Symbian

Symbian OS
DeveloperSymbian Ltd. (1998–2008)
Symbian Foundation (2008–11)
Nokia (2010–11)
Accenture on behalf of Nokia (2011–13)[1]
Written inC++[2]
OS familyRTOS
Working stateDiscontinued
Source modelClosed source,[3] previously open source (2010–11)
Initial release5 June 1997; 27 years ago (1997-06-05) (as EPOC32)
Latest releaseNokia Belle Feature Pack 2 / 2 October 2012
Available inMulti-lingual
Update method65
Package manager.sis, .sisx, .jad, .jar
PlatformsARM, x86[4]
Kernel typeReal-time microkernel, EKA2
Default
user interface
S60 (from 2009)
LicenseProprietary,[5] previously licensed under EPL
Official websitesymbian.nokia.com (defunct as of May 2014), symbian.org (defunct as of 2009–10)

Symbian OS is an operating system for mobile devices. It is designed for smartphones.

History

Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Psion and others joined to create Symbian association. This let them promote using EPOC designed for mobile phones. Symbian is a follower of EPOC system. It is used in pocket PC Psion, running on the ARM processors. This operating system has had many changes since it was first created. Nokia smartphones are the major users of Symbian OS. The last Symbian phone is the Nokia 808 PureView. The Nokia 808 PureView was released in May 2012.

Versions

Symbian 6.0 / 6.1

The first usable version of Symbian. It was used on Nokia 9210 communicator. Nokia sold over 500 000pcs of this type. Basic changes were: add bluetooth support, VGA camera.

Symbian 7.0 / 7.1

Very important version of Symbian OS. Developers add support of EDGE technology and IPv6. Change from pJava to Java ME. A virus, spread by bluetooth, caused problems with this version.

Symbian 8.0 / 8.1

Safer version of Symbian (because of the first virus), with CDMA, 3G, DVB-H and OpenGL support.

Symbian 9.0

There was only few changes, mostly for developers.

Symbian 9.x Version 9.1 was released in 2005. Nokia added support of Bluetooth 2.0, but some developers were angry because of the new security changes.

A new version came out every year after 2005. Because of fast technology research, mobile phones and operation systems made very large improvement quickly. The most recent Symbian OS is designed for touch phones and the newest technologies.

References

  1. Nokia and Accenture Finalize Symbian Software Development and Support Services Outsourcing Agreement
  2. Lextrait, Vincent (January 2010). "The Programming Languages Beacon, v10.0". Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  3. Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license. Ars Technica. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
  4. Lee Williams "Symbian on Intel's Atom architecture". Archived from the original on 19 April 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). blog.symbian.org. 16 April 2009
  5. "Not Open Source, just Open for Business". symbian.nokia.com. 4 April 2011. Retrieved 23 August 2014.[dead link]