Talk:Symbian OS

First Symbian phone
Isnt the first Symbian 6.0 phone Nokia 7650? --194.106.188.16 20:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC) Nope, that was Symbian 6.1. 9210 was the first 6.0 phone, R380 first ER5U phone. Adetaylor 22:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Moving the Symbian article
Most of the conversation below is off-topic, though a lot of it contains valuable suggestions and input. The question was specifically whether this article should be renamed as History of Symbian instead of being a current article on Symbian OS. Short answer - No, do not move the article. The operating system is still in use and the article would be harder to find under the "History of..." name. Perhaps the discussions below incent those with a Symbian bias to update the existing article? 74.241.226.172 (talk) 17:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)Tal Stewart, 9/29/2010
 * I agree to some extent. It will only be an improvement after rewriting/reshuffling Symbian platform and Symbian OS/History of Symbian. The current organization of the articles in not acceptable to me, because it keeps on causing confusion to all people/readers who are unfamiliar with the subject. Andries (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Symbian and open source
I thought Symbian OS was open source, can someone verify this off hand (and what license it is?) --ShaunMacPherson 12:09, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Symbian OS IS NOT Open Source. It is however an "Open platform" which means an API is provided to third parties allowing applications to be developed outside of Symbian.  Symbian's old tagline (that used to accompany the Logo) was "Innovation through openness" which unintentionally mislead some people into believing that Symbian OS was Open source.    —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.43.136 (talk) 14:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No that is not correct, Symbian OS source is sold via a development kit license (for development purposes) or customisation kit license (for device creation). --Edderly 22:34, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * So I guess this makes it impossible to run free software on Symbian OS, or is it? G-u-a-k-@ 18:40, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Running free software application on an OS does not require the source code to the OS. There is free software running on Symbian OS, since the software development kit (SDK) is available to all. For cross developing on PCs for the Symbian OS devicez, you can use the MS VC++ and/or Borland C++. You can also develop in Java for Symbian OS versions that have the Java runtime. See ...
 * Symbian SDKs
 * Open source development resources for Symbian
 * -- sabre23t 23:06, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I just found http://symbianos.org, a collection of free software for symbian :)

I think it is open source as from now! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeshan (talk • contribs) 16:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

That still does not explain why specific open source programs are mentioned in this article. It has absolutely nothing to do with Symbian OS, other than some people apparently liking those tools or not liking proprietary alternatives. 63.241.31.130 (talk) 01:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The Symbian Foundation platform (comprising the former Symbian OS and S60 UI) will be released under the Eclipse Public Licence. See Symbian Foundation website  Thing  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.93.61.49 (talk) 20:21, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Symbian processors
On what processors does Symbian run, and could it be possible to install a free operating system next to or instead of Symbian? 18:41, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I believe Symbian mostly run on Arm9 based CPUs. May be possible to install free OS alongside Symbian, but I haven't come across any when I was using Nokia 9210. You'd have to ask "real" Symbian OS developer this. Try ...
 * Symbian OS discussion forums
 * -- sabre23t 23:06, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Symbian OS runs on ARM CPUs. Earlier versions of Symbian OS were used in Psion Series 5 organisers. There is an active project here:
 * Open Psion
 * Which lets you run Linux (and X!) on a Psion Series 5, Series 7, Revo or netBook. In theory the same could be done on phones running later versions of Symbian OS, but I'm not aware of anyone attempting it.
 * --Rob

Can Symbian Os be installed in pentium processors and with a normal desktop configuration.if so how?.
 * Emulator from SDK can be installed, but it can't run native binaries, only those compiled for windows. Serg3d2 07:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Symbian redirect
Should it really come here rather than going to Symbian Ltd. which seems rather more natural?


