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Actually in this case it means you need to have a company, sign a bunch of documents and pay $1500 per year

http://developer.symbian.com/wiki/display/pub/Symbian+Foundation+Membership+Guide#SymbianFoundationMembershipGuide-Membershipeligibilitycriteria

Membership of the Symbian Foundation is available to organizations meeting the following criteria
1. Must be an incorporated company or organization. Individuals can not become a Member.
2. A parent company should sign on behalf of all controlled entities and the applicant company should not have a parent company. If there are reasonable reasons why a parent company may not become a member, then the parent company must co-sign the Deed of Adherence in conjunction with the applicant company.
3. Successful submission of the Membership Application Form.
4. Receipt by Symbian Foundation of Signed of the Deed of Adherence.
5. Members also wishing to contribute source code or other artefacts are further required to sign and return the Member Contribution Agreement.
6. Approval of membership by the Symbian Foundation.
7. Receipt of payment of the annual membership fee of $1500 USD + 15% VAT (where applicable).

Dude, you're getting a Nokia!

Or a Nokia

Dude, you're getting a Nokia!

The good old symbian myths:

- No c++ exceptions, below the rebuttal:
http://developer.symbian.com/main/downloads/papers/Exception_Handling_in_Symbian_OS-v1.02.pdf

- Descriptors: yes, they are weird, but they do make sense:
http://descriptors.blogspot.com/

- Standards: Open C, pips (posix compliancy), S60Python. Is hard to build an OS on a language which was not standard when it was being designed.

- there are more runtimes than symbian c++ (if that is too hard for you):
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/hartti-suomelas-forum-nokia-blog/2007/05/17/slides-for-the-s60-runtimes-presentation-on-svsig

plus: QT for s60 is around the corner and will remove some of the pain for developers.

http://www.qtsoftware.com/developer/technical-preview-qt-for-s60

about the debugger: I still don't see the problem with carbide.c++ 2.0 and trk to debug symbian phones. You can also go fancy an use lauterbach or any other ICE that you like. Also you can use the emulator for 90% of app developement, so unless you are making something tied to the HW your target debugging should be a breeze (if you know what you are doing).

and about android: Please go on an read the code, run a grep for "fixme", then another for "??" and another for "hack". I specially like the TI AT command workarounds in the their telephony RIL reference implementation. This guys have put it together with gum and tape, product quality my ass.

Yes, they have good ideas, they are not reinventing the wheel and is easier to use (sometimes), but feature wise, production quality wise, android is not just there...yet.

Mod parent up. Symbian is a truly horrible OS to develop for.

True, but if you don't like its core c++ api, you can develop applications for it in Python or (soon) Qt both of which have a much nicer api.

And there's the PIPS API allowing you to port POSIX C apps and libraries to Symbian (most recent S60 apps use it).

Starting with 5th edition, you can also use Flash Lite. And, of course, there's still Java, too.

  Not only that, but there are many different versions (V9, V9.1, S60 3rd Ed, S60 FP1, S60 FP2, 9.4, 9.5 and that's just the recent ones) and they are mostly binary and source incompatible.

You're making confusion between Symbian and S60.
As a developer, you only care about the S60 version. Since 2004, we've seen only two major S60 releases, 3rd edition and 5th edition.

Software written for plain S60 3rd edition should work on any 3rd edition device. Feature packs add, well, new features, so if you want to take advantage of these features, of course you'll be able to do so only on those devices which provide them.

disc: I work for a company that supports Symbian. In fact, Nokia is our main customer, which is a secret to no one.

The main advantage of Symbian is that it is a known quantity on the market. Major manufacturers know it and its internals. Nokia (of course), but also Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola have experience making Symbian phones.

Symbian is huge. 228 Million cumulative phones by June 2008, on 250 different models. iPhone: 2 models (EDGE and UMTS). Android: 1 model: G1. (I couldn't find precise sales numbers, sadly. Although the iPhone did hit 4 Million by mid-January 2008.)

