Symbian, the provider of the open operating system for smartphones, has announced Symbian SQL and an advanced Location Based Services (LBS) architecture – two new technologies that are claimed to herald the next generation of mobile computing by offering 'dramatic' enhancements in the vital areas of mass data handling and LBS.
According to the company, Symbian SQL and the new LBS architecture will help Symbian licensees develop handsets that handle very large amounts of data, and which provide users with relevant information based on their current location, in tune with consumer demand.Mobile phones featuring Symbian's LBS offering were recently launched in Japan. In Europe, Symbian's LBS architecture will appear in mobile phones later this year.
Symbian SQL will be featured in phones shipping in the second half of 2008 and be available to application developers via a download in Q2 2008.SQLite, an established open source technology widely used in products such as Mozilla's Firefox, has been implemented by Symbian to create Symbian SQL, a robust and highly scalable database management system for Symbian OS. Symbian SQL makes retrieving and sorting terabytes of data and multimedia fast and efficient without compromising performance.
Application developers can also take advantage of Symbian SQL by using a standard query language when working with databases on Symbian OS, helping to reduce maintenance costs and application footprints. To support the open source community, Symbian is contributing technology improvements back into the SQLite open source project and is a charter member of the SQLite Consortium launched in December 2007.
"When I authored SQLite in 2000, I never imagined that it would one day be used in mobile phones to host databases with millions of searchable entries," said Dr. Richard Hipp, architect and primary author of SQLite. "The advanced design of Symbian OS meshes well with SQLite, resulting in a stable and robust platform for supporting new applications. I look forward to seeing the innovation that Symbian SQL sparks from developers across the world."
Symbian's LBS architecture is claimed to offer the most extensive LBS-rich solution of any OS, supporting multiple positioning technologies including A-GPS, network-based and Wi-FI to provide fast and accurate location information. Handset manufacturers do not need to invest separately in developing location support, reducing the time it takes to create GPS-enabled devices. Developers can cost-effectively target their LBS applications across multiple Symbian OS platforms, including S60, UIQ and MOAP, due to the consistent set of APIs offered by Symbian's LBS architecture. The architecture enables:
a.. Tracking by emergency services (as mandated by government legislation in some regions
b.. Providing the quickest route – getting from A to B as quickly as possible
c.. Accurate pin-pointing of current location
d.. Geotagging images and videos – location stamping images and videos
e.. Finding the location of people in a contacts list
f.. Locating the nearest services
g.. Providing proximity alerts when near a specific location
"A new breed of smartphones is emerging, which requires the sort of performance and file management ability that we're used to with PCs but in a more personal environment," said Jørgen Behrens, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Symbian. "It's a smarter smartphone and the two technologies that we're announcing today will bring personal computing to millions of consumers' pockets."
"The global market for mobile navigation solutions is booming," added Chris Jones, VP & Principal Analyst, Canalys. "In 2007 almost 40 million devices were shipped, more than double the 2006 figure. Furthermore, Canalys estimates that around 4 million navigation solutions were on GPS-enabled smartphones, the majority of which were based on Symbian OS. This is the fastest growing category and our end-user research consistently shows that consumers are more interested in having navigation on their phones than any other advanced application. By delivering an advanced LBS architecture and enabling seamless location-based user experiences, Symbian will help drive this market forward."