On 11 February , Nokia announced that it would use Microsoft 's Windows Phone OS as its primary smartphone platform, whilst Symbian would be gradually wound down. Several non-Nokia companies are still releasing new Symbian phones after Nokia stopped releasing new phones, like FF from Fujitsu [15] or SHF from Sharp , [16] as late as mid Afterwards, different software platforms were created for Symbian, backed by different groups of mobile phone manufacturers.
In June , Nokia announced the acquisition of Symbian Ltd. The platform has been designated as the successor to Symbian OS, following the official launch of the Symbian Foundation in April The Symbian platform was officially made available as open source code in February Nokia became the major contributor to Symbian's code, since it then possessed the development resources for both the Symbian OS core and the user interface.
Since then Nokia has been maintaining its own code repository for the platform development, regularly releasing its development to the public repository. The code was published under EPL on 4 February ; Symbian Foundation reported this event to be the largest codebase moved to Open Source in history. However, some important components within Symbian OS were licensed from third parties, which prevented the foundation from publishing the full source under EPL immediately; instead much of the source was published under a more restrictive Symbian Foundation License SFL and access to the full source code was limited to member companies only, although membership was open to any organisation.
In November , the Symbian Foundation announced that due to changes in global economic and market conditions and also a lack of support from members such as Samsung [21] and Sony Ericsson , it would transition to a licensing-only organisation; [22] Nokia announced it would take over the stewardship of the Symbian platform. Symbian Foundation will remain the trademark holder and licensing entity and will only have non-executive directors involved.
On 11 February , Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft that would see it adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, [23] and Symbian will be its franchise platform dropping Symbian as its main smartphone OS of choice.
By 5 April , Nokia ceased to openly source any portion of the Symbian software and reduced its collaboration to a small group of pre-selected partners in Japan.
On 22 June , Nokia made an agreement with Accenture for an outsourcing program. Accenture will provide Symbian-based software development and support services to Nokia through ; about 2, Nokia employees became Accenture employees as of October Nokia terminated its support of software development and maintenance for Symbian with effect from 1 January , thereafter refusing to publish new or changed Symbian applications or content in the Nokia Store and terminating its 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification.
Qt can also be installed on older Symbian devices. When more applications gradually feature a user interface reworked in Qt, the legacy S60 framework AVKON will be deprecated and no longer included with new devices at some point, thus breaking binary compatibility with older S60 applications. Symbian was the first mobile platform to make use of WebKit in June Nokia released a new browser with the release of Symbian Anna with improved speed and an improved user interface.
Symbian has strong localization support enabling manufacturers and 3rd party application developers to localize their Symbian based products in order to support global distribution. Current Symbian release Symbian Belle has support for 48 languages, which Nokia makes available on device in language packs set of languages which cover the languages commonly spoken in the area where the device variant is intended to be sold.
All language packs have in common English or a locally relevant dialect of it. The supported languages [with dialects] and scripts in Symbian Belle are:. Symbian Belle marks the introduction of Kazakh, while Korean is no longer supported. Web Run time WRT is a portable application framework that allows creating widgets on the S60 Platform ; it is an extension to the S60 WebKit based browser that allows launching multiple browser instances as separate JavaScript applications.
Apps compiled for the simulator are compiled to native code for the development platform, rather than having to be emulated. Before the release of the Qt SDK, this was the standard development environment. A choice of compilers is available including a newer version of GCC see external links below.
This can make even relatively simple programs initially harder to implement than in other environments. It is possible that the techniques, developed for the much more restricted mobile hardware and compilers of the s, caused extra complexity in source code because programmers are required to concentrate on low-level details instead of more application-specific features.
The CodeWarrior tools were replaced during by Carbide. Fully featured software can be created and released with the Express edition, which is free. Features such as UI design, crash debugging etc. Microsoft Visual Studio and are also supported via the Carbide. In the past, Visual Basic , Visual Basic. On 13 March AppForge ceased operations; Oracle purchased the intellectual property, but announced that they did not plan to sell or provide support for former AppForge products.
