Symbian Foundation announced the next version of the world’s most popular mobile platform today, at the Mobile World Congress. The recently open-sourced OS, Symbian^3 will feature multi-touch, multiple home screens (with widgets) and visual multi-tasking. Internet connectivity will become easier with Symbian^3 as the users will not see the rather irritating and repeated prompts to connect to the available network. Better memory management, powerful multi-tasking and a much elegant UI are just some of the key features in the new OS.

Media management has been vastly improved. The OS will feature iPhone-like cover flow for albums. If supported by the hardware, Symbian^3 will also allow users up to 1080p resolution on an external display. Most mobile developers believe that there may be hope again. With steep competition from the iPhone OS and Android, Symbian has recently lost its grounds.

The OS will be available end of March and will be shipped with phones sometime in summer.

[source: developer.symbian.org]