Symbian Mobile OS Aims To Boost Performance

Symbian's goal of lowering the cost of developing of phones is a meritorious one. Although Symbian has enjoyed great success worldwide, its penetration within the U.S. market has been low. Americans are much more price-conscious than their global counterparts; decreasing the price of Symbian-based phones may help Symbian enjoy increased success in the U.S. market. Device-memory enhancements will help Nokia, Sony Ericcson and others develop feature phones with lower memory requirements. Meanwhile, enterprise-class devices should gain performance benefits with a more efficient OS, enabling more complex applications. Also important are new features in the network stack, allowing more efficient Wi-Fi to 3G roaming and better prioritization of VoIP. Both features will be important as dual-mode phones start to make their way into enterprises' Vo-Fi deployments. Sean Ginevan NWC Contributing Editor

Symbian debuted a new version of its smartphone operating system this week that promises to improve system performance and support the latest device features while reducing memory, processor and battery capacity requirements.

Symbian OS 9.5 includes memory-optimization capabilities, such as demand paging and automatic RAM de-fragmentation, which the company claims can cut RAM requirements by more than 25 percent. This makes it possible for users to run more applications simultaneously, Symbian said.