Net60 , a. With Net60, VB. Symbian OS development is also possible on Linux and Mac OS X using tools and methods developed by the community, partly enabled by Symbian releasing the source code for key tools. Other tools include SuperWaba , which can be used to build Symbian 7. Nokia S60 phones can also run Python scripts when the interpreter Python for S60 is installed, with a custom made API that allows for Bluetooth support and such.
There is also an interactive console to allow the user to write Python scripts directly from the phone. Once developed, Symbian applications need to find a route to customers' mobile phones. An alternative is to partner with a phone manufacturer and have the software included on the phone itself. Symbian's design is subdivided into technology domains , [42] each of which comprises a number of software packages.
Every package is allocated to exactly one technology domain, based on the general functional area to which the package contributes and by which it may be influenced. By grouping related packages by themes, the Symbian Foundation hopes to encourage a strong community to form around them and to generate discussion and review.
The Symbian System Model [44] illustrates the scope of each of the technology domains across the platform packages. Packages are owned and maintained by a package owner, a named individual from an organization member of the Symbian Foundation, who accepts code contributions from the wider Symbian community and is responsible for package.
The Symbian kernel EKA2 supports sufficiently fast real-time response to build a single-core phone around it—that is, a phone in which a single processor core executes both the user applications and the signalling stack.
It has been termed a nanokernel , because it needs an extended kernel to implement any other abstractions. It contains a scheduler , memory management and device drivers, with networking, telephony and file system support services in the OS Services Layer or the Base Services Layer. The inclusion of device drivers means the kernel is not a true microkernel.
Symbian features pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection , like other operating systems especially those created for use on desktop computers.
Symbian OS was created with three systems design principles in mind:. To best follow these principles, Symbian uses a microkernel , has a request-and-callback approach to services, and maintains separation between user interface and engine. Later OS iterations diluted this approach in response to market demands, notably with the introduction of a real-time kernel and a platform security model in versions 8 and 9.
There is a strong emphasis on conserving resources which is exemplified by Symbian-specific programming idioms like descriptors and a cleanup stack. Similar methods exist to conserve storage space.
Further, all Symbian programming is event-based, and the central processing unit CPU is switched into a low power mode when applications are not directly dealing with an event. This is done via a programming idiom called active objects. Similarly the Symbian approach to threads and processes is driven by reducing overheads. The All over Model contains the following layers, from top to bottom:. It also includes the Text Window Server and the Text Shell: the two basic services from which a completely functional port can be created without the need for any higher layer services.
Symbian has a microkernel architecture, which means that the minimum necessary is within the kernel to maximise robustness, availability and responsiveness.
It contains a scheduler , memory management and device drivers, but other services like networking, telephony and filesystem support are placed in the OS Services Layer or the Base Services Layer. The EKA2 real-time kernel, which has been termed a nanokernel , contains only the most basic primitives and requires an extended kernel to implement any other abstractions.
Symbian is designed to emphasise compatibility with other devices, especially removable media file systems. The internal data formats rely on using the same APIs that create the data to run all file manipulations. This has resulted in data-dependence and associated difficulties with changes and data migration. Each of these has a plug-in scheme. PRT" protocol modules to implement various networking protocol schemes. There is also a large volume of user interface UI Code. Only the base classes and substructure were contained in Symbian OS, while most of the actual user interfaces were maintained by third parties.
This is no longer the case. Symbian also contains graphics, text layout and font rendering libraries. These classes create the fundamental application behaviour. The remaining needed functions, the application view, data model and data interface, are created independently and interact solely through their APIs with the other classes.
Many of these are frameworks, and vendors are expected to supply plug-ins to these frameworks from third parties for example, Helix Player for multimedia codecs. This has the advantage that the APIs to such areas of functionality are the same on many phone models, and that vendors get a lot of flexibility. But it means that phone vendors needed to do a great deal of integration work to make a Symbian OS phone. Symbian includes a reference user-interface called "TechView.
It is very similar to the user interface from the Psion Series 5 personal organiser and is not used for any production phone user interface.
Symbian, as it advanced to OS version 7. Things began more complicated when applications developed for different Symbian UIs platforms are not compatible with each other, and this led to OS fragmentation. User Interfaces platforms that run on or are based on Symbian OS include:. Also called Series 60, it was backed mainly by Nokia. There are several editions of this platform, appearing first as S60 1st Edition on Nokia Used by Nokia Communicators such as Nokia i.