Symbian is an established player, and Nokia is keeping it on the edge by open-sourcing it.

It is certainly not a too-late response to Android, but rather rather trying to cut off its market before it gains too much of a foothold. Though I'd like to trumpet Linux, I doubt it'll really challenge Symbian before 5 years from now. (exercise: count the Android phones on the market since it was announced in Nov 2007. Count the announced Android phones. Do the same for Symbian over the same time frame)

Another vital point to note is the main motivation with open-source Android and Symbian is not to please the geeks (hah!), but to provide a cheap OS through which Google and Nokia can sell their services. That is their business strategy, and don't forget it.

That's the story Nokia keeps spinning. They say specifically that they formed the Symbian Foundation after purchasing Symbian to consolidate the different Symbian flavors (S60, UIQ, etc) and take it Open Source.

It doesn't give ANY credibility to Apple.

J2ME security model, Symbian Security model which nears a billion installed base wouldn't do a mistake like that and yet there is no "Nokia Store" prison or "Sun Store" lock in.

Here is Symbian security model (295K pdf) http://www.symbian.com/files/rx/file3202.pdf

J2ME security (Symbian also carries J2ME) http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/permissions/

It can't be used as excuse for Apple draconian policies. Apple's security policy on iPhone is: Nobody should never, ever compete with their iTunes on device.

Symbian is part of Nokia now. http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2008/pr200811006.html

I know most symbian (including lots of Nokia) phones support python, which as just as good as Andriod or the iPhone OS. Why not Andriod vs Symbian vs iPhone SDK?

>Which of these other OSes (WinMob, Symbian, and Palm) has a bluetooth API? None, I think.

Actually, they all do.

Windows Mobile Bluetooth API
Symbian Bluetooth API
Palm Bluetooth API

with Andriod, you already *can* develop your own apps.....there was a whole competition sponsored by Google for it. For that matter, you can develop your own apps for Windows Mobile, too....and Blackberry....and Symbian...and even the *gasp* iPhone.....

Android SDK - http://code.google.com/android/download.html
Windows Mobile (Compact Framework) SDK - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497273.aspx
Blackberry SDK - http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/
Symbian OS SDK - http://www.symbian.com/developer/techlib/v8.1adocs/doc_source/index.html
iPhone SDK - http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

Let us know when you've developed something cool. Maybe even post a Slashvertisement.

Layne

The way to do this is to get an Open Signed i.e. limited to particular devices.

http://developer.symbian.com/main/signed/

Alternatively I wouldn't be surprised a port turned up for something like:

http://beagleboard.org/

or some such future variant

Here would be a start, for example.

And yes, I call you clueless.

Thanks for finding that.

So there are a few things that can't be done without signing the app, from platform security:

The Extended capabilities include:

PowerMgmt Grants the right to power off unused peripherals, switch the
                                  phone into/out of standby state and power phone down

ProtServ Grants the right to a server to register with a protected name.
                                Protected names start by a "!". The kernel will prevent
                                servers without ProtServ capability from using such a name,
                                and therefore will prevent protected servers from being
                                impersonated.

ReadDeviceData Grants read access to phone confidential settings or data

SurroundingsDD Grants access to the surroundings device driver

SwEvent Grants the right to generate software key and pen events

TrustedUI Grants the right to create a trusted UI session, and therefore
                                to display dialogs in a secure UI environment

WriteDeviceData Grants write access to phone confidential settings that
                                control the phone's behaviour

I guess I can live with that.

Hehehe "surroundings device driver" - real spyware.

I can't seem to find this famous list of things an unsigned app can't do.

