Multi-core processors to hit Symbian smartphones

The future is brighter for Symbian mobile devices, following the announcement that the Symbian OS will support the ARM Symmetric Multi-processor (SMP) architecture. The SMP architecture uses multiple CPU cores to provide 'performance on demand', whereby individual cores can be switched on and off, depending on the needs of the device, thus conserving power.

The new multi-core ARM processors should be a crucial step to increasing the battery life of portable devices, which tends to be growing shorter and shorter, as contemporary mobiles are getting evermore power-thirsty. We doubt it we are likely to see multi-core CPUs in Symbian handsets anytime soon, but at least that's some promising news, while we wait for the Symbian 9.5 (announced March 2007) to finally start being implemented in mobile devices.

This comes just a couple a days after Adobe announced the release of their Flash Lite 3.0 platform. The upgrade of the widespread Flash Lite technology will open doors to using flash video and dynamic Web content on mobile devices, as well as to creating multimedia-driven interfaces (LG Prada and LG Viewty both share a flash-based user interface).

As of now, Adobe Flash Lite runs on multiple platforms, including S60 on Symbian OS, BREW and Windows Mobile 5, in addition to embedded operating systems on a variety of OEM platforms.

We are looking forward to seeing the fresh novelties put to use in future devices.