There are many steps between a semi working technology and something that's considered a release candidate for devices.

Symbian is currently going through that hardening process with its Symbian^3 OS, which will first be available to the public in the shape of Nokia's N8 device, due sometime in August.

In the meantime, Symbian's released a Product Development Kit.

PDK 3.0.0 is the first PDK since S^3 achieved its functionally complete milestone on June 16.

Ready for action

According to Symbian, it's the first fully open-sourced Symbian release and contains a full build of the Symbian^3 platform along with the corresponding source code, giving developers access to the S^3 featureset and providing the community with the means to start taking S^3 into devices.

In terms of new features, it includes HDMI support, the introduction of next generation graphics, better data networking and a new UI theme. It's also the first release to support a full UI ROM executing on ARMv5 platforms.

You can download S^3 here.