Touch and button based. Only phone using this platform is Nokia The last major release version is UIQ3. It was discontinued after the formation of Symbian Foundation, and the decision to consolidate different Symbian UI versions into one led to the adoption of S60 as the version going forward.
Japan Only. Samsung: i Omnia HD , [66]. On 16 November , the millionth smartphone running the OS was shipped. Symbian has lost market share over the years as the market has dramatically grown, with new competing platforms entering the market, though its sales have increased during the same timeframe. Prior reports on device shipments as published in February showed that the Symbian devices formed a In the number of "smart mobile device" sales, Symbian devices were the market leaders for Statistics showed that Symbian devices formed a In Q2 according to IDC worldwide market share has dropped to an all-time low of 4.
The users of Symbian in the countries with non-Latin alphabets such as Russia, Ukraine and others have been criticizing the complicated method of language switching for many years. After typing the Latin letter, the user must repeat the procedure to return to his native keyboard. This method slows down typing significantly. All other mobile operating systems, as well as Nokia's S40 phones, enable switching between two initially selected languages by one click or a single gesture.
In November , Smartphone blog All About Symbian criticized the performance of Symbian's default web browser and recommended the alternative browser Opera Mobile. There are many different versions and editions of Symbian, which led to fragmentation. Apps and software may be incompatible when installed across different versions of Symbian. Symbian OS is subject to a variety of viruses, the best known of which is Cabir.
Usually these send themselves from phone to phone by Bluetooth. So far, none have taken advantage of any flaws in Symbian OS — instead, they have all asked the user whether they would like to install the software, with somewhat prominent warnings that it can't be trusted, although some rely on social engineering , often in the form of messages that come with the malware, purporting to be a utility , game or some other application for Symbian.
This is no longer the case. Symbian also contains graphics, text layout and font rendering libraries. These classes create the fundamental application behaviour. The remaining needed functions, the application view, data model and data interface, are created independently and interact solely through their APIs with the other classes. Many of these are frameworks, and vendors are expected to supply plug-ins to these frameworks from third parties for example, Helix Player for multimedia codecs.
This has the advantage that the APIs to such areas of functionality are the same on many phone models, and that vendors get a lot of flexibility. But it means that phone vendors needed to do a great deal of integration work to make a Symbian OS phone.
Symbian includes a reference user-interface called "TechView. It is very similar to the user interface from the Psion Series 5 personal organiser and is not used for any production phone user interface. Symbian, as it advanced to OS version 7.
Things became more complicated when applications developed for different Symbian GUI platforms were not compatible with each other, and this led to OS fragmentation.
Samsung: i Omnia HD , [75]. In Q1 2. Symbian Ltd. This has been attributed to North American customers preferring wireless PDAs over smartphones, as well as Nokia's low popularity there.
On 16 November , the millionth smartphone running the OS was shipped. Symbian has lost market share over the years as the market has dramatically grown, with new competing platforms entering the market, though its sales have increased during the same timeframe.
Prior reports on device shipments as published in February showed that the Symbian devices formed a In the number of "smart mobile device" sales, Symbian devices were the market leaders for Statistics showed that Symbian devices formed a In Q2 , according to IDC worldwide market share has dropped to an all-time low of 4. The users of Symbian in the countries with non-Latin alphabets such as Russia, Ukraine and others have been criticizing the complicated method of language switching for many years.
After typing the Latin letter, the user must repeat the procedure to return to their native keyboard. This method slows down typing significantly.
All other mobile operating systems, as well as Nokia's S40 phones, enable switching between two initially selected languages by one click or a single gesture. In November , Smartphone blog All About Symbian criticized the performance of Symbian's default web browser and recommended the alternative browser Opera Mobile. There are many different versions and editions of Symbian, which led to fragmentation.
Apps and software may be incompatible when installed across different versions of Symbian. Symbian OS is subject to a variety of viruses, the best known of which is Cabir.
Usually these send themselves from phone to phone by Bluetooth. So far, none have exploited any flaws in Symbian OS. Instead, they have all asked the user whether they want to install the software, with somewhat prominent warnings that it can't be trusted, although some rely on social engineering , often in the form of messages that come with the malware: rogue software purporting to be a utility, game, or some other application for Symbian.
