Silverlight for Symbian Available for Download

One of the latest solutions available for the users of mobile phones running under the Symbian operating system is Silverlight. Coming to handsets as the result of a partnership between the Redmond-based software giant Microsoft and the Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia, Silverlight for Symbian has just been made generally available.

Silverlight for Symbian is being pushed into the wild as a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework that would offer to developers the possibility to come up with media experiences and rich interactive applications for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices too. Currently, the solution is available for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97 devices.

“We are very pleased to announce the general availability of Silverlight for Symbian. This brings the Silverlight experience to the 20+ million users of Nokia S60 5th edition Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97 devices,” the Silverlight for Symbian team states in a blog post announcing the RTM of the solution.

Some of the main features of Silverlight for Symbian include:
- Media: Hardware assisted Media playback of H.264 content. This gives a great media viewing experience using full hardware decode and hardware post processing.
- IIS Smooth Streaming: Enables users to access live and on demand media content streamed using IIS Smooth Streaming including multiple bit rate switching.
- Rich UI: Developers get access to the Silverlight V2 surface area to create Rich Interactive Web Applications.
- .NET Programmability: .NET Compact Framework class libraries and runtime.

The owners of a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or of a Nokia N97 or Nokia N97 Mini can try out the new Silverlight for Symbian from the Ovi Store. Through this solution, users would be able to enjoy new applications built for their handsets based on Microsoft's technology. At least two such software solutions are available for download, including the Bing and HSN applications, while more details on what Silverlight for Symbian is all about can be found here.