Its old news (announced in July), but somehow, I didn’t know anout it. So I thought I’d share it with everyone anyways.

Symbian announced the availability of Symbian OS™ v9.3, the latest evolution of the world’s leading smartphone operating system.

Symbian OS v9.3 builds on the success of the v9 family as a robust, secure, open and standards-based OS for smartphones. It includes incremental enhancements in line with market requirements related to phone performance and reducing time-to-market for handset vendors and network operators’ cost-effective deployment of revenue-generating services, content and applications.

Symbian OS v9.3 includes:

Improved phone performance

* Shorter start-up times for phones and key applications
* Improved memory management resulting in more responsive applications and phone features ensuring smartphones work as quickly with better quality features as mid-range phones

Reduced development and ownership cost, and time to market

* New development tools
o Symbian OS awareness for the Eclipse/CDT IDE framework and Nokia’s Carbide.c++ Development Tools for Symbian OS v9.3 phones
o Configuration tools to easily create and customise Symbian OS variants
o The Symbian Verification Suite to support compatibility and phone integration for creating Symbian OS variants, reducing time taken to customize phones for operators targeting different market segments
o A fully searchable on-line edition of the Symbian OS Library including a significant amount of new content
* Backwards compatibility from v9.1, easy migration for phone vendors, technology and third party software providers
* Reference design for Symbian OS v9.3 with Freescale and Nokia S60
* Hindi and Vietnamese language support for improved market coverage

Support for new hardware

* Native support for WiFi
* USB 2.0 on-the-go, allowing faster device connectivity

Support for key operator services and requirements

* Firmware over the air (FOTA) provisioning, FOTA allows network operators to provide OTA software upgrades or fixes lowering cost of ownership
* HSDPA support
* Introduction of IPSec for UMA service (Voice over IP)
* Improved 3GPP R5 support
* Native support for Push To Talk
* Java JSR 248 support

And last but not the least,

Symbian OS v9.3 is fully backwards compatible with previous versions in the v9 family. Symbian OS licensees currently have phones based on Symbian OS v9.3 in development, with product launches anticipated in 2007.

My comments:

• Yay! for the backward compatibility with 9.1
• I’m quite surprised to see Hindi being added as a core language. That’ll definitely help boost sales of symbian phones in India.
• USB 2.0 gets a mention, but no Bluetooth 2.0?
• VoiP stack is still not a standard feature. Why isn’t the VoiP stack used by Nokia for the E series made common to all symbian devices?
• FOTA for all devices? (Wouldn’t that be awesome!)
• I see they’ve announced v9.3. Where’s v9.2?

From the article at SearchEngineWatch:

Here’s a roundup of the mobile search interfaces for some of the web’s most popular shopping sites. The boldfaced links navigate to each service’s primary web interface. The other links offer mobile access via web-enabled phone or other handheld device, typically with slimmed-down interfaces designed for smaller displays.

Amazon.com

Mobile interface at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/h.html or
http://www.amazon.com/access.

More Amazon:

• Search Amazon.com SMS
• Wireless with TicTap
• Search Amazon.co.uk Via SMS with txtbux
• Amazon-OnTheGo

Become.com

The main url http://www.become.com does a nice job of detecting browsers from mobile devices, so there’s no special URL for mobile access.

eBay

Mobile interface at: http://wap2.bonfiremedia.com/

Froogle

Mobile interface at: http://wml.froogle.com or via SMS
http://www.google.com/mobile/sms/index.html.

Frucall

Frucall is a new free service that brings you Internet shopping when you are in a store or on the street. Frucall does not need any software downloads to your phone, or SMS data plans. I covered Frucall briefly in a ResourceShelf mention, and ComparisonEngines.com ran an interview with Frucall’s CEO.

PriceGrabber

Mobile interface at: http://www.atpgw.com/

Smarter.com

Mobile interface at: Details here.

XP Bargains

PDA Interface: http://www.xpbargains.com/pda.php
WAP Interface: http://www.xpbargains.com/wap.php

Yahoo Shopping (Beta)

Mobile interface at: http://us.wap.yahoo.com/p/shopping; more info about the new service here.

And, a few lesser known mobile shopping search services:

• ShopWiki Mobile
• SCANBUY
• Slifter, a location-based shopping search (here’s an interview with the CEO.
• UpSnap

Digital Lifestyles has reviewed 3’s X-Series. It covers the skype, slingbox and orb services that 3 offers as a part of its x-series package. I am actually waiting for a similar service to be implemented in the US. What interests me most is the skype client. A good robust VOIP client is long overdue for symbian phones, even more so now, since almost all new symbian phones have integrated wi-fi. 3’s skype (iskoot actually) is a step in the right direction. Although the service only allows users to call skype contacts at the moment (no skypeout till early 2007), it still is a promising application. Add 3’s flat-rate pricing and it makes for an enticing deal.