1.5 Why can I not get a certificate to sign Freeware, there is no other way to install Freeware? Contact your freeware developer and request him/her to re-release the application such that Developer Certificates are not required. a) Approx 60% of APIs do not require any Capabilities and applications using only those APIs do not need to use Symbian Signed services. b) The Capabilities; LocalServices, Location*, NetworkServices,ReadUserData ,UserEnvironment, WriteUserData: are user-grantable on the device. Applications using these Capabilities are not required to be Symbian Signed; an end-user can grant the permissions on their device. This allows people to do application development with a large amount of functionality for interesting apps. At least 25% of commercial apps are released without needing to use any Symbian Signed services. c) The Capabilities; PowerMgmt, Location*, ProtServ, ReadDeviceData, SurroundingsDD, SwEvent, TrustedUI, WriteDeviceData: are grantable by Open Signed Online, as well as all the user grantable permissions described in (2) .There is a requirement (as requested by the developer community) that you must own the applications UID, or you may use a test UID (i.e. in the range 0xE0000000 to 0xEFFFFFFF). This protects the integrity of UID allocation process and prevents developers signing applications with UIDs which have been reserved by other developers. Note: Location* depends on device type

Symbian Signed allows access to all but the seven most resticted capabilities on the phone (these capabilities can only be accessed with an extra level of manufacturer approval). Self-signing allows application access to a more limited set of capabilities than Symbian Signed. General capabilities that are not considered a major security risk can be access via self signed applications. Where there is a small security risk (such as the use of Bluetooth or use of the Network to retrieve data) self signed application must gain user permission to access these capabilities (in the form of a dialog that asks user the grant these capabilities to an application).

Symbian 3rd edition (v 9.x) is not capable of running unsigned native application. Period.
Some application, restricted in functionality could be signed by developer without developer certificate(LocalServices, UserEnvironment, NetworkServices,ReadUserData ,WriteUserData). User can allow application which use only those capabilities to run on his device. The rest - Network control, Multimedia driver, Communication driver, disk admi, PowerMgmt, Location, ProtServ, ReadDeviceData, Surroundings driver, SwEvent, TrustedUI, WriteDeviceData - should be signed online through Symbian website or offline by other certified body.
The situation is quite heated right now, after Symbian introduced some more restrictions recently (removed free developer certificates, which allow sign application for single phone - IMEI numebr). Symbian signed forum turning to flamefeast between moderator interventions. http://developer.symbian.com/forum/forum.jspa?forumID=2&start=0
Of cause all this only from legal point of view. Many devices (all FP1 and Nokia N95-1, not 8GB) have their platform security hacked already.

The PC is the mainframe... The people worrying about MS Exchange are like mainframe developers predicting or worrying about some obscure business application. It's irrelevant. You're 3, 5 years behind the times already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(mobile_phone_platform)
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8591201260.html
http://www.symbian.com/phones/index.html

This is the now, not the future, Microsoft have already lost, and they have admitted it. All their Windows mobile devices?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/pocketpc/default.mspx?curPg=All

Almost all, industrial applications.

You can make calls on your Sybian? Where can I get this new model (for my wife, of course). Oh, you mean a Symbian phone. Oh well...

Reviewing the member list at the Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) web site I noticed that none of the major handset companies joined this organization. The Open Handset Alliance on the other hand has HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung as members.

Having a standard is all well and good, but it only matters if someone puts it into a phone.

Also, how many development platforms can survive in the cell phone market anyway? Besides Android and LiPS (we'll ignore Microsoft for now), there are Symbian, the LiMo Foundation and a la Mobile - all Linux-based. The first two or three to get accepted will attract the developers and dominate the market (unless they *really* bring something new to the game).


Never let reality temper imagination

The ownership structure of Symbian is different now. It is half-owned by Nokia, with Ericsson and Sony-Ericsson being next in line.

Microsoft is not less of a threat in this segment, smartphones, i.e. phones with an open operating system, than it has been. It is solidly in the second position. Linux-based phones are slowly growing as well, having a greater market share on phones than on PCs (but far lower than on servers). iPhone is a marginal player, but that may change in time. All of it depends on what is meant by smartphone of course, and the vast majority of phones still use closed proprietary systems, smartphones is still a niche market. There are also different markets. The phone market in America is very different from the one in Europe which is very different from the one in East Asia. The developing world has some surprises in store as well.