 * Symbian usually associated with OS, not company.Serg3d2 08:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tags, Merge
I'm removing the &#123;{cleanup}} tag, if only because the article is now significantly different from when it was originally tagged, and has seen review by many others. Also, regarding the merge-tag from EPOC (computing) to here... does anyone have any comments on that? I'm slightly in favor of keeping the articles separate because: 1) The Symbian OS article is somewhat long already (17k).  2) the EPOC OS work was done by Psion, eg. done by a slightly different company, and we also have separate pages for details like Psion 3 and Psion 5, those pages are similar in length to the EPOC page, and if the EPOC page was felt to be too short, we could even go as far to merge those three together. 3) many people have edited the article, and none of them have performed the merge despite the suggestion. I don't have a really strong feeling on this, though if nobody comments for a while, I might remove the merge tag.  --Interiot 17:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge because EPOC was an important part of Symbian's history and Psion probably deserve more credit for this than they're getting currently. Plus the EPOC article is short and there is already EPOC info in this article. -- samj in out 13:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge complete, basic integration done, needs cleanup by expert. -- samj in out 13:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on the merge
EPOC really is Symbian OS. There's more difference between Symbian OS 8 and 9 than there is between EPOC 5 and Symbian OS 6. So I am in favour of the merge, but haven't been able/willing to approach it myself.

Once it's all merged into one page then it might be sensible to separate them out a bit, e.g. more pages for different versions. Just my 2p worth, anyway.

Adetaylor 21:38, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Symbian is used on mobile phones, EPOC was more for Psion devices, so for users it's a real difference, also in interface, interaction... I'd suggest leave them as separate articles.

Marijn de Jong 1:57, 14 December 2005 (CET)

I agree that the pages should be merged -- anonymous owner of several Psion PDA devices. 21:19 5 April 2006 (PST)

I'd keep them separate as the devices they run on are different. Stephen B Streater 06:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

To give each OS their fair due (which won't happen if they're merged) I think all EPOC (computing) material from this Symbian OS article should be moved (without loss) to the EPOC (computing) article. Just because the OS was merged, doesn't mean we should merge their articles too. The EPOC (computing) article has more historic value and the Symbian OS has more current value. Similar example here is eventhough Windows Mobile is based on Windows CE they're still kept seperate. The suggested content move to EPOC, will also help make this Symbian OS article more focused.—IncidentFlux [ TalkBack 21:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Missed this discussion but just finished the merge. Symbian is effectively EPOC, rebadged and run differently. It doesn't justify a separate article (I'd have AfD'd otherwise) and EPOC will see more eyeballs in the Symbian article, giving Psion their due credit. -- samj in out 13:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

External link explosion
I'd prefer if the article had only 5-8 external links, beyond those directly connected to Symbian or Nokia. Having a long list of low-quality sites just encourages others to add more low-quality links (and wikipedia isn't a repository of links).

I'm not really closely familiar with all the sites listed here, but I have a few suggestions for organizing these: --Interiot 12:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) separate out the links that are more associated with developer information, from the sites that list software/hacks to download (since devs and end-users probably want different kinds of content)
 * 2) single-contributor blogs are less valuable than sites that are maintained or contributed to by many people.  I removed symbianreview.com because it's hardly ever updated.  symbianwatch.com is updated somewhat regularly...  could we vote on this one?
 * 3) If there are a lot of forums/wikis out there, can we try to just list the top 3 or 4 of them?

Help with Carbide.c++ page
Hi, given my job at Nokia making Carbide.c++ I'm destined to be biased about my product but thought it would be useful to have a separate page for the tool, much like Visual Studio has its own. Now the Carbide.c++ page has been flagged as advertising... I could use some outside help to weigh the content for neutrality.

Cheers, Maahonen

Hi, I've made it more neutral, although that did involve including some criticism of Carbide. Hopefully you don't mind too much - I expect it should at least save the article from deletion. I definitely do agree it deserves a page. Cheers, Adetaylor 08:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Skulls Virus?
Shouldn't there be a reference to the skulls virus? Solidsnake204 19:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it's not an actual virus, just a proof of concept never found in the wild. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.168.1.18 (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

Symbian OS page needs major revamp
I was checking out the Windows Mobile page and its being very well maintained considering the fact Windows Mobile users have a much smaller market share. Can someone with lots of Symbian OS knowledge and experience contribute please. Current sate of this page is just pathetic! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MMuzammils (talk • contribs) 06:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC).
 * ah but...windows mobile is a windows subset and there are *far* more windoze OS developers than Symbian OS. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.209.32.108 (talk) 20:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

Windows mobile is derivative of windows ce which is not a subset of windows for CISC. All are members of the superset of microsoft products

Competition section
The "Competition" section appears to be much confused technically, even somewhat self-contradictory.

