Symbian OS

Symbian OS is the operating system of production of Symbian company intended for mobile devices: communicators, smatrfonov, phones.

Menu of the Symbian OS 9.4 operating system

History

Eventually pocket computers became more powerful. By 1994, restriction in 64 Kb, inherent for the 16-bit systems, began to represent a serious obstacle to software development, besides it became clear that the system of such class should be postponed for broader spectrum of devices. So there was a new Symbian OS system. Having saved in itself the best lines previous OS Psion, it had to become completely 32-bit, postponed for any hardware platform and architecture. It would allow Symbian OS to become the open system available to licensing by third-party mobile device manufacturers. For this purpose from the Psion group the independent enterprise for creation of the software - Psion Software was selected. A new system had to become the standard for wireless information devices due to licensing to a wide range of producers of this industry. In April, 1997 there was the first version of Symbian OS and at once on its base the new product was created: Psion Series 5. Licensing of new OS began even before its official issue. Symbian OS with its efficiency and flexibility and also high technological level Symbian Psion Software (earlier) created exclusively favorable basis for creation new system SOFTWARE for wireless devices. The Psion Software company was selected from Psion Group, and replaced the name with Symbian Ltd, having become Ericsson joint venture, Nokia, Motorola and Psion. From the very beginning a system was projected as completely object-oriented. As language of implementation C++ also the object-oriented programming language most functional today was selected as the most powerful.

October, 2010: Together with the publication of positive financial results Nokia announced change of strategy for Symbian development. From now on the platform will be continuously updated, permitting users to install updates on the devices existing at them.^[1]

Nokia decided to refuse release of Symbian^4, the next version of the platform for smartphones which release was planned for 2011. Instead the company intends to improve continuously the current version of the platform, adding to it new features step by step. New approach will allow to install updates on the existing smartphones. So for example, if earlier the user has to wait for a release of the first mobile phones based on Symbian^4 to see this platform in operation, then now he can purchase N8 Nokia and wait for the corresponding updating, Ars Technica write. In the future there will be no separate versions of Symbian (^4, ^5, etc.), there will be just a Symbian platform.

Besides, Nokia announced intention to use a framework for application development of Qt as the basic, and both for Symbian, and for other platform - MeeGo. It is expected that it will allow to seize the graphical interface of mobile devices and in general to increase quality of the user experience - to change what Nokia most strongly loses to other vendors in.

Representatives of Nokia assured that the company will try to save users from fragmentation (existence of a large number of versions of the platform with which it is necessary to try to obtain compatibility). It is planned that all third-party software released by a certain moment will be compatible to updates of Symbian which will be released in the future.

November, 2010 the European Commission announced selection within the state program on assistance to the innovative development of economy of €11 million for support of the Symbian platform. As much again will select consortium SYMBEOSE (Symbian – the Embedded Operating System for Europe), IntoMobile reports. Total €22 million will be in addition invested in the platform.

SYMBEOSE will concentrate on three purposes. First, the organization is going to make development of devices on Symbian simpler due to adaptation of the software for different chipsets. Secondly, the consortium will be engaged in development of Symbian in the direction of the built-in solutions (home appliances, sensors etc.). Thirdly, researches in the field of multithreaded and cloud computing and other mobile devices of technologies, perspective for the market, will begin to be conducted.

According to the official blog Symbian, the consortium SYMBEOSE included 24 producers of mobile phones, the operator, software developer and scientific center from eight European countries. Symbian Foundation and SYMBEOSE are different organizations which will exist at the same time and will not replace each other. The non-profit consortium Symbian Foundation founded by Nokia company heads development and support of the Symbian platform for mobile devices.

Versions

Symbian^3 is version 1.1 firmware

Updating increases stability and speed of operation of devices and also bears other improvements. For example, after updating it will be directly possible to accept meetings invitations from mail letters and to see the place of future meeting on the card.

Besides, users of N8 will receive the new version of Quickoffice, and on new devices three games - Need for Speed Shift, Real Golf and Galaxy on Fire will be preset. The existing owners of flagman model can download these games from Ovi Store free of charge.

Updating for C7 Nokia well from now on, for other two models will appear at the beginning of the next week. The new firmware can be loaded through update handler function of software on the smartphone or by means of the software of Ovi Suite on the computer.

Interesting Facts

• The name EPOC, the first version of a system, is reduction of "Electronic Piece Of Cheese" - an electronic piece of cheese. Originally the name should be Epoch or "era", but it seemed to engineers not too original. ^[2]
• In the first communicators of Nokia based on the Symbian operating system the AIKON graphic interface - "Nokia", only ^[3] was used

Links

Symbian OS for smartphones: that to what

Notes