The Symbian Foundation has unveiled the Symbian^3 platform, which is its first entirely open-source release following its transition to an open-source license earlier this month. The organization expects Symbian^3 to be feature complete by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

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Symbian^3 will include significant usability and interface advances, faster networking, acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics in games and applications, HDMI support, music store integration, an improved user interface with easier navigation and multi-touch gesture support, its feature-rich Homescreen, and the ability to run even more applications simultaneously, according to the Symbian Foundation.

Members of the Symbian community, including device creators, network operators, hardware technology providers, professional services companies, and application developers are already engaged with Symbian^3. The first devices using the platform are expected to ship as early as the third quarter of 2010.

Symbian^3 includes several major advances. For example, its HDMI support enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player. Also, music store integration embedded within the radio enables users to identify a song and learn more about it. The addition of a “buy now” button, which links with the user’s chosen music store, makes purchasing easy.

Its more efficient memory management due to Writeable Data Paging allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience, especially on mid-range hardware. Additionally, a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the hardware acceleration available to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface.

Users, developers, and device creators will all benefit greatly from the visual enhancements and smooth transitions that will significantly improve the look and feel of their applications and services. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games, all without slowing the phone down.

Symbian^3’s networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, provides next-generation Internet experiences on today’s devices. According to the Symbian Foundation, consumers will benefit from its ability to seamlessly balance each individual application’s needs regarding factors such as bandwidth, latency, and jitter. This improves the consumer’s experience of network-dependent applications and Internet services like Voice over Internet Protocol (IP) and media content streaming.

The platform’s one-click connectivity for all applications greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, without interrupting the user. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behavior—for example, ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to a wireless local-area network (WLAN) when a free WLAN is available.