What is Symbian?

              Symbian………... the most used mobile operating system on the earth and an unbroken attachment between Nokia’s rich past and it’s present. What a journey when there are many new players have entered into the market!! It’s the guiding hand behind virtually all of Nokia’s smartphones and the latest version, Symbian Anna is the brains behind the newly launched Nokia E6 and X7.

        As on date Nokia’s Symbian Operating System is being used by more than 250 million people around the world, and it’s still constantly evolving. What a journey it has been so far isn’t it?

Symbian?

               I remember myself asking the same question few years back.
          Have you any idea what is Windows or Mac or Linux? OK, you got it right? The operating system of a computer?! It is the medium through which the dead machine made of hardwares interacts with live human. This is what exactly Symbian is for a cellular phone. It’s an operating system (OS) and, just like windows on your PC, it allows developers to write bits of software that you can install on your phone to perform specific functions. Symbian is mainly associated with Nokia, but as we are about to reveal, it has also played a part in several other mobile phone.

How it begin?

               Symbian’s history is linked to the world of personal digital assistants (PDAs)- the forerunners of today’s smartphones – in the late 1990s. At the initial time it was called EPOC and things have come a long way since then. As mini computers, Psion PDAs offered loads of useful features, including calendars, to-do lists, a calculator, contact lists and the ability to send e-mails and to view or work on spreadsheets. Each version of EPOC offered a similar structure, so users would be familiar it when they updated to newer devices- a feature that continued through to modern-day Symbian smartphones.

               It is to note that at that early time of 90’s when mobile phones were mere communications devices that you interacted with only to store and access contacts, and to type out text with no such facility available as they are today.

         Also, it is interesting to know that that Symbian’s history is so closely associated with Nokia that many people think of it as it was born from within this Finland based phone giant. Sensing a big opportunity ahead, giants like Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson saw the potential for mobile phones to evolve into far more than that, and – together with PDA software maker Psion – they started work on what would become the Symbian OS. Sure enough after the turn of the millennium, mobile phone started to become smarter and Symbian was there to take advantage.

               In 2001, Nokia launched the Nokia 9210 communicator, the first Symbian phone on to which you could install software.

The evolving Symbian

             By the time Symbian become so popular and so quickly that whenever it was about smart phones of that time, It was about Symbian although for many years, smartphones remained niche devices, as hardware manufacturers struggled to match the shinning potential of the software with products that could do it justice. Early efforts met with relatively low success. But the range of devices that did most to bring smartphones – and Symbian- to prominence was Nokia’s N Series, starting with the Nokia N90 in 2005.

          I still remember my Nokia N-73 vividly. The phone that probably showcased manufacturer and OS maker at the height of their might, the Nokia N95.  It has been a legendary phone and even can outsmart any phone as on date.

               In Symbian the most successful company who mastered this software was Nokia however Nokia was by no means the only company making Symbian phones – Ericsson which later became be Sony Ericsson and Motorola had maintained their involvement, and others had also joined what was a rapidly emerging market .Yes but lion’s share was of course Nokia.

Tough road ahead

          You might have noticed that in recent past; nothing has changed as rapidly as has the mobile and the visual technology. Now, the same Symbian which played a crucial role in the evolution of smartphones is passing through the period of transformations where it is taking on with the likes of Google’s android and Apple’s iOS. The change has been really quick and not favoring.

        unfortunately Symbian is losing war.

        It happened from 2008-09 when the smartphone revolution finally starting to gain mass market attraction, Nokia bought the company responsible for developing and licensing the commercial side of Symbian, and announced plans to create the Symbian foundation, aimed at making the mobile OS open source and royalty free.

       It was not enough  as those bold steps taken were not enough to counter the blowing winds of change through the mobile world, and Google’s android and Apple’s iOS started to snatch the market share of Nokia/Symbian. What an irony it was that the conditions those have looked so favoring for the Symbian foundation recently were U-turned on their head and all of the leading hardware partners beside Nokia were forced to decide to change the course of action.

The future for Symbian

               Nokia had by now taken Symbian fully in-house and in a move that looks set to usher in a whole new era in the company’s history changed the strategy.  The company decided to base its smartphone future around Microsoft’s windows phone platform and steadily draw to a close its Symbian

         Honestly, the present Symbian is not what it was originally and  at the moment, The latest touchscreen-friendly version of the software, new Symbian, has just been overhauled and the so-called Anna update are showcased on two new Nokia smartphones; the E6 and the X7.

        Every good thing has to come one end one day and so has to Symbian and frankly speaking very soon.  Nokia assures that there are more Symbian handsets in the pipeline, and many of updates to the OS itself, we can presume that there are still many  chapters leftover to be written before Symbian’s smartphone call it a day. But end looks imminent for sure.
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