Symbian is a mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. Symbian was originally developed as a closed source OS for PDAs in 1998 by Symbian Ltd. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and runs exclusively on ARM processors, although there is an unreleased x86 port. Symbian is used by many major mobile brands, such as Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and most importantly by Nokia. It is also prevalent in Japan by brands including Fujitsu, Sharp and Mitsubishi. As a pioneer who established the smart phone industry, it was the world's most popular smartphone OS worldwide by the end of 2010 - at a time when smartphones were in limited use, when overtaken by Android, as Google and its partners reached widespread adoption.
Symbian OS is basically a shell system and requires an additional user interface (as a middleware) to form a complete operating system. Symbian OS became a standout of the S60 platform (formerly Series 60) built by Nokia, first released in 2002 and running most of Nokia smartphones. Symbian OS eventually became the most widely used smartphone operating system, though not popular in North America. UIQ is another Symbian user interface mostly used by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, while in Japan the MOAP (S) platform is created by NTT DoCoMo operator. These interface applications are not compatible with each other, although each one is built on top of Symbian OS. Nokia became the majority shareholder in Symbian Ltd. in 2004 and purchased all shares in 2008. The non-profit Symbian Foundation was later created to create a royalty-free successor to Symbian OS - trying to unify the platform, S60 became the favorite UI and UIQ Foundation to stop development but MOAP continues in the Japanese market. Symbian ^ 1 (or S60 5th Edition) was created as a result in 2009. Symbian ^ 2 (based on MOAP) is used by the NTT DoCoMo operator, a member of the Foundation, for the Japanese market. Symbian ^ 3 was released in 2010 as the successor to the S60 5th Edition, which at the time became a full open source. Symbian ^ 3 received Anna and Belle updates in 2011.
The Symbian Foundation was destroyed in late 2010 and Nokia took over the control of OS development. In February 2011, Nokia, currently the only company that still supports Symbian outside of Japan, announced that it will use Microsoft Windows Phone 7 as its flagship smartphone platform, while Symbian will gradually decline. Two months later, Nokia moved the OS to a closed license, merely collaborating with Japanese OEM and Symbian development which was then outsourced to Accenture. Although support is promised until 2016, including two major updates planned, by 2012 Nokia has largely abandoned development and most Symbian developers have left Accenture, and in January 2014 Nokia stopped accepting new or changed software from developers. Nokia 808 PureView in 2012 is officially the latest Symbian smartphone from Nokia. NTT DoCoMo continues to release its OPP (S) (Symbian Operator Operator, MOAP successor) device in Japan, which still acts as a middleware over Symbian. The phones that run this include F-07F from Fujitsu and SH-07F from Sharp in 2014.
Video Symbian
Histori
Symbian comes from EPOC32, an operating system created by Psion in the 1990s. In June 1998, Psion Software became Symbian Ltd., a large joint venture between Psion and Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia phone manufacturers.
After that, different software platforms were created for Symbian, which is supported by various groups of mobile phone manufacturers. They include S60 (Nokia, Samsung and LG), UIQ (Sony Ericsson and Motorola) and MOAP (S) (Japan just like Fujitsu, Sharp etc.).
With no major competition in the smartphone OS then (Palm OS and Windows Mobile are relatively small players), Symbian reached as high as 67% of the global smartphone market share in 2006.
Although its market share is quite large, Symbian is in various stages difficult to develop: First (about early to mid 2000s) due to the complexity of the only native programming languages ​​OPL and Symbian C and from the OS itself; then a stubborn development bureaucracy, along with the high prices of various IDEs and SDKs, which are very expensive for independent developers or very small; and then subsequent fragmentation, which is partly due to a dispute between and within the manufacturer, each of which also has their own IDE and SDK. All these uninspired third-party developers, and presented cause the native app ecosystem for Symbian not to expand to a scale later reached by the Apple App Store or Google Play Android.
In contrast, the iPhone OS (renamed iOS in 2010) and Android have relatively simpler designs, providing a much easier and much more centralized infrastructure for creating and obtaining third-party apps, offering developer tools and specific programming languages ​​with complexity levels managed, and has multitasking and graphics capabilities to meet future consumer demands.
