Symbian OS Information

General

Symbian OS is an operating system with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd.. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC. Symbian is currently owned by Ericsson, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens AG and Sony Ericsson.

“Ericsson R380 (2000) was the first commercially available smartphone based on Symbian OS
Nokia 9210 Communicator smartphone (32-bit 66 MHz ARM9-based RISC CPU) (2001), 9300 Communicator (2004), 9500 Communicator (2004) using the Nokia Series 80 interface
Sony Ericsson P800 (2002), P900 (2003), P910 (2004), Motorola A920, A925, A1000, DoCoMo M1000, BenQ P30, P31 and Nokia 6708 using the UIQ user interface.
Nokia Series 60 (2002)
Nokia Series 60 is used in various phones, the first being the Nokia 7650, then the Nokia 3650, followed by the Nokia 3620/3660, Nokia 6600 and Nokia 7610. The Nokia N-Gage and Nokia N-Gage QD gaming/smartphone combos are also Series 60 platform devices. It was also used on other manufacturers' phones such as the Siemens SX1 and Sendo X. Recent, more advanced devices using Series 60 include the Nokia 6630, the Nokia 6680 and a next generation N series, including the Nokia N90 and Nokia N91.
Nokia 7710 (2004) using the Nokia Series 90 interface.
Fujitsu and Mitsubishi phones for NTT DoCoMo in Japan, using an interface developed specifically for them often called FOMA after the DoCoMo "Freedom of Mobile Access" network brand.

There are a number of smartphone user interface platforms based on Symbian OS, including open platforms UIQ, Nokia's Series 60, Series 80 and Series 90 and closed platforms such as that developed for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA handsets. This adaptability allows Symbian OS to be used on smartphones with a variety of form factors (e.g. clam-shell or "monoblock"/"candybar", keypad- or pen-driven).

Symbian OS, with its roots in Psion Software's EPOC (which itself had similarities to the internals of VMS, a grown-up POSIX compatible operating system for mini-computers in the 1980s) is structured like many desktop operating systems, with pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, and memory protection.

Symbian OS's major advantage is the fact that it was built for handheld devices, with limited resources, that may be running for months or years. 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. There are similar techniques for conserving disk space (though the disks on Symbian devices are usually flash memory). Furthermore, all Symbian OS programming is event-based, and the CPU is switched off when applications are not directly dealing with an event. This is achieved through a programming idiom called active objects. Correct use of these techniques helps ensure longer battery life.

All of this makes Symbian OS's flavour of C++ very specialised, with a steep learning curve. However, many Symbian OS devices can also be programmed in OPL, Python, Visual Basic, Simkin, and Perl - together with the J2ME and Personal Java flavours of Java.

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