Talk:Symbian OS

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[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 ...
-- sabre23t 23:06, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I just found http://symbianos.org, a collection of free software for symbian :)

[edit] 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 ...
-- 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:
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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Cleanup tags, Merge

I'm removing the {{cleanup}} tag, if only because the article is now significantly different from when it was originally tagged [1], 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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:

  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?

--Interiot 12:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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).

[edit] Symbian filesystem structure

Hi. I am putting together an extensive list of all the files and directories included with a factory install of Symbian, starting with the Nokia 6680 but to be expanded for all phones. I will also then put together a list of all files associated with various applications, including viruses so that people can easily refer to this list to identify what application a file or directory belongs to, so that they can identify if they need it, or should delete it. I'll post a link to this list once it's ready to view - probably later today, but if there are no objections, I could create a wikipedia article for this list as a sub-article to this one. --Rebroad 20:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, please let me know if anyone knows of such a list having already been developed elsewhere! Thanks! --Rebroad 20:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Here's a link to what I've got so far (from a base Nokia install + FExplorer + PC Suite apps) here. Regards, --Rebroad 22:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Hi, I do not see the real use of having such a list here. It is too technical for avarage people who are interested in Symbian OS. More advanced ones can find this info elsewhere if they really need it. BTW it is not really good to dig in the private folders of the OS and delete/change something there just for fun as it can make your phone unusable. I recommend not to encourage people doing this and thus delete this paragraph. BTW in Symbian OS v9.x you anyway can not access system folders without operator/manufacturer capabilities. Document folders at the same time can be accessed from the basic phone applications as well. --Mrtj (talk) 13:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
  • quick thing, adding cleanup to symbian folder structure since its pretty awful to read. not very good continuity and has personal references such as "more to come" and stuff like that... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.218.171 (talk) 15:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 :)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Tone

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

[edit] 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)