Although Symbian is difficult to program, this problem can be done by creating Java Mobile Edition applications, as if under the slogan "write once, run anywhere". This is not always the case due to fragmentation due to different device screen sizes and different levels of Java ME support across devices.
In June 2008, Nokia announced the acquisition of Symbian Ltd., and a new independent nonprofit organization called the Symbian Foundation was founded. Symbian OS and related user interfaces S60, UIQ and MOAP (S) were donated by the owners of Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson and Symbian Ltd., to the foundation with the goal of creating the Symbian platform as open source software, royalty free, under the OSI and FSF approved Eclipse Public License (EPL). The platform was designated as the successor to the Symbian OS, following the official launch of the Symbian Foundation in April 2009. The Symbian platform was officially made available as open source code in February 2010.
Nokia became a major contributor to Symbian code, because it then has development resources for both Symbian OS core and user interface. Since then Nokia has maintained its own code repository for platform development, regularly releasing its development to public repositories. Symbian is intended to be developed by a community led by the Symbian Foundation, first announced in June 2008 and officially launched in April 2009. The goal is to publish source code for all Symbian platforms under the OSI- and FSF- approved Eclipse Public License (EPL). This code was issued under the EPL on February 4, 2010; The Symbian Foundation reports this event as the largest code base that moved to Open Source in history.
However, some important components in Symbian OS are licensed from third parties, which prevents the foundation from full source publishing under the EPL immediately; not many sources are published under the stricter Symbian Foundation (SFL) License and access to full source code is limited to member companies, even if membership is open to any organization. In addition, the open-source Qt framework was introduced to Symbian in 2010, as the main upgrade path to MeeGo, which will be the next mobile operating system to replace and replace Symbian on high-end devices; Qt is essentially free and very convenient to develop together. Some other frameworks are deployed to the platform, among them Standard C/C, Python, Ruby, and Flash Lite. IDE and SDK were developed and then released for free, and application development for Symbian was taken.
In November 2010, the Symbian Foundation announced that due to changes in economic conditions and global markets (as well as the lack of support from members such as Samsung and Sony Ericsson), it would transition into a licensed only organization; Nokia announced it will take over the management of the Symbian platform. The Symbian Foundation will remain the holder of the trademark and licensing body and will only involve non-executive directors.
With market share sliding from 39% in Q32010 to 31% in Q42010, Symbian lost ground for iOS and Android quickly, eventually falling behind Android in Q42010. Stephen Elop was appointed CEO of Nokia in September 2010, and on February 11, 2011, he announced a partnership with Microsoft that will see Nokia adopt Windows Phone as its main smartphone platform, and Symbian will gradually be deleted, along with MeeGo. As a result, Symbian's market share fell, and application developers for Symbian broke up quickly. Research in June 2011 showed that more than 39% of mobile developers who use Symbian at the time of publication are planning to leave the platform.
On April 5, 2011, Nokia no longer openly sought the source of Symbian software and reduced its collaboration to a small group of partners who have been selected in Japan. Source codes released under EPL remain available in third-party repositories.
On June 22, 2011, Nokia entered into an agreement with Accenture for the outsourcing program. Accenture will provide Symbian-based software development and support services to Nokia through 2016; about 2,800 employees of Nokia became Accenture employees as of October 2011. The transfer is completed on September 30, 2011.
Nokia suspended its support for software development and maintenance for Symbian with effects beginning January 1, 2014, after which it refused to publish any new or updated or modified Symbian app or content in the Nokia Store and discontinue the 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification.
Maps Symbian
Features
User interface
Symbian has had original graphics toolkit from the beginning, known as AVKON (formerly known as Series 60). S60 is designed to be manipulated by interface metaphors such as a keyboard, such as a 15 button keypad, or a mini QWERTY keyboard. AVKON-based software is compatible with binaries with Symbian versions up to and including Symbian ^ 3.
Symbian ^ 3 includes the Qt framework, which is now the recommended user interface toolkit for new applications. Qt can also be installed on older Symbian devices.
Symbian ^ 4 is planned to introduce a GUI library framework specifically designed for touch-based interface, known as "UI for Mobile Extension" or UIEMO (internal project name "Orbit"), built on Qt Widgets; preview released in January 2010, but in October 2010 Nokia announced that Orbit/UIEMO has been canceled.
