At the beginning of September, the four Symbian Councils (Features and Roadmap, UI, Architecture and Release) held their latest face to face meetings. The usual range of activities were carried out, examination, review of and voting on contribution proposals, assessment of the hardening of Symbian^3 and feature complete date for Symbian^4, and much more. Also of interest was the proposal to change the naming of Symbian releases. This will see the introduction of minor release numbers.

We've summarised the information from the various September Symbian Council meetings below. We start with join discussion between the Feature and Roadmap Council and the Architecture Council, before moving on to a breakdown of each individual Council meeting.
   

Joint discussions on Platform Strategy (FRC and AC)

A joint sitting of the Feature and Roadmap Council with the Architecture Council reviewed a proposed Platform Strategy. It was agreed there were were four pillars to the strategy moving forward: Supporting low cost hardware configurations, User Interface, Service integration and Battery life.

The councils then considered guidance around future S^3 contributions with the conclusions that non-disruptive contributions should be accepted. If it is likely to impact on existing users, it should be reviewed with potential impact balanced against the benefits.

The forthcoming Symbian^4 was addressed. Symbian^4 includes a complete rewrite of the application suite in Qt. It was noted that some applications have been removed from the application suite and that these might be good candidates for developers to step forward, take over and contribute.
   

Naming and Releases (FRC and AC)

A change in Symbian's naming scheme was proposed. This would see a move to major and minor release numbers; this would mean Symbian^4.0, Symbian^4.2, Symbian^4.3, Symbian^5.0 (and so on), rather than Symbian^4, Symbian^5, Symbian^6 (and so on). 

This would better underline the difference between major releases, such as Symbian^4, and 'minor' releases that build on an existing release. It also allows for version numbers to be useful in the marketing of the platform.

This reflects the story around the upcoming version of Symbian. Symbian^4 is major change from Symbian^3 because of the introduction of the new UI ('DirectUI') and switch to Qt. Symbian^5 (as it is now) builds on progress made in Symbian^4, such that they are two halves of the same story (e.g. the application suite will evolve between the two versions).

The councils agreed to the proposal. Future versions will have major and minor release numbers. This means that Symbian^4 is now Symbian^4.0 and will be referred to as such in the roadmap documents. Symbian^5 will (likely) become Symbian^4.1, although this is not yet reflected in the roadmap documents. In some cases, future versions of Symbian may have code names, so that their scope can be understood before giving them a specific number.
   

Feature and Roadmap Council

• The Video Telephony Contribution from Packet Video was accepted. This means Symbian now has a complete open source video telephony solution (previously relied on manufacturers licensing from third party).
    
• The Blocks Contribution from Nokia was approved as an optional tool. It is a packaging tool that will help with the development of the platform.
   
• The PlatSim contribution is on hold (QEMU is the primary solution for platform simulation / emulation). The Bondi contribution has been withdrawn.
      
• The review of the Japanese input method for Symbian^4 Contribution was started. This provides a predictive input system for the Japanese language.

   Additional information is available in the minutes.

Architecture Council

• Tom Pritchard is taking over as Chairman of the Architecture Council from Daniel Rubio. Daniel Rubio is moving up to become the Head of Technology and Delivery at the Symbian Foundation following the departure of John Forsyth.
     
• The council heard a status update from the SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing) Working Group, which indicated that SMP plans are on schedule. Fujitsu and Nokia are both working in this area, a good example of co-operation that is facilitated by Symbian.
     
• The Adaptation Layer model was approved. This is part of the SHAI initiative that seeks to make its possible to run Symbian on a greater variety of hardware.
    
• The council discussed packaging tools, with consideration of the Blocks Contribution. The idea is to improve the current packaging process which has the end results of multiple ZIP files and can be unwieldy.
    
• The council discussed the deprecation of AVKON (in Symbian^4) onwards. It will become a platform API from Symbian^4 onwards. CONE and UIKON will remain because of dependencies.
    

Release Council

• S^2 is now officially closed (no further development), the final PDK 2.0.3 was issued on September 17th 2010.
     
• S^3 hardening status was assessed, with contributions from Nokia (N8), NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu. The council approved the hardening testing plan, which is used to assess how well the platform has been hardened.
     
• S^4 was assessed in terms of readiness for feature complete date (the date at which core features are frozen and emphasis moves to hardening). Currently the graphics bring up is the key risk.

  Additional information is available in the minutes.

User Interface Council

• Discussed  Japanese input method for Symbian^4 Contribution (see above).
     
• Symbian^4 User Interface patterns (example UI) have now been received from Nokia. It includes patterns which describe tasks and descriptions of the Orbit Widgets (the building blocks). The pattern library will not be public until Symbian^4 application development is being actively publicised.
    
• The Social Mobile Framework competition was discussed, which has now been defined and is looking for funding.
    
• The council agreed to start a gap analysis project, where Symbian^4 will be compared to competing platforms, in order to find areas that need to be improved. 

Additional information is available in the minutes.