I would give the Anonymous Symbian some credit, making a good phone is different from making a good embedded device, and it takes time to get this right. The selling point of the iPhone is not that it is a great phone, but that other aspects of it is great. Windows Mobile used to be horrible, but it has improved in time. This initiative might not make the killer phone on first attempt either, but chances are that there might be a second one.

All in all there seems to be more competition coming in as this phone niche is becoming more mainstream, which should be good for all of us.

http://www.symbian.com/phones/index.html

That being said, I agree that Mr. Forsyth statement is unfortunate -- to put it mildly.

RT
--
Your bookmarks. Anytime. Anywhere

I couldn't find the cost for Windows Mobile but for Symbian it's as low as $2.50 (used to be up to $7.25).

(from http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2006/pr20063401.html)

In the whole smart phone market Windows Mobile is also a small player. Symbian had 72% market share and sold 18.7 million in Q2 http://www.symbian.com/about/fastfacts/fastfacts.html

But since the iPhone is not really a smart phone it should be compared to the whole cellphone market which is about 1 Billion per year!

Um, have you been asleep for seven years?

The Nokia 9210 was released in 2000.

Tools for Symbian phones available here.

Official SDK for iphone or ipod available in your dreams. I'm surprised Apple even lets other companies develop software for the Macintosh they are so developer hostile.

Anyway, my friends who have Prada phones (which the iPhone ripped off) want to go back to using buttons anyway - easier for touch-texting.

iPhone owners share the dubious distinction of owning a computer they aren't legally allowed to program.

Where in any contract agreed to by iPhone users does it state that you're not legally allowed to write software for it? ("Write software for it" is different from "unlock it" - and I don't even know whether that is forbidden; the DMCA explicitly exempts phone unlocking (see PDF pages 1, 5, and 6).

With the advent of cellphones, especially locked ones, we are seeing a new trend in computers. Rather than expanding the functionality of computers, they seek to limit it, in order to serve the greed of Corporate America. A device which formerly could be repurposed for any task the owner thought fit is now restricted to performing only the functions which make the manufacturer money. Consumer benefit beyond the original purpose of the device is explicitly and legally forbidden.

"Locked" in what sense? I suspect most cellphones sold in the US are locked to the carrier they were sold to work with, but there are SDKs for Symbian, Windows Mobile, and what I assume is the successor to the Palm OS. "Locked to a carrier" is not the same as "locked shut so that you can't run third-party apps"; even the iPhone has third-party apps, Apple's lack of assistance to developers of them nonwithstanding.

I have a specific goal in mind. OpenMoko just seems to say "tons of possibilities and it's open", but for people who have no clue about development, "tons of possibilities" just means "this is not for me".

A truly open platform's killer apps don't need to be entirely new ones. They just need to be unmolested by the legacy carriers' greed/stupidity/business models. For example, a true push email service - one which does alert you about new messages but doesn't kill your battery through polling - does not need to be a $$/month line item. With OpenMoko it can - and will - be "free" on top of one of the affordable data plans. Same deal with location-aware services, since there's no restricted API between the developer and the GPS functionality.

OpenMoko costs $450/$600. You can get a Symbian/WinMobile smart phone with open API for less than that.

Ah yes, open APIs and timely firmware updates. The joys of being a user of smartphone platforms dictated by operators.

A computer, by common definition since 1980s means something you can install programs, there is some payware or free SDK open to development .

I am speaking about these:
http://www.symbian.com/developer/index.html
http://trolltech.no/developer
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/default. aspx
http://www.java.net/

You know, Symbian, Linux, WinCE handheld devices are "handheld computers". Lets say, the mail client doesn't fit your needs? Go to sourceforge or handango and get a better client for your needs and install. You need a specific function such as GPS? You buy add on device, install its software and you got it.