Nokia currently recommends that developers use Qt Quick with QML, UI declarative interface and new high-level script to create a rich visual touch screen interface that enables development for Symbian and MeeGo; it will be sent to the existing Symbian ^ 3 device as Qt update. As more apps gradually display the reworked user interface in Qt, the legacy S60 framework (AVKON) will be stopped and no longer included with the new device at some point, thus damaging binary compatibility with older S60 applications.
Browser
Symbian ^ 3 and earlier had a built-in WebKit-based browser. Symbian was the first mobile platform to utilize WebKit (in June 2005). Some older Symbian models have Opera Mobile as their default browser.
Nokia released a new browser with the release of Symbian Anna with improved speed and a better user interface.
Support multiple languages ​​
Symbian has strong localization support that allows 3rd-party app manufacturers and developers to localize their Symbian-based products to support global distribution. The current Symbian (Symbian Belle) release has support for 48 languages, which Nokia provides on devices in the language pack (a collection of languages ​​that include commonly used languages ​​in areas where device variants are meant for sale). All language packs have general English (or locally relevant dialects). Supported languages ​​[with dialect] (and scripts) in Symbian Belle are:
Symbian Belle marks the introduction of Kazakh, while Korea is no longer supported.
- Japanese language is only available on Symbian ^ 2 devices as they are made in Japan, and on other Symbian devices, Japan is still supported with restrictions.
Application development
Starting in 2010, Symbian switches to standard C with Qt as the main SDK, which can be used with Qt Creator or Carbide.c. Qt supports the older Symbian/S60 3 (starting with the Feature Pack 1, a.k.a. S60 3.1) and Symbian/S60 5th Edition (a.k.a. S60 5.01b) releases, as well as the new Symbian platform. It also supports Maemo and MeeGo, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
The development of alternative applications can be done using Python (see Python for S60), Adobe Flash Lite or Java ME.
Symbian OS previously used a special Symbian C version, along with CodeWarrior and then Carbide.c integrated development environment (IDE), as the original application development environment.
Web Run time (WRT) is a portable application framework that enables creation of widgets on the S60 Platform; this is an extension to the S60 WebKit-based browser that allows the launch of multiple browser instances as separate JavaScript applications.
Application development
Qt
In 2010, the SDK for Symbian is standard C, using Qt. It can be used with Qt Creator, or Carbide (old IDE previously used for Symbian development). The phone simulator allows testing Qt applications. The compiled app for the simulator is compiled into native code for the development platform, rather than having to be replicated. Application development can use C or QML.
Symbian C
Since the Symbian OS is written in C using the Symbian Software encoding standard, it is possible to develop using Symbian C, even though it is not a standard implementation. Before the release of Qt SDK, this is a standard development environment. There are several Symbian OS-based platforms that provide software development tools (SDKs) for application developers who want to target Symbian OS devices, the main ones being UIQ and S60. Individual mobile products, or families, often have SDK or SDK extensions that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website as well.
The SDK contains the documentation, header files and library files needed to build Symbian OS software, and a Windows-based emulator ("WINS"). Up to Symbian OS version 8, the SDK also includes a compiler version of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) (cross compiler) required to build software to work on the device.
Symbian OS 9 and the Symbian platform use a new application binary interface (ABI) and require different compilers. Compiler options are available including newer GCC versions (see external links below).
Unfortunately, Symbian C programming has a steep learning curve, because Symbian C requires the use of special techniques such as descriptions, active objects, and cleanup piles. This can make relatively simple programs initially more difficult to implement than in other environments. It is possible that these techniques, developed for mobile hardware and compilations were much more limited in the 1990s, caused extra complexity in the source code because programmers were required to concentrate on low-level details rather than more application-specific features. In 2010, this problem no longer occurs when using standard C, with Qt SDK.
Symbian C programming is generally done with an integrated development environment (IDE). For earlier versions of Symbian OS, the commercial CodeWarrior IDE for the Symbian OS was favored. CodeWarrior tools were replaced during 2006 by Carbide.c, an Eclipse-based IDE developed by Nokia. Carbide.c is offered in four different versions: Express, Developer, Professional, and OEM, with increased level of capability. Full featured software can be created and released with Express editions, which are free. Features like UI design, debugging errors, etc. Available in other editions that are charged. Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 are also supported through the Carbide.vs plugin.
