First things first though. Why announce the new version of Symbian OS a week and a bit before 3GSM? Surely this runs the risk of the announcement being overshadowed by something else at 3GSM? There are probably two reasons for this.

The range of additions and changes in Symbian OS v9 is significant, from end user enhancements, through operator and enterprise improvements to fundamental changes to the way in which the OS is delivered and works. While some of the changes have been heralded in earlier releases, such as the real-time kernel in Symbian OS v8, much is new. It is a lot to digest so SymbianOne suspects part of the reason for the early announcement is simple because the full ramifications of the changes could get lost at 3GSM. An early announcement will bring delegate and media to the show with much they want to find out about.

Another important reason will be that Symbian remains the enabler and not the center of its own universe. The announcement of Symbian OS v9 the week before 3GSM suggest that there will further announcements from Licensees at 3GSM it does not want to overshadow. For example the press release states "reference designs from leading semiconductor vendors such as Intel are targeting Symbian OS v9." Intel's reference design was jointly announced with Nokia last October, but Nokia have not yet announced support for Symbian OS v9 in any of its platforms.

There are other tantalizing statements. In discussing the new multimedia support there is mention of a feature to support "simultaneous multiple displays" which offers some intriguing design possibilities. Equally the tools announcement notes that the new ARM ABI binary offers "support for all C++ language features including RTTI and exceptions." Exceptions a C++ coding paradigm not available in the current Symbian C++ and missed by many C++ developers.

The security feature and the link to Symbian Signed is perhaps the most interesting change as it underpins a new virus beating capability. The press release states "Symbian OS v9's security model also helps protect networks, phones and users' personal information from malware by ensuring applications can only access sensitive phone capabilities (e.g. sending SMS, making calls, access to personal information on the phone etc) when they have been given specific permission to do so. Symbian's application certification and signing program, Symbian Signed, has been extended to further support the Symbian OS security model."

The Symbian OS v9.1 - Technical specifications provides a little more detail (but not much) noting "Application capability management (via "Symbian Signed" certification)" and "Application data caging." How it will all work is not clear.

The information made available in the announcement of Symbian OS v9 is clearly just the tip of the iceberg. It will be interesting to see what information emerges over the coming weeks. On that note we will be talking to Morten Grauballe, Symbian's VP Product Management in the next day or so, and hopefully have some more answers soon.

As a footnote it is interesting to note how little the mainstream media understand about Symbian. In Reuters' article on the release they state "British mobile phone software maker Symbian, part-owned by Psion." Sad but true.