A $60 J2ME (Java) supporting regular phone is more close to computer than iPhone is.

I may have lost my little remaining trust/respect to Apple centric media after iPhone. That is a big deal since I use Macs whenever possible. I won't be checking Apple hating gray beard sites either. We don't deserve this kind of media...

Saying Apple has 2-3% of the cell phone market (hardware+software) compared to MS's 60 to 70% (software) is ridiculous

Not only that, it's untrue. According to a Q4 2006 survey by Canalsys, Ballmer inflated Microsoft's penetration in the smartphone market by at least an order of magnitude:
Symbian - 72.5%
Linux - 16.9%
PalmSource - 2.0%
Microsoft - 4.6%
RIM - 3.8%
Others - 0.2%

There's considerable difference between 60-70% and 4.6%.

http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2007/pr20078776.htm l

Interestingly, I believe this is the first UIQ phone without a touchscreen.

I agree though that the screenshots look more like S60 than UIQ to me.

If a device needs to be hacked to enable 3rd party apps and if it is a communications enabled device, it paves the road for trojan/malware/spyware coders. You know the old story, "install this to enable skype" type crap.

BTW Symbian announces 100 million Symbian OS running devices at http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2006/pr20068610.htm l , 37 million just in 2006, they didn't seem to "down cellular network" yet.

iPhone made me sure that Nokia or Sony Ericsson is way to go on these stuff.

• Example #1: the Go PDA in the early 90s.

  Microsoft convinced Go's investors to pull out, and the company died. Why?

  NOT because it was in Microsoft's business interests. At the time PocketPC/WindowsMobile did not exist, and PDAs do not take away business from Desktops, so Go was not a competitor to Microsoft. Rather, they would have been synergy -- the devices would have needed to plug into PCs for syncing. The only other explanation I can see is that Microsoft wants to prevent innovation. Sounds far fetched, until you see that it is actually a pattern. Read on...

• Example #2: Microsoft vs. iTunes.
  The Zune is actually Microsoft's *fifth* attempt to compete with iTunes Before Zune there was the hyped venture with MTV. Before that was an earlier Microsoft music store. etc.

  The point: what did Microsoft gain by these efforts (before the Zune?). It's well known that Apple makes its money off of selling the iPod, whereas the store is only slightly above break-even (it is the music companies get what profit there is to be had from the store). So here we have Microsoft attacking an innovative area, even though it 1) does not compete with Microsoft and 2) Microsoft will not profit (indeed, they had to spend money to setup their various stores). Microsoft's shareholders should object to this behavior by the way.

• Example #3: Google.
  Once again, an innovative area (search) that was complementary to Microsoft's business. Microsoft makes it a priority to try to kill Google, even though they have plenty of other more important things to do, like getting their OS to ship on time rather than 3 years late (thus creating actual revenue), or fixing some bugs at least.

• Example #4: Microsoft Research. MSR is a candidate for the single largest group of brains on the planet. They're much bigger than any university CS department for example.

  What do they do with all those people? Ignore them, for the most part. One would expect them to be doing wonders, yet all we see of Microsoft is it's attempts to copy Google and Apple. It must be hard to be at MSR. I guess it's a comfortable job.

I assume there must be is a deep insecurity at the top of Microsoft that leads to this negative behavior.

Microsoft seemed invincible in 1999. One could imagine them taking over the internet and in effect becoming the corporation that controlled the world. Fortunately that didn't happen, and it now seems like Microsoft is quickly becoming irrelevant, except for the Xbox.

The cell phone is the new computing platform, and if you read the international (rather than US) computing press you already know that Microsoft is way behind Linux on phones.

