Silverlight for Symbian Now Available

Silverlight technology is now available for Symbian devices by way of a new download from Nokia’s OVI store. The latest release works on S60 5th edition phones, a lineup which includes the Nokia XpressMusic, N97 and N97 Mini, which are used by 20+ million users worldwide.

The Silverlight technology brings the following features to these Nokia users (according to the Team blog post):

• 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.

But as an end user, you may want to know what exactly you can do with Silverlight on your Nokia phone. Well for starters, there’s a handy Bing app featuring News, Entertainment, Video, Sports, Weather, Money and Stocks info. There’s also an HSN app which lets you watch the Home Shopping network Live, On Demand while also providing quick access to the “deal of the day” and more.

Developers interested in building their own apps should check out the developer tools and device runtime.