For instance, there has been no need for real-time features in unix operating systems to properly drive the network stack, even at 10gbit, and this has not prevented them from breaking the land speed records. As long as hardware interrupts can be served with a minimum of latency and code (either delegating to software interrupts or other scheduling mechanisms such as a task or thread), a networking stack should be no issue for a non-realtime operating system with a single processor. Adding a second processor does not change this either.

Moreover, it is generally more common for an RTOS to explicitely dedicate tasks to specific processors, while the section appears to state otherwise (and an RT or non-RT OS can both properly function with single or multiple processors as long as the scheduler and structure of the OS allows it).

As for power saving, most multitasking OSs allow to temporarily halt the processor until an interesting hardware interrupt occurs (and the interesting ones can be specified in software via the interrupt mask).

Thus, it appears erroneous to directly link OS capability with hardware configuration, which the text appears to suggest.

IMO, it requires a rewrite. The competition issue more has to do with human decisions and market factors than with hardware or software capabilities in this context, because the processors and memory in units which can run Symbian OS are capable enough to run a variety of other OSs (as well as NetBSD or Linux, for instance).

66.11.179.30 10:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I wrote most of that originally, and I've no problem with anyone who wants to rewrite it. Adetaylor 13:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it looks like someone completely re-wrote it. I took out the reference to Android, since that isn't yet technically competition. Also, should iPhone OS really be referenced as such? Apple claims it's OSX, which I'm technically dubious about, but I guess they can call it what they want to call it. Left as is for now. Morisy (talk) 12:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Confusion in the Info box and the introductory lines.
The introductory line says that the Symbian OS "runs exclusively on ARM processors", whereas the info box says that the x86 platform is also supported. Well, as far as I know, 0x86 is nearly out of the market for mobile phones. So the info box is either redundant, or for the sake of completeness, is contradictory to the introduction lines. I could not find any site complementing the claim neither refuting it. So can anyone please make the necessary changes?

Musically ut 05:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * the emulator builds run on intel :)

Design
There are a bit too many claims about how the design of Symbian OS with leaves, cleanup stack and active objects help reduce memory.

To use the cleanup-stack and LEAVEs instead of for example auto pointers and exceptions, makes the programmer him/herself more directly responsible for memory management, which may or may not be safer than letting this be more automatic. Also it is really up to the programmer if this will save footprint.

Symbian descriptors save a couple of bytes per string compared with STL's strings, how much importance is this of today compared to code portability?

Also I doubt the CPU switches off when there are no events to process. --Magnez 22:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You are correct. The claims, if any will be overstatements. Readers Write About Symbian, OS X and the iPhone will make an interesting read and it backs most of the claims made in the Article here. Musically ut 07:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, the article says:

" There is a strong emphasis on conserving memory, using Symbian-specific programming idioms such as descriptors and a cleanup stack. Together with other techniques, these keep memory usage low and memory leaks rare. "

I think I wrote that (and a lot of the rest of the article). The first sentence is obviously true - there's certainly a large emphasis on these things in Symbian OS programming, whether or not they do any good! You can't go two lines of code in a Symbian programme without bumping into one or the other. As for the second sentence - it probably could do with citing something, but I'd still say it's clearly true. Memory leaks are indeed rare on Symbian OS, and memory usage is low. It's the overall *emphasis* of the OS, including these individual features as examples, that make it that way.

In general terms I wish that Symbian OS did use STL strings and exceptions instead. I'm sure that would be the right decision decision nowadays (we can argue indefinitely about whether it was the right one when Symbian OS was made). But, nevertheless, there's still an emphasis on saving memory, with some success, and I reckon most Symbian books will tell you so.

CPU switching off: yes, that's an overstatement. The CPU goes into a low-power mode and doesn't process any instructions; it just waits for interrupts. This is made possible by a general OS architecture which largely removes the need for polling. For this reason, a Symbian OS phone can go many seconds or minutes between responding to interrupts, without the CPU powering up enough to process any instructions. This is only possible due to the universal provision of asynchronous APIs all over the place (which manifests itself in the universal use of active objects). I don't know for sure, but I have serious doubts that a Linux phone or any other desktop-oriented OS, is quite so focussed on asynchronity and thus able to be quite so aggressive in putting the CPU into a low power mode.

