From the Symbian Foundation and Texas Instruments comes the news that the Zoom OMAP34x-II mobile development platform will be the first reference platform for the Symbian Foundation. This is a test device, capable of running various mobile operating systems, that can be used, to test code, by those wishing to contribute to the open source platform. It is also useful for developers wanting to explore and conduct tests on upcoming Symbian platform releases.

From the Symbian Foundation press release:

The foundation plans to move the platform to open source over the next two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License. This will make the platform code available to all for free, bringing additional innovation and engaging an even broader community in future developments. As part of the development of the platform, the foundation is fostering a community of developers, hardware manufacturers and other partners.

Using the Zoom OMAP34x-II MDP, Symbian developers will be able to quickly and easily validate smartphone and Mobile Internet Device (MID) applications that will run on Symbian^3 - the next release of the Symbian platform and is targeted for development in 2H 2009.

On the Symbian Foundation blog, David Wood notes that:

The commitment of the Symbian Foundation is that, every two weeks, the platform test code will be run on the Zoom 2 (that’s what’s meant when we say that it’s a reference execution environment).  We’ll publish the test results: which tests can’t be run (for any reasons), which tests run but produce wrong results, and which tests pass.  Developers can then run the same test suite on their version of the image - and compare the outcomes.

and goes on to say:

By the way, the Zoom 2 should also be of considerable interest to developers who have no intention of modifying the Symbian Platform code.  These developers will be able to copy their own applications onto the device and see how they work.  In this way, they’ll become familiar with Symbian^3 even before any device manufacturer releases a product based on that software.