Symbian has unveiled the Symbian OS v9.3 open, standards-based smartphone operating system. The company has said the v9.3 includes incremental enhancements for the development of higher volume, lower cost, advanced, data-enabled phones (smartphones) for 2.5G, 3G and HSDPA networks around the world.

Symbian OS v9.3 is backwards compatible with previous versions in the v9 family. Symbian OS licensees are currently developing handsets based on the Symbian OS v9.3, with product launches anticipated in 2007.

The company has said that the v9.3 includes shorter start-up times for phones and applications, improved memory management, new development tools, configuration tools to create and customise Symbian OS variants, the Symbian Verification Suite to support compatibility and phone integration, a fully searchable on-line edition of the Symbian OS Library with new content, Hindi and Vietnamese language support, native support for WiFi, USB 2.0 on-the-go, firmware over the air (FOTA) provisioning and HSDPA, 3GPP R5, push to talk and Java JSR 248 support. Symbian is a software licensing company owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.