Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones.
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Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones.
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Symbian was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for PDAs in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd.
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Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was released exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed.
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Symbian was used by many major mobile phone brands, like Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and above all by Nokia.
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The non-profit Symbian Foundation was then created to make a royalty-free successor to Symbian OS.
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Symbian^2 was used by NTT DoCoMo, one of the members of the Foundation, for the Japanese market.
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Symbian^3 was released in 2010 as the successor to S60 5th Edition, by which time it became fully free software.
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Symbian Foundation disintegrated in late 2010 and Nokia took back control of the OS development.
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Symbian originated from EPOC32, an operating system created by Psion in the 1990s.
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The platform was designated as the successor to Symbian OS, following the official launch of the Symbian Foundation in April 2009.
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The Symbian platform was officially made available as Free software in February 2010.
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Symbian was intended to be developed by a community led by the Symbian Foundation, which was first announced in June 2008 and which officially launched in April 2009.
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The code was published under EPL on 4 February 2010; Symbian Foundation reported this event to be the largest codebase moved to Free software in history.
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However, some important components within Symbian OS were licensed from third parties, which prevented the foundation from publishing the full source under EPL immediately; instead much of the source was published under a more restrictive Symbian Foundation License and access to the full source code was limited to member companies only, although membership was open to any organisation.
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In November 2010, the Symbian Foundation announced that due to changes in global economic and market conditions, it would transition to a licensing-only organisation; Nokia announced it would take over the stewardship of the Symbian platform.
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Symbian has had a native graphics toolkit since its inception, known as AVKON.
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Symbian^3 includes the Qt framework, which is the recommended user interface toolkit for new applications.
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Symbian had strong localization support enabling manufacturers and 3rd party application developers to localize Symbian based products to support global distribution.
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NET compact framework for Symbian, which is developed by redFIVElabs, is sold as a commercial product.
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Symbian development is possible on Linux and macOS using tools and methods developed by the community, partly enabled by Symbian releasing the source code for key tools.
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Java ME applications for Symbian OS are developed using standard techniques and tools such as the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit.
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Symbian's design is subdivided into technology domains, each of which comprises a set of software packages.
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Each technology domain has its own roadmap, and the Symbian Foundation has a team of technology managers who manage these technology domain roadmaps.
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Further, all Symbian programming is event-based, and the central processing unit is switched into a low power mode when applications are not directly dealing with an event.
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Symbian has a microkernel architecture, which means that the minimum necessary is within the kernel to maximise robustness, availability and responsiveness.
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Symbian is designed to emphasise compatibility with other devices, especially removable media file systems.
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Unlike Android OS's cosmetic GUIs, Symbian GUIs are referred to as "platforms" due to more significant modifications and integrations.
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Symbian has lost market share over the years as the market has dramatically grown, with new competing platforms entering the market, though its sales have increased during the same timeframe.
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In November 2010, Smartphone blog All About Symbian criticized the performance of Symbian's default web browser and recommended the alternative browser Opera Mobile.
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Symbian OS is subject to a variety of viruses, the best known of which is Cabir.
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One million Symbian phones were shipped in Q1 2003, with the rate increasing to one million a month by the end of 2003.
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Basic capabilities are user-grantable and developers can self-sign them, while more advanced capabilities require certification and signing via the Symbian Signed program, which uses independent 'test houses' and phone manufacturers for approval.
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