Mark Skrebels who is the Senior Release Manager at the Symbian Foundation has recently tweeted that Symbian^3 is now functionally complete. While this really makes no difference to users as such , it does give you confidence that all relevant devices are now well on their way to make it to the market in the 2nd half of the year.
This announcement signifies that the os is now in the hardening face where it will be will be heavily used to remove bugs. This is good news as we hope that the os releases in a condition which does NOT mirror the N97 firmware ie bug-ridden. The focus now is on improving stability, fixing defects (bugs) and related activities. The SDK for the os is expected in June with the functionally complete beta coming in August.