Principal articles: History of Symbian, S60 (software program platform), MOAP, and UIQ
; after this integration Symbian OS is known as the Symbian platform.
The Symbian platform was created by merging and integrating software belongings contributed by Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson and Symbian Ltd. including Symbian OS belongings at its core, the S60 platform, and elements of the UIQ and MOAP(S), user interfaces.
In December 2008, Nokia purchased Symbian Ltd. the company behind Symbian OS; consequently, Nokia grew to become the most important contributor to Symbian's code, since it then possessed the event sources for each the Symbian OS core and the consumer interface. Since then Nokia has been maintaining its own code repository for the platform improvement, often releasing its development to the general public repository.Symbian was intended to be developed by a neighborhood led by the Symbian Foundation which was first announced in June 2008 and which officially launched in April 2009. Its objective was to publish the source code for the whole Symbian platform under the OSI and FSF accredited Eclipse Public License (EPL). The code was published under EPL on 4 February 2010; Symbian Basis reported this occasion to be the biggest codebase transitioned to Open Supply in history.
However, some vital elements within Symbian OS were licensed from third parties, which prevented the muse from publishing the complete supply underneath EPL immediately; instead much of the supply was printed underneath a extra restrictive Symbian Foundation License (SFL) and entry to the total source code was limited to member companies only, though membership was open to any organisation
In November 2010, the Symbian Basis announced that attributable to a scarcity of help from funding members, it could transition to a licensing-solely organisation; Nokia introduced it might take over the stewardship of the Symbian platform. Symbian Foundation will stay the trademark holder and licensing entity and can solely have non-executive administrators involved.
On February 11, 2011, Nokia introduced a partnership with Microsoft which might see it undertake Home windows Phone 7 for smartphones, lowering the number of devices operating Symbian over the approaching two years.
By April 5, 2011, Nokia ceased to open source any portion of the Symbian software program and decreased its collaboration to a small group of pre-selected companions in Japan. Supply code released beneath the EPL stays available in third occasion repositories.
Symbian releases are styled Symbian^1, Symbian^2 etc. (vocalised as "Symbian one", "Symbian two").
Symbian^1, being the first launch, kinds the idea for the platform. It incorporates Symbian OS and S60 5th Version (which is built on Symbian OS 9.4) and thus it was not made available in open source.
Symbian^2 was the primary royalty-free version of Symbian. Whereas portions of Symbian^2 are EPL licensed, a lot of the supply code is beneath the proprietary SFL license and accessible solely to members of the Symbian Foundation. On June 1, 2010, plenty of Japanese corporations together with DoCoMo and Sharp announced smartphones utilizing Symbian^2.
Symbian^3 was introduced on 15 February 2010. It was designed to be a extra ‘subsequent technology’ smartphone platform. The Symbian^three launch launched new features like a brand new 2D and 3D graphics architecture, UI improvements, and support for exterior shows through HDMI. It has single tap menus and as much as three customizable homescreens. The Symbian^3 SDK (Software Growth Equipment) was launched September 2010.
Six smartphones with the Symbian^3 working system have been launched so far; the Nokia N8, Nokia C6-01, Nokia E7-00, Nokia C7-00, Nokia E6, and Nokia X7.
In April 2011, an replace to Symbian^three, known as 'Symbian Anna', was released by Nokia as a part of the launch of the X7 and E6 smartphones. Symbian Anna includes such improvements as a brand new browser, a digital keyboard in portrait orientation, and real-time homescreen scrolling. Nokia has indicated that the Anna replace might be also be out there for previous Symbian^three devices such as the N8 and C7.
Symbian^4 was expected to be launched in the first half of 2011. Nonetheless, Nokia introduced in October 2010 that Symbian^four will not ship in a separate release. As a substitute, New Symbian Anna will likely be delivered with all new Icons, Net Browser, Portrait Qwerty Keyboard, and many others to all present Symbian^3 devices