Other languages ​​
Symbian devices can also be programmed using Python Widgets, Java ME, Flash Lite, Ruby,.NET, Web Runtime (WRT), and Standard C/C.
Visual Basic programmers can use NS Basic to develop applications for S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3 devices.
In the past, Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET, and C # development for Symbian were made possible through AppForge Crossfire, a plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. On March 13, 2007, AppForge ceased operations; Oracle purchases intellectual property, but announces that it does not plan to sell or provide support for AppForge's previous products. Net60, a compact NET framework for Symbian, developed by redFIVElabs, is sold as a commercial product. With Net60 source code, VB.NET and C # (and others) compiled into an intermediate (IL) language run in Symbian OS using a just-in-time compiler. (Starting January 18, 2010, RedFiveLabs has suspended Net60 development with this announcement on their landing page: "At this stage we're looking for some options to sell IP so Net60 can continue to have a future.")
There is also a version of Borland IDE for Symbian OS. Symbian OS development is also possible on Linux and Mac OS X using tools and methods developed by the community, partly enabled by Symbian releasing source code for key tools. A plugin that enables the development of Symbian OS applications on Apple Xcode IDE for Mac OS X is available.
Java ME applications for Symbian OS were developed using standard techniques and tools such as Sun Java Wireless Toolkit (formerly J2ME Wireless Toolkit). They are packaged as JAR files (and possibly JAD). Both CLDC and CDC applications can be created with NetBeans. Other tools include SuperWaba, which can be used to build Symbian 7.0 and 7.0s programs using Java.
The Nokia S60 phone can also run Python scripts when the Python interpreter for S60 is installed, with custom made APIs that allow for Bluetooth support and such. There is also an interactive console to allow users to write Python scripts directly from the phone.
Implementation
Once developed, Symbian applications need to find a route to the customer's mobile phone. They are packaged in SIS files that can be installed over the air, via a PC connection, Bluetooth or on a memory card. The alternative is to partner with the phone manufacturer and have the software included on the phone itself. Applications must be Symbian Signed for Symbian OS 9.x to utilize certain capabilities (system capabilities, limited capabilities and device manufacturer capabilities). Applications can now be signed for free.
Architecture
Domains and technology packages
Symbian design is divided into technology domains , each of which consists of a limited number of package software. Each technology domain has its own roadmap, and the Symbian Foundation has a team of technology managers who manage this technology domain roadmap.
Each packet is allocated to exactly one technology domain, based on the general functional areas in which the packet contributes and which can be affected. By grouping related packages by theme, Symbian Foundation hopes to encourage strong communities to form around them and to generate discussions and reviews.
The Symbian System model illustrates the coverage of each technology domain across platform packages.
Packages are owned and managed by package owners, individually named members of the organization of the Symbian Foundation, who receive code contributions from the wider Symbian community and are responsible for the package.
Symbian Kernel
The Symbian kernel (EKA2) supports fairly fast real-time response to build a single core phone around it - that is, a phone where one processor core executes a user application and signal array. The real-time kernel has a microkernel architecture that contains only the minimum, primitive and most basic functionality, for maximum resilience, availability and responsiveness. It has been called nanokernel, because it requires an extended kernel to apply other abstractions. It contains scheduler, memory management and device drivers, with network, phone support service and file system in OS Services Layer or Base Services Layer. The inclusion of device drivers means that the kernel is not true microkernel.
Design
Symbian has pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection, like other operating systems (especially those made for use on desktop computers). The EPOC approach to multitasking is inspired by VMs and is based on server-based events that are out of sync.
Symbian OS is created with three principles of system design in mind:
- the integrity and security of user data is paramount
- user time should not be wasted
- all scarce resources
To best follow these principles, Symbian uses a microkernel, has a demand-and-call approach for services, and maintains a separation between the user interface and the machine. The OS is optimized for low-power battery-based devices and for ROM-based systems (eg features like XIP and re-entrancy in the shared library). The application, and the OS itself, follows an object-oriented design: Model-view-controller (MVC).
Then OS repetition dilutes this approach in response to market demand, especially with the introduction of real-time kernel and platform security models in versions 8 and 9.