"On smartphones, Windows had a 4% stake of the operating systems in the same quarter, ranking third behind Symbian and Linux, with 64.8% and 26%, respectively."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6089270.html
http://www.symbian.com/files/rx/file8405.pdf

The Go story was discussed in part in this slashdot article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/06/15 35231
"I used the Go OS, which was powerful, well-designed, feature-rich and ran acceptably on a 386-based touchscreen tablet - a real advance at that time....Microsoft suckered Go into telling secrets under NDA, and once they had the details, MS's marketing guys played the vaporware game on Go in the public arena. A key clue was that after Go fell, MS pen computing vanished for almost a decade."

There are some Japanese phones like this for example

I guess they are just way ahead of "us".

The Symbian OS is primarly for smartphones, and unfortunately they usually make for lousy PDAs. But if you're still interested check out the Nokia E61 or Sony Ericsson M600i. Same could be said about RIM's Blackberry OS.

There's also an plethora of quirky, mostly-discontinued embedded linux PDAs, including the geek-famous Zaurus.

If you thought having only two major players for PDA OS's was unfortunate, Palm has started replacing the Palm OS with Windows Mobile on some of their own hardware.

On the desktop, you're absolutely right.

But note that Opera's extensions are for 2D games.

So this will allow web developers to create mobile games pretty easily? Games that require no downloads, no extensions - just a web page to be downloaded...

Anjd doesn't Opera have some kind of relationship with some silly little company called Symbian? The same Symbian that had 66.5% of smartphones in Q1 2006?

This is an extension which has HUGE potential. Don't even get me pointing out that Opera are supplying the browsers for Nintendo products...

You're looking at the wrong markets. The stagnant, unshifting, monopoly-based ones. Look at where there's huge growth in browsing, and you'll see Opera is way ahead of their competition - and these extensions aren't going to hurt that.

One potential aspect of this joint venture that I haven't been able to find any information about is whether it includes transfer of stakes in Symbian OS? I don't imagine it would considering it is the network divisions, not the phone divisions. However, if it does it might push Nokia over 50% ownership.

PS: When visiting symbian.com at work, don't leave out the m! Looks like I'm going to be getting visit from the network overlords. Grumble, grumble.

Most of the stuff covering how PlatSec works, and how to handle it is available here

Depending on what you want to do changes what capabilities you require. You might not require any at all, and you can still install unsigned software, you'll just get a nice set of warnings about what features it's trying to access.
Getting is signed is a bit expensive for your average hobbiest, but there is a faq here

The problem is, you would have had a lot of trouble typing that message if computers didn't have keyboards added to them (instead of just punched tape), or VDUs instead of just a printer... I imagine that there were people in IBM who'd just thought 'Christ, we've shipped 12 of these buggers, that's twice as many as we thought we would', and never thought we'd ever get rid of tables and slide-rules. Some pieces of technology gets used in different ways as new uses are found, until the barely resemble their ancestors.

So, exactly how much code-breaking is your computer doing at the moment? ;)

You should see them as a personal communication device, and stop thinking of them as a phone in your house with a very long cord. A landline is a communication device that is limited to a single location, and so has very different requirements and usage to a mobile.

On your point about text messaging, you're missing one of the key problems of mobile communications, namely that speech isn't always the best method of communication.
A simple example of voice being inferior is in a loud environment, such as a bar, club, etc.
Sometimes it's also easier to type than to talk. Giving a phone number over the phone is a good example of this problem.
Sometimes it's more socially acceptable to send a note than to grab someone's attention. Phone calls interrupt, but messaging doesn't.

People are generally more reactive, but not anymore effective. Things are generally more ad-hoc with far less forethought and planning. Is anyone skilled in the art of writing a letter anymore? Nope, we're the cut'n'paste generation ;)

Anyway, I ramble. Back to the point.
Security is a concern, although it's one that's rapidily being addressed by the networks and manufacturers. There's one take on the problem here

So, while it does need to be addressed, the industry has no desire to have the problems of the PC market, and are working hard to avoid such problems.