However, with a view that the average mobile phone user shouldn't have to worry about security, Symbian OS 9. Installed software is theoretically unable to do damaging things such as costing the user money by sending network data without being digitally signed — thus making it traceable. Commercial developers who can afford the cost can apply to have their software signed via the Symbian Signed program. Developers also have the option of self-signing their programs. Some operators opted to disable all certificates other than the Symbian Signed certificates.
Some other hostile programs are listed below, but all of them still require the input of the user to run. Symbian OS 9. The hack was criticised by Nokia for potentially increasing the threat posed by mobile viruses as unsigned code can be executed. EPOC16 featured a primarily monochrome, keyboard-operated graphical interface [] — the hardware for which it was designed originally had pointer input in the form of a digitiser panel. EPOC32 was a pre-emptive multitasking, single user operating system with memory protection, which encourages the application developer to separate their program into an engine and an interface.
One of the first licensees was the short-lived Geofox , which halted production with less than 1, units sold. This release has been retrospectively dubbed Symbian OS 5. It was not an open device: software could not be installed. The 'u' in the name refers to it supporting Unicode.
Bluetooth support was added. Almost , Symbian phones were shipped in , rising to 2. Development of different UIs was made generic with a "reference design strategy" for either 'smartphone' or 'communicator' devices, subdivided further into keyboard- or tablet-based designs. The first one of them was the Nokia smartphone featuring Symbian OS 6. Other notable S60 Symbian 6. Despite these efforts to be generic, the UI was clearly split between competing companies: Crystal or Sapphire was Nokia, Quartz was Ericsson.
DFRD was abandoned by Symbian in late , as part of an active retreat from UI development in favour of headless delivery. One million Symbian phones were shipped in Q1 , with the rate increasing to one million a month by the end of Symbian OS 7.
In , Psion sold its stake in Symbian. The same year, the first worm for mobile phones using Symbian OS, Cabir , was developed, which used Bluetooth to spread itself to nearby phones. See Cabir and Symbian OS threats. The first and maybe the most famous smartphone featuring Symbian OS 8.
Symbian OS has generally maintained reasonable binary code compatibility. Substantial changes were needed for 9. Symbian 9. To access certain APIs, developers have to sign their application with a digital signature. Basic capabilities are user-grantable and developers can self-sign them, while more advanced capabilities require certification and signing via the Symbian Signed program, which uses independent 'test houses' and phone manufacturers for approval. For example, file writing is a user-grantable capability while access to Multimedia Device Drivers require phone manufacturer approval.
Nokia phones with Symbian OS 9. The release is also better known as S60 5th edition, as it is the bundled interface for the OS. On 24 August , Nokia announced it officially for three new smartphones, the Nokia later replaced by Nokia , Nokia , and Nokia Nokia officially renamed Symbian Belle to Nokia Belle in a company blog post.
As of 7 February , Nokia Belle update is available for most phone models through Nokia Suite, coming later to Australia. Users can check the availability at the Nokia homepage. On 1 March , Nokia announced a Feature Pack 1 update for Nokia Belle which will be available as an update to Nokia , , excluding others , and for Nokia PureView natively. Symbian Carla and Donna were the planned follow-up releases to Belle, to be released in late and late respectively.
However it was acknowledged in May that these had been cancelled and that the upcoming Belle Feature Pack 2 would be the last version of the operating system.
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All About Symbian. ZDNet UK. Live Hacking 10 December Symbian Freak 27 March Hello, Nokia Belle". Nokia Conversations. Morris, Ben 22 June Touch-screen Symbian phones. Nokia platforms. Accredited Symbian Developer Carbide. Mobile operating systems.
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Navigation Navigation Add a new article Search in all topics Search in namespaces Search in categories Search using prefix. Wiki tools Wiki tools Special pages. Page tools Page tools. Userpage tools. Other projects In other languages Add links. EPOC Symbian. Proprietary software , [3] formerly Free software — ARM , x86 [4]. Real-time microkernel , EKA2.
S60 from Proprietary software , [5] formerly Eclipse Public. Yes, with extra headset [61]. Unknown, but have 1seg support [62]. Yes, with extra headset.
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