There is a strong emphasis on the preservation of resources exemplified by Symbian-specific programming idioms such as descriptions and cleanup piles. A similar method exists to save storage space. Furthermore, all Symbian programming is event-based, and the central processing unit (CPU) is switched to low-power mode when the application does not directly handle an event. This is done through a programming idiom called active object. Similarly the Symbian approach to threads and processes is driven by reduction in overhead.
Operating system
The All Over Model contains the following layers, from top to bottom:
- Layer UI Framework
- Application Services Layer
- Java ME
- The OS Service Layer
- a generic OS service
- communication services
- multimedia and graphics services
- connectivity services
- Basic Services Layer
- Kernel & amp; Hardware Interface Layer
The Basic Services layer is the lowest level that can be reached by user-side operations; including File Server and User Library, a Plug-In Framework that manages all plug-ins, Store, Repository Center, DBMS and cryptographic services. It also includes Text Window Server and Text Shell: two basic services from which a fully functional port can be created without the need for higher layer services.
Symbian has a microkernel architecture, which means that the minimum required is in the kernel to maximize toughness, availability, and responsiveness. It contains scheduler, memory management and device drivers, but other services such as network, phone and file system support are placed in the OS Services Layer or Base Services Layer. The inclusion of device drivers means that the kernel is not true microkernel. The real-time kernel EKA2, which has been called nanokernel, contains only the most basic primitives and requires an extended kernel to apply other abstractions.
Symbian is designed to emphasize compatibility with other devices, especially removable media file systems. The early development of EPOC led to adopting FAT as an internal file system, and this remains, but the object oriented persistence model is placed on top of the underlying FAT to provide POSIX style interface and streaming model. The internal data format depends on the use of the same API that makes the data to run all file manipulations. This results in data dependency and difficulties associated with data migration and migration.
There is a large network and communication subsystem, which has three main servers called: ETEL (EPOC telephony), ESOCK (EPOC sockets) and C32 (responsible for serial communication). Each has a plug-in scheme. For example, ESOCK allows various ".PRT" protocol modules to implement various network protocol schemes. The subsystem also contains code that supports short-range communication links, such as Bluetooth, IrDA, and USB.
There is also a large volume of user interface (UI) Code. Only the base classes and substructures are contained in Symbian OS, while most of the actual user interfaces are maintained by third parties. This is no longer the case. The three main UI - S60, UIQ and MOAP - contributed to Symbian in 2009. Symbian also contains graphics, text layout and rendering font libraries.
All of the native Symbian C applications are built from three framework classes defined by the application architecture: application classes, document classes and user interface class of applications. These classes create fundamental application behavior. The remaining required functionality, application display, data model and data interface, are created independently and interact only through their APIs with other classes.
Many other things that are not yet compatible with this model - for example, SyncML, Java ME provide a bunch of other APIs above most OS and multimedia. Many of these are frameworks, and vendors are expected to provide plug-ins to this framework from third parties (eg, Helix Player for multimedia codecs). It has the advantage that the API for such function fields is the same on many mobile phone models, and that the vendor gets a lot of flexibility. But that means that mobile phone vendors need to do a lot of integration work to make Symbian OS phones.
Symbian includes a user interface reference called "TechView." It provides the basis for starting customizations and environments where a lot of testing and Symbian code examples are running. This is very similar to the user interface of the Psion 5 Series personal organizer and is not used for mobile phone user interface production.
Symbian UI variant/platform
Symbian, while advancing OS 7.0 versions, is split into several different graphical user interfaces, each supported by a particular company or group of companies. Unlike the Android OS cosmetic GUI, the Symbian GUI is referred to as the "platform" because of the more significant modifications and integration. Things get more complicated when apps developed for different Symbian GUI platforms are incompatible with each other, and this causes OS fragmentation.
The User Interface Platform that runs on or is based on Symbian OS includes:
- S60, Symbian, also called Series 60. It's supported mainly by Nokia. There are several editions of this platform, first appearing as S60 (First Edition) on Nokia 7650. This is followed by S60 2nd Edition (eg Nokia N70), S60 3rd Edition (eg Nokia N73) and S60 5th Edition (which introduces touch UI eg Nokia N97). The name, S60, changed to only Symbian after the formation of Symbian Foundation, and then called Symbian ^ 1, 2 and 3.
