Symbian cuts development time for Sendo X

Sendo has launched the first UK-developed smartphone, citing Symbian's operating system as a big factor in its speed to market.

The Sendo X is the first Symbian-based phone to synchronise email and calendar with a PC. It uses a graphics co-processor to deal with imaging, which frees up the central ARM processor.

A video camera with flash capable of storing 40 minutes of video is also built in.

"The development of the Sendo X was an easier job with Symbian," Sendo's chief executive, Hugh Brogan, told vnunet.com.

"Applications like Java weren't available when we were developing with Microsoft. Using them now has made the job of coming to market a lot easier."

Analyst Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysis said: "This is a quick way of getting a phone to market because Symbian's System 60 gives you a ready-made operating system and interface.

"A lot of Symbian's push has been in reducing the cost to market, whereas Microsoft is still further up the experience curve in this respect."

Sendo spent over 18 months developing the Z100 smartphone using the Microsoft operating system, only to see it pulled days before launch. It designed and built the Sendo X smartphone in less than a year.

Microsoft and Sendo are locked in legal action each other over the Z100.