Version 8.0 of the Symbian OS now has real-time capabilities, allowing phone vendors to build one-chip phones. At present, the most popular smart phone platforms, such as Texas Instruments’ OMAP, typically feature two processors: one to handle the radio communications and one to handle the data operating system that the user sees.In the meantime, Nokia has found itself competing with a platform from the company it has just bid to control, Symbian. Symbian’s UIQ division has announced that it would take its pen-based UI – UIQ – which runs on Symbian OS and make a one-handed “penless” version that competes head-on with Nokia’s Series 60, which also runs on the Symbian OS.
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
they are effectively saying that symbian will handle the protocol stack and (please correct me if i am wrong), the instruction set that controls the baseband…the dSP firmware?
perhaps its just the protocol stack. This is a nokia/ti push no doubt but i don’t know about it.
There are lots of base band and systems vendors (ADI, infineon, Philips, Skyworks to name but a few). They generally include their own software which is optimized with their baseband. They probably don’t want this feature from symbian, meaning symbian just gave itself baggage that makes it less appealing to a lot of phone vendors.
This sounds like it was made for Nokia whose primary DSP partner is TI. It seems to be a case in which symbian is being driven towards the needs of just one of its clients.
I add it has nothing to do with the number of chips you use on a phone. Most phones do not have a separate application processor. They have an ARM core to handle user apps. These are already “single-chip” basebands (no one has single chip phones) though the power granted for user apps is limited.