- Series 80 is used by Nokia Communicator such as Nokia 9300i.
- Series 90 Touch and button-based. The only phone that uses this platform is Nokia 7710.
- UIQ is supported mainly by Sony Ericsson and then Motorola. It's compatible with both buttons and touch/stylus based input. The last major release version was UIQ3.1 in 2008, on the Sony Ericsson G900. It was discontinued after the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, and the decision to consolidate different Symbian UI variants into one leads to the adoption of S60 as an advanced version.
- MOAP (Mobile-Oriented Application Platform) [Japan only] is used by Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sony Ericsson and Sharp phones developed for NTT DoCoMo. It uses an interface developed specifically for FOMA DoCoMo's "Freedom of Mobile Access" network brand and is based on the UI of the previous Fujitsu FOMA model. Users can not install new C apps. (Japan only)
- OPP [Japanese Special], successor MOAP, used on FOMA NTT DoCoMo phone.
Symbian (S60) version comparisons
* produced by Fujitsu
  manufactured by Sharp ? The software update service for Nokia Belle and Symbian (S60) phones is discontinued at the end of December 2015
In Q1 2004, 2.4 million Symbian phones were shipped, twice as many as in Q1 2003. Symbian Ltd. very impressed with the progress made in Japan.
3.7 million devices shipped in Q3 2004, growing 201% compared to Q3 2003 and the market share grew from 30.5% to 50.2%. But in the United States it is less popular, with 6% market share in Q3 2004, far behind Palm OS (43%) and Windows Mobile (25%). This has been attributed to North American customers who prefer wireless PDAs rather than smartphones, as well as the low popularity of Nokia there.
On November 16, 2006, the 100 million smartphone running the OS was delivered. On July 21, 2009, more than 250 million devices running the Symbian OS have been produced.
In 2006, Symbian had 73% of the smartphone market, compared to 22.1% of the market in the second quarter of 2011.
At the end of May 2006, 10 million Symbian-powered phones were sold in Japan, representing 11% of Symbian's total worldwide shipments of 89 million. In November 2007 the figure reached 30 million, reaching a market share of 65% in June 2007 in the Japanese market.
Symbian has lost market share over the years as the market has grown dramatically, with new platforms vying into the market, although sales have increased over the same timeframe. For example, although Symbian's share of the global smartphone market fell from 52.4% in 2008 to 47.2% in 2009, Symbian shipments grew 4.8%, from 74.9 million units to 78.5 million units. From Q2 2009 to Q2 2010, Symbian device shipments grew 41.5%, 8.0 million units, from 19,178,910 units to 27,129,340; compared with an increase of 9.6 million units for Android, 3.3 million units for RIM, and 3.2 million units for Apple.
Previous reports on device shipments as published in February 2010 show that Symbian devices form a 47.2% share of smartphone devices shipped in 2009, with RIM having 20.8%, Apple having 15.1% (via iOS) , Microsoft has 8.8% (through Windows CE and Windows Mobile) and Android has 4.7%.
In the number of sales of "smart mobile devices", Symbian devices are the market leaders for 2010. Statistics show that Symbian devices make up 37.6% of the share of smart mobile devices sold, with Android having 22.7%, RIM has 16%, and Apple has 15.7% (via iOS). Some estimates indicate that the number of mobile devices sent with Symbian OS until the end of Q2 2010 is 385 million.
During 2009-10, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson announced their withdrawal from Symbian to support alternative platforms including Google Android, Microsoft Windows Phone.
In Q2 2012, according to IDC worldwide market share has dropped to an all-time low of 4.4%.
Criticism
Symbian users in countries with non-Latin alphabets (such as Russia, Ukraine, and others) have criticized complicated methods of language transfer for years. For example, if the user wants to type in Latin letters, they should call the menu, click the language item, use the arrow keys to select, for example, English from many other languages, then press the 'OK' button. After typing the Latin letters, the user must repeat the procedure to return to their original keyboard. This method slows down the typing significantly. In touch phones and QWERTY phones the procedure is slightly different but still time consuming. All other mobile operating systems, as well as Nokia S40 phones, allow transfers between the two pre-selected languages ​​with a single click or a single motion.
