Symbian
Sign in to saveSymbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was mostly used on ARM processors, although an x86 port exists. A modified version of Symbian for x86 was used on the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C where it was dual booted with Windows 7. Symbian was used primarily by Nokia, and in select models of Samsung, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson. It was also prevalent in Japan by brands i
AI overview
Symbian was a mobile operating system created in 1998 that powered smartphones and personal digital assistants, most famously used by Nokia and several other major phone manufacturers. It has since been discontinued, but it was historically significant as one of the early platforms that competed in the smartphone market before iOS and Android dominated.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- OS.name
- Symbian
- OS.logo
- Symbian logo.svg
- OS.logo_size
- 220px
- OS.screenshot
- Nokia Belle OS Feature Pack 2 screenshot.png
- OS.screenshot_size
- 220px
- OS.caption
- Home screen of Nokia Belle Feature Pack 2 in Romanian (last version of Symbian)
- OS.developer
- Symbian (1998–2008)Symbian Foundation (2008–11)Nokia (2010–11)Accenture on behalf of Nokia (2011–13)
- OS.source model
- Proprietary software, formerly Free software (2010–11)
- OS.kernel type
- Real-time microkernel, EKA2
- OS.supported platforms
- ARM, x86
- OS.ui
- S60 (from 2009)
- OS.family
Article
32 sectionsContents
- History
- Features
- User interface
- Browser
- Multiple language support
- Application development
- Application development
- Qt
- Symbian C++
- Other languages
- Deployment
- Architecture
- Technology domains and packages
- Symbian kernel
- Design
- Software Installation Script
- Operating system
- Symbian UI variants, platforms
- Version comparison
- Market share and competition
- Criticism
- Malware
- Bypassing platform security
- Version history
- List of devices
- See also
- General
- Development-related
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
- Symbian^3 EPL source
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was mostly used on ARM processors, although an x86 port exists. A modified version of Symbian for x86 was used on the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C where it was dual booted with Windows 7. Symbian was used primarily by Nokia, and in select models of Samsung, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson. It was also prevalent in Japan by brands including Fujitsu, Sharp and Mitsubishi. As a pioneer that established the smartphone industry, it was the most popular smartphone OS on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, at a time when smartphones were in limited use, when it was overtaken by iOS and Android. It was notably less popular in North America in comparison to Windows Mobile and Pocket PC platforms.
The Symbian OS platform is formed of two components: one being the microkernel-based operating system with its associated libraries, and the other being the user interface (as middleware), which provides the graphical shell atop the OS. The most prominent user interface was the S60 (formerly Series 60) platform built by Nokia, first released in 2002 and powering most Nokia Symbian devices. UIQ was a competing user interface mostly used by Motorola and Sony Ericsson that focused on pen-based devices, rather than a traditional keyboard interface from S60. Another interface was the MOAP(S) platform from carrier NTT DoCoMo in the Japanese market. Applications for these different interfaces were not compatible with each other, despite each being built atop Symbian OS. Nokia became the largest shareholder of Symbian Ltd. in 2004 and purchased the entire company in 2008. The non-profit Symbian Foundation was then created to make a royalty-free successor to Symbian OS. Seeking to unify the platform, S60 became the Foundation's favoured interface and UIQ stopped development. The touchscreen-focused Symbian^1 (or S60 5th Edition) was created as a result in 2009. Symbian^2 (based on MOAP) was used by NTT DoCoMo, one of the members of the Foundation, for the Japanese market. Symbian^3 was released in 2010 as the successor to S60 5th Edition, by which time it became fully free software. The transition from a proprietary operating system to a free software project is believed to be one of the largest in history. Symbian^3 received the Anna and Belle updates in 2011.