Generally: when I began, this page was basically a stub. I expanded it a lot. I'm sure I should have cited some sources etc. There seems to be a consensus that a lot of this page is rubbish, and needs redoing. I totally agree: I think that this page is woefully inadequate for coverage of Symbian OS, and I wish somebody else would muck in and revitalise it. But believe me it's better than when I started :-) Adetaylor 08:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, on some current silicon platforms the clocks and voltage regulators supplying the CPU core will be turned off when the platform is put into it's lowest power modes so by that definition, the CPU can be considered to be turned off. Obviously this needs some careful management to ensure that the CPU can be woken up in time to process any events but it would just not be possible to have a high speed processor in a phone with a standby time of several days on a small battery without this kind of technology - Anon

Openness and GPL
Can editor comment the latest "Openness" edit about GPL ? Is it applicable to GPL 1 ? What about LGPL ? What is the source of information ? Is it editor opinion, or there were some precedents ? I think this part need more in depth explanation and references.Serg3d2 16:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Should be info about platform security hack put here ?Serg3d2 (talk) 18:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hard vs. Soft
The claim that this is a "hard" Real-Time OS (RTOS) needs to be backed-up with a reference. Most commercial real-time systems are soft; only medical and other safety/critical systems constitute hard real-time systems. PDAs and smart phones do not constitute hard systems. It is a very common misconception to think of any system with real-time response as a 'hard' real-time system. In fact, most are soft. This includes networking devices. Also, the designation is that of the entire system, including the hardware, not just of the RTOS. P00r 04:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Tone
Why is there a flag in the Structure section questioning the articles tone? Mathiastck (talk) 20:05, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Linux phones need two cores??
from artical:

"Symbian OS EKA2 supports sufficiently-fast real-time response that it is possible 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. This is not a feature that is available from Linux. "

...apparently this company has made a Linux phone running on a single core: http://www.purplelabs.com/news-press-release-view.php?code=76

"NXP offers powerful 3G and 3.5G multimedia platforms running on a single ARM926 processor core" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.172.90.47 (talk) 19:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Performance problems
Should there be some part of the article talking about the bad performance problems (and fixes of some of them in later versions) of symbian OS. (especially file access was very slow on old versions, now faster but still not very good)Hkultala (talk) 07:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Symbian is going open source
According to computerworld.com Symbian OS is going open source. Could someone with wiki-skills write this —Precedingunsigned comment added by 87.56.189.197 (talk) 14:27, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That article says very little, and many news outlets seem to be confusing the marketing term "open operating system" (meaning that anyone can develop for it) with "open source" (which means something else entirely). There needs to be more proof than this that Symbian is turning open source, if this is the case. Xmoogle (talk) 22:53, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

"Open"
It seems Nokia and the other Symbian people are talking a lot about Symbian being an "open platform", meaning that anyone can develop software for it, which a lot of people (including people in this talk page) are mistaking for meaning that the OS itself is open source. In fact, before I made an edit to change it a few minutes ago, the article was calling Symbian an "Open Operating System" (a marketing phrase used a lot by the Symbian people), with the word "Open" linked to Open Source Software. As I'm 99% sure Symbian is *not* open source, this is misleading and wrong, and I intend to revert any edits that again make it look like it's an open source OS, unless such edits cite a reliable source confirming it to be open source - and be careful, as some news articles have *also* seemingly confused the "open OS" marketing term with "open source" - and preferably state what license the OS is under, and a link to where the source code can be downloaded would also be helpful (this doesn't seem to exist so far). So please, don't make the mistake of implying (or outright stating) that Symbian is open source unless there is reliable proof that this is the case. Xmoogle (talk) 22:50, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not even open in that way, because developers need to get their software signed, but they can't access all features even after that, and other serious restrictions (e.g. locking to IMEI, 36 months time limit) are in effect. Sounds like Microsoft's illegal tactics. http://www.simplysymbian.com/2008/03/04/how-to-symbian-sign-applications-using-open-signed/