The original version of the firmware for the original Nokia N97, running on Symbian ^ 1/Series 60 5th Edition has been heavily criticized as a buggy (also contributed by the low amount of RAM installed in the phone).
In November 2010, the Smartphone blog All About Symbian criticized the performance of the standard Symbian web browser and recommended Opera Mobile's alternative browser. Nokia Senior Vice President Jo Harlow promised an updated browser in the first quarter of 2011.
There are many different versions and editions of Symbian, which cause fragmentation. Applications and software may not be compatible when installed in different versions of Symbian.
Malware
Symbian OS is subject to various viruses, the most famous being Cabir. Usually this sends itself from phone to phone via Bluetooth. So far, no one has exploited weaknesses on the Symbian OS - instead, they all ask the user if they want to install the software, with rather prominent warnings that can not be trusted, although some rely on social engineering, often in the form of incoming messages with malware, claiming to be a utility, game or some other application for Symbian.
However, with the view that the average mobile user does not have to worry about security, Symbian OS 9.x adopts a UNIX style capability model (permissions per process, not per object). The theoretically installed software can not do damaging things (such as calculating user's money costs by sending network data) without being digitally signed - thus making it traceable. Commercial developers who can afford to pay fees can apply for their software to be signed through the Symbian Signed program. Developers also have the option to self-sign their programs. However, the available feature set does not include access to Bluetooth, IrDA, GSM CellID, voice calls, GPS, and several others. Some operators choose to disable all certificates other than Symbian Signed certificates.
Some other hostile programs are listed below, but they still require user feedback to run.
- Drever.A is a malicious Trojan SIS Trojan that tries to disable automatic startup of Simworks and Kaspersky Anti-Virus application.
- Locknut.B is a SIS trojan malicious file that pretends to be a patch for Symbian S60 phones. When installed, it drops a binary that will crash critical system service components. This will prevent any app from launching on the phone.
- Mabir.A is basically Cabir by adding MMS functionality. Both are written by the same author, and the code has many similarities. It spreads using Bluetooth through the same routine as the early variant Cabir. When Mabir.A activates, it searches for the first phone it finds, and begins sending its own copy to the phone.
- Fontal.A is a SIS trojan file that installs corrupted files that cause the phone to fail upon reboot. If the user tries to reboot the infected phone, it will permanently stick to the reboot, and can not be used without disinfection - that is, the use of a reformat key combination that causes the phone to lose all data. Being a trojan, Frontal can not spread by itself - the most likely way for users to get infected is to get files from untrusted sources, and then install them to the phone, accidentally or otherwise.
A new form of malware threat to the Symbian OS in the form of 'cooked firmware' has been shown at Malware International Conference, Malcon, December 2010, by Indian hacker Atul Alex.
Passing platform security
The Symbian OS 9.x device can be hacked to remove the security platforms introduced in OS 9.1 and beyond, allowing users to execute unsigned codes. This allows changing of system files, and access to previously locked OS areas. The hack was criticized by Nokia as it could potentially increase the threat posed by mobile phone viruses because unsigned codes can be executed.
Version history
See also
General
- Bada
- Nokia Ovi suite
- Nokia PC Suite, the software package used to create the interface between a Nokia mobile device and a computer running Microsoft Windows operating systems; not limited to Symbian
- Nokia Software Updater
- Ovi Store The Nokia app stores on the Internet, not limited to Symbian
Related to development
- Accredited Symbian Developer
- Carbide.c, alternative apps and OS development IDE
- Clear the stack
- P.I.P.S. Is POSIX on Symbian
- Python for S60, alternative application development languages ​​
- Qt, the preferred development tool, both for OS and apps, is not limited to Symbian
- Qt Creator IDE
- Qt Quick
- QML, a JavaScript-based language
References
Bibliography
External links
- the Symbian Foundation blog (which is re-homepage)
- Symbian in Ohloh
- Symbian on Curlie (based on DMOZ)
Symbian Sources ^ 3 EPL
- Most complete Open Source Symbian Archive
- symbiandump - Disposes of all public source code of the Symbian project under the original Eclipse Public License, as of December 7, 2010
- wildducks - Beagleboard Port of Symbian S ^ 3
- Symaptic - C-Make builds the Symbian Mercurial Repository (Windows platform) system
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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