Well, that's my tu'pence

If you get one of the great phones running Symbian OS, you can buy/download several programs that will do the job (such as BlackBaller). Unlike other phone operating systems, you also have the opportunity to write your own software that has access to the telephony features of the phone.

I won't comment on any of your post other than the statement:


Mobile 5 blows the doors off of all business class phones today with the exception of RIM's


This is simply untrue. Symbian OS is the leading smartphone OS with 61% of smartphones using it. In terms of features etc., I'd be interested to see you post some areas in which Windows Mobile 5 outperforms Symbian OS.

Symbian is not the easiest OS to write for. Also, Symbian is dominated by Nokia, who bought out Motorola's share a couple of years back (which allowed Motorola to work on developing Microsoft Smartphone devices). See the Wikipedia entry for Symbian OS for more. Over time, I'm sure the power management features of Linux phones will be just as sophisticated.

Eric
BlackBerry programming information (speaking of non-Symbian)

Platform security is extended in Symbian OS v9, providing control over the capabilities of applications installed on the devices. This is done to ensure the integrity of the phones and the network, while still enabling an open environment for third party applications.

installation of C++ executables, including authentication of software components using digital signatures to provide a measure of confidence that applications being installed onto a Symbian OS phone are from a known reputable vendor

anyway, the desktop machines and servers today dont really care that much about which threading api they use, but in stuff like cellphones, palm handhelds and other quite slow operating devices that dont have a common threading interface, this is a quite good solution.

While your argument concerning cellphones certainly has been valid historically, todays devices are actually very capable. I work with cellphone software and I found myself beeing suprised e.g by the performance of J2ME on modern phones. My experience is with symbian (c/c++) and J2ME. Symbian OS encourages use of cooperative multitasking though its "active objects"-pattern to eliminate some of the overhead of real threads. However using J2ME yields almost the same performance without having to deal with all the "performance optimizing" tricks of Symbian C++ (such as active objects, descriptors instead of strings and manual memory (de)allocation). (It is possible that this is due to java-optimized hardware in the phones, we have tested new Sony Ericssons and high-end Nokias, but who cares it works very well)

When high level languages/platforms like Java can successfully be used even on cellphones, its is time for C++ to die as language for application developement. The only obstacle, as I see it, is that the two promising platforms (Java and .NET) are properitary and subject to market power struggles. So we are sadly probably stuck with C++ hell for years to come yet.

What does a Linux OS have to do with a Spider-Man movie?
http://www.symbian.com/
I thought Venom was more of a symbiont.
http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=symbi ont

Recent press reports make this sound as if Microsoft had devoured its one and only contender to the smartphone crown - and we'd all have to start clicking tiny Windows icons (and the reset button) on our cellphones, forever, really soon now. Curiously, almost all of these reports seem to forget how Symbian/Psion (and Linux itself) make a great platform for a smartphone OS while having many years of extremely loyal following by both countless customers and the mobile industry giants.

What in that list does SymbianOS not do? Maybe your old SymbianOS 6.0 era device from 2002 is lacking, or maybe the software you use is poorly designed... If you want to see where SymbianOS is going, start here http://www.symbian.com/technology/symbos-v91-det.h tml

Nokia is currently doing 2 WebKit (based on KHTML/KJS by the KDE project) related webbrowsers:

1) for 770/maemo
this will be shipped with an opera-browser, but WebKit was ported to GTK+ (the toolkit used by maemo) as part of the feasability study. This port can be found under the name gtk-webkit and is used for the atlantis browser.

2) for the Series60 (Symbian based)
For this series Nokia is porting WebKit to the Symbian OS and Symbian toolkit, and will thus create a new browser.

links:
http://khtml.info/
http://kde.org/
http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/
http://www.akcaagac.com/index_atlantis.html
http://www.series60.com/
http://www.symbian.com/
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/7 70
http://www.maemo.org/

g'luck...
Cies Breijs

Like this one

or this one

Like this one

or this one

this is what you want