowed in DLLs (not recommended however)

This will definitely ease the porting of existing C++ application on Symbian OS (take care that you won't be able to mix exception and the current Leaves/Trap).

The ARM RealView compiler is now supported as well. Due to its price point (starting at 6000$....), this probably concerns only a few of you. But those will be able to reach enhanced performance - quite useful for multimedia, cryptography and gaming. Fortunately, GCC is still supported. The good news being here the move to GCC 3.4 instead of the old GCC 2.98 we currently use.

As far as IDE as concerned, you will have to move to Codewarrior 3.0. Earlier version won't support Symbian OS v9. The free Eclipse IDE should be supported as well and cover the basic needs of a developer but we could not get more details so far. The release of the IDE is scheduled for the second half of 2005.

More speed and battery life

Symbian OS v9 now supports the latest ARMv5 architecture. This means faster processor.... and then more responsive phones and faster applications.

Less expensive phones

Symbian OS v9 is targeted by various reference design fro Intel, TI and other hardware manufacturer. This means less work for licensees (70% of the effort in the development of a smartphone is in the hardware integration).

While existing phones are all based on a dual core architecture (two CPU cores, two memory plans...), Symbian OS v9 introduces a new hard real time kernel which will enable the creation of single core phones. Smaller, lighter, cheaper phone running Symbian OS v9 are very likely to be expected for next Christmas!