 * Some news about symbian & open source: http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/open-source-business/news/index.cfm?newsid=12260 oc666 (talk) 13:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Open, free, proprietary?
I just removed Category:Free_software_operating_systems, added added proprietary in the first line. This article also needs some references to what Symbian really means by "open", as in "open mobile operating system", from what I found it's not open as in open source. Guaka (talk) 12:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000073,39672469,00.htm "Published: 09 Jul 2009 15:36 BST   - The Symbian Foundation has released its first open-source software package, the first step in the organisation's plan to eventually open source the entire Symbian mobile operating system." Guaka (talk) 05:29, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * eventually was the key word. Netrat (talk) 22:32, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Help expand: Python, Mobile Web Server (Apache), P.I.P.S. for S60
Please help expand the following Symbian OS related articles:
 * Python for S60
 * Mobile Web Server (Apache HTTP Server)
 * P.I.P.S. Is POSIX on Symbian

Thanks!—IncidentFlux [ TalkBack 21:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Install apps
How can I install programs (i.e. PDF reader) in Symbian phone ?. Do I have to download the file to a PC and them install it in the mobile phone ? How ?. Regards.--Nopetro (talk) 13:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

WorkAbout
Workabout mx is no longer in production, it appears in the 'discontinued products' category of Psion's website. Edited the article. A new version, Psion Workabout pro, running windows is in production however. Shyboy16 (talk) 16:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Article split, deletion, merge, etc
This is just silly. Symbian OS and Symbian are not different products. This was a mere marketing trick, shortering OS name. It makes not sense having 2 separate articles or marking Symbian OS as "historic". Netrat (talk) 22:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

This article has been split. The new article is Symbian. I nominated the new article for deletion. At least it should be redirected to this article. You can comment at the nomination page here: Articles for deletion/Symbian.-- Lester  00:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

This thread has been active and discussed in Talk:Symbian, please see, Thanks! —-— .: Seth_Nimbosa :. (talk • contribs) 05:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Qt
I expect Qt to have some words in this long Symbian text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Comptrol (talk • contribs) 15:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed! I've now updated it to reference Qt. It's still possible to use Symbian C++ to develop so I guess we should leave the section as one of the possible languages (as well as keeping it for historical reasons). Although I wonder if we should trim it down now - there seems a lot of rant/criticism about Symbian C++ being poor, but that's no longer fair or relevant now that standard C++ with Qt is the official SDK for Symbian. Mdwh (talk) 22:06, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus for a simple rename. The proposed target article name is available, so anyone can perform the rename after then necessary rearrangement of information has taken place. Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Symbian OS → History of Symbian — The split between Symbian OS and Symbian platform keeps on causing confusion for the average reader and to contributors. The split may be acceptable from an inside perspective because of the significant changes in ownership of Symbian, but here in Wikipedia we treat subjects from an outside perspective. Andries (talk) 08:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

See talk:Symbian. I think the discussion should be there. Not here. Andries (talk) 09:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that the whole split in the first place is premature - whilst Symbian platform is now the current OS being developed, AIUI there has yet to be a Nokia phone released using this, and won't be until the N8 is released. All the current Symbian phones you can buy in shops like the 5xxx series, X6 and N97, are Symbian OS (S60 5th edition) phones, which Wikipedia is talking about as being "historical". Also, all the figures such as getting 40-50% of the smartphone market refer to Symbian OS, not Symbian platform - so again, it seems odd to refer to it as "historical"! It's also confusing to me how Symbian^1 relates to S60 5th edition - are these different names for exactly the same thing? The articles are a bit vague.

Long term, yes I agree that having a primary page about Symbian, and a History page, makes best sense. For now, I would still expect discussion of Symbian OS (at least, the latest version that still ships of current phones), as well as the new Symbian platform, in the "main" Symbian article. Mdwh (talk) 15:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * But the current phones Nokia X6 and Nokia N97 are also part of the Symbian platform. See Symbian_platformAndries (talk) 15:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Well this is what I was wondering - are the current "S60 5th edition" also considered the Symbian^1 platform? If so, I would support renaming this to being a History article. Some of the content here would still be relevant for the "main" Symbian article (e.g., mentioning of it being the number 1 in sales), and should be moved across. Mdwh (talk) 22:20, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, Symbian^1= S60 5th Edition. Andries (talk) 22:25, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Insert non-formatted text here

Recent merge into Symbian platform
See Talk:Symbian