Nokia Buys Symbian: So What?
Linked by Eugenia Loli on Fri 4th Jul 2008 21:45 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless "The mobile phone operating system world was rocked recently by the announcement that Nokia had acquired all of the shares of Symbian that it didn't already own, and that it planned to transition the OS to an open-source licensing model," says DeviceGuru.
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Yawn indeed!
by neozeed on Fri 4th Jul 2008 23:44 UTC
neozeed
Member since:
2006-03-03

Now that OS X has been shipping on the ARM for a year, Android shold be out soon enough (ha!), and Windows CE approaches usability....

Does it matter?

The real truth is, that if Microsoft had ported even NT 4.0 to the ARM it'd be a real player.

The real fun will start when the Atom cpu starts shipping in phones.

In the end Nokia will do what it does now... nurture it's antiquated OS, to the masses, you know the ones that just 'make calls'... It will be a long time before they die out. But it'll be a slow and protracted death marked with lots of blunders.

It reminds me a lot of Novell.

Reply Score: 0

RE: Yawn indeed!
by caudex on Sat 5th Jul 2008 08:35 UTC in reply to "Yawn indeed!"
caudex Member since:
2008-07-05

The real fun will start when the Atom cpu starts shipping in phones.

You do know that Intel Atom is nowhere as power efficient as ARM based processors? They won't be shipping Atom based mobile phones for quite a while (unless you want a phone with 5 h standby).

Reply Score: 6

RE[2]: Yawn indeed!
by neozeed on Sun 6th Jul 2008 03:23 UTC in reply to "RE: Yawn indeed!"
neozeed Member since:
2006-03-03

Those atom phones are marked for late next year.

It's coming!

Reply Score: 1

RE: Yawn indeed!
by gedmurphy on Mon 7th Jul 2008 12:16 UTC in reply to "Yawn indeed!"
gedmurphy Member since:
2005-12-23

The real truth is, that if Microsoft had ported even NT 4.0 to the ARM it'd be a real player.


ReactOS is currently being ported to ARM, which should become interesting

Reply Score: 1

Nothing doing until 2010...
by madcrow on Mon 7th Jul 2008 13:53 UTC in reply to "RE: Yawn indeed!"
madcrow Member since:
2006-03-13

Has anybody else noted the fact that Nokia hasn't comitted to opening a single line of code until at least 2010... This seems more aimed at generating buzz than anything else. If they were serious about saving Symbian, they would dump the code right now, Mozilla-style.

Reply Score: 2

This what.
by Verenkeitin on Sat 5th Jul 2008 03:15 UTC
Verenkeitin
Member since:
2007-07-01

* LiMO (Does anyone actually sell these? Where?)
* Android (Now, if only there was a phone that runs this framework that only OSS geeks have ever heard.)
* Windows Mobile (Get ready to run Vista Mobile)
* iPhone (Even Scientology is reasonable in comparison to Apple)
* Symbian (Just you wait what mobile giants come up with)

Now that Nokia can cram QT into Symbian and break most of existing code with major updates without caring for UIQ, Symbian could get interesting.

Reply Score: 1

RE: This what.
by raboof on Sat 5th Jul 2008 08:16 UTC in reply to "This what."
raboof Member since:
2005-07-24

* LiMO (Does anyone actually sell these? Where?)
* Android (Now, if only there was a phone that runs this framework that only OSS geeks have ever heard.)

There's a third to this party: OpenMoko has just started shipping the second edition of their phone, which is as open as it's going to get.

Sure, not all aspects of the phone are equally impressive, and the software still needs a lot of work, but these guys are really going 'all the way' openness-wise, encouraging hackability instead of grudgingly tolerating it.

Reply Score: 2

re
by netpython on Sat 5th Jul 2008 04:55 UTC
netpython
Member since:
2005-07-06

Nokia’s commitment to open-source Symbian does turn Windows Mobile into the “odd man out” — the only major mobile phone OS that’s not available under a genuine open source license.

Reply Score: 3

patents?
by siraf72 on Sat 5th Jul 2008 09:06 UTC
siraf72
Member since:
2006-02-22

Presumably Symbian has some patents that Nokia is interested in

Reply Score: 1

Ease of development
by BlackJack75 on Mon 7th Jul 2008 08:31 UTC
BlackJack75
Member since:
2005-08-29

Ease of development is key to the success of any software platform. I personally rank Symbian at the bottom of all the alternatives mentionned. I am convinced in the end it will fail and gradually become outdated because of this.

Reply Score: 1

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