“On Monday, at CTIA, Symbian will announce version 9.5 of its operating system. The new version delivers improved performance including lower memory and processor requirements, more multimedia features including support for advanced camera features, better PC connectivity, support for DVB-H and ISDB-T Mobile TV standards and improved network and connection management features. Symbian 9.5 is fully backwardly compatible with all member of the Symbian 9.x family. The 9.5 release is part of the scheduled 6 monthly updates of the Symbian OS and cements Symbian OS’s position as the most technical advanced mobile operating system. Generally a Symbian OS release is found in shipping handsets about 12-16 months after it is announced. We will bring you further details on Monday. New Symbian OS v9.5 brings higher performance at mass market costs CTIA Wireless, Orlando, USA and London, UK – 26 March 2007 – Symbian Ltd. today announced Symbian OS v9.5, the latest evolution of the world’s leading operating system for smartphones. Symbian OS v9.5 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 operating system for the global market. Symbian OS v9.5 is the result of continued deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, the world’s leading handset vendors, and its user interface platform partners including MOAP, S60 and UIQ. With high smartphone growth in developing markets and as mass market requirements from handset manufacturers continue to rise, Symbian’s addressable market is broadening across segments and regions.Symbian OS v9.5, backward compatible with all versions of the v9 family, includes the following key enhancements: Higher performance for lower hardware costSymbian OS v9.5 delivers performance improvements with reductions in requirements on memory, processor and battery, enabling smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 to run on the same hardware as feature phones. Faster time to marketSymbian is continuing to improve time-to-market for handset vendors, system integrators and developers. Symbian OS v9.5 introduces new hardware adaptation interfaces for digital TV and location based services (LBS) making it cheaper and easier to bring popular services to the mass market. Designed for richer user experiences: MultimediaSymbian smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 will support rich multimedia experiences with advanced camera features similar to standalone digital cameras with 35 new features including image orientation following tilt sensor, preset image enhancements, digital/optical zoom, auto focus spots, panorama stitch, image distortion correction auto-focus such as red-eye reduction. With improved seamless connectivity to home computers, enabling the easy transfer of music, videos and images, one smartphone can replace several devices. In addition, with support for multi-standard digital TV (DVB-H, ISDB-T) and standardised LBS, the Symbian smartphone will bring true convergence to consumers worldwide. Enterprise New Symbian smartphones will enable users to be more productive and save costs with Wifi-3G connection roaming. Professionals will gain the advantage of having services such as push-email and VoIP run over WiFi when in the office and automatically switch to 3G when on the move. In addition, real-time networking ensures that VoIP is not interrupted when other IP-based services, such as web browsing or push email, make a connection.Smartphone lifestyle With over 70% market share, Symbian continues to provide flexibility and choice to leading handset vendors who sell Symbian smartphones to over 250 network operators worldwide. The introduction of Brahmic script in Symbian OS v9.5 which extends Symbian OS support of languages to cover 99% of the world’s countries, the support for global standards including HSPDA, HSUPA and digital TV, makes Symbian the only true global mobile operating system powering both mid-range and high-end mobile phones.” Thanks to allaboutsymbian for this…
ZyXeL V660: a dual mode Windows Mobile smartphone
“ZyXEL has announced a new smartphone – ZyXel V660. This is one of dual-mode Windows Mobile smartphones becoming ever more popular. The device is compatible with convergent Wi-Fi/GPRS/GSM services.The calls get diverted to available networks, automatically searching for available Wi-Fi hot spots. The smartphone supports standard encoding methods, including WPA/WPA2/TLS and also VPN networking.ZyXel V660 is equipped with a 1.9” LCD, a 2-megapixel camera, 64 MB of internal memory and an expansion slot for microSD cards. It is powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 OS. The company is expected to release the new smartphone in the second half of 2007.” via mobile-review.com