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Nokia Taking Over Psion to Control Symbian?

Posted by Cliff on from the operating-system-power-plays dept.

securitas writes: "Reuters reports that Nokia is considering a takeover of Psion (mirror at Forbes), to gain control of the Symbian operating system. Psion is the second largest shareholder in Symbian with a 31.1 percent stake. Nokia holds 32.2 percent. The move is seen as a tactic to fight off Microsoft and dominate the lucrative and growing mobile phone software market. Symbian is currently owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The report originates in the London newspaper, Business. What does this mean for the Symbian OS, which is currently an open OS?"

5 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Symbian OS by vlad_petric · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Most people who worked with it will tell you the same thing: as far as programability is concerned, Symbian OS just sucks ...

    Symbian was designed for devices with small memory. This, unfortunately, comes at a price - even doing simple string operations can be quite a chore. Memory is really cheap these days, so its advantage is diminishing

    I do own a Psion Revo, and its doing its job excellently. It never required a reboot, unlike my Zaurus PDA which did (although the current ROMs are quite stable). But ...

    With a linux programming background, developing for the Zaurus simply means that you have to get used to its resolution & a few other minor quirks (I never developed for WinCE, but I'm pretty sure a Windoze developer would say that it's pretty much the same thing). Developing for Symbian means learning a new philosophy. Learning a new programming philosophy is worth it when the number of devices sold for that OS is high (e.g. Palm). But Symbian devices never sold that well (at least in the US).

    This is probably one of the reasons Psion uses WinCE for its newest Netbook.

    --

    The Raven

  2. No more Symbian/Palm/Linux/Windows, PLEASE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am about to go nuts here because of these rediculous new phones. I went to buy a new cellular phone the other day and they were all clunky, beastly, color-screened, battery hogs that could barely make a phone call. But! They could play a game of the lamest Arkanoid you've ever seen. ONLY for $300, whee!

    These cell phones can't keep a reception, drop calls like hot potatoes, and otherwise sound like shit. To add insult to injury they overheat, lock-up and need to be "rebooted", and damnit their batteries are more powerful and yet fail to last.

    There's a few things I want my cell phone to do if I'm going to pay $300 for the device and $40+ a month for service:

    1) Have a battery life comparable to a landline 900mhz wireless phone. That's hours upon hours of talk time or days upon weeks of standby.

    2) Have audio quality and reliability equal to that of a land phone even when moving although in a reasonable location (not underground).

    3) Be thinner, not smaller. I've got big hands so I can't be holding something 0.7" across. But that doesn't mean I need a phone that needs a man-bag, my pockets should suffice. Half an inch or less is something to shoot for on thickness. Height and width should be like a normal phone: It's got to reach from my ear to my mouth, right?

    4) Not to heat up like a red-hot poker after 20 minutes of talking. Maybe that's a tactic in combination with the atrocious battery life to keep us from taking advantage of free nights and weekends.

    As far as I'm concerned all that other internet, symphonic ring tone, downloadable wallpaper, customizable faceplate crap can be sacrificed until they get it right. I want a goddamn phone. Stop giving me overpriced toys for overgrown 12-year-olds.

  3. WinCE (audio) sucks by js7a · · Score: 5, Interesting
    One of the huge advantages that Symbian has is that as a licensed developer, you can look at the source, unlike WinCE, which ends up with very buggy audio drivers on every single one of the five WinCE platforms I've developed on. Back in v2 days, WinCE was fairly lean and reasonably real-time, although it's always had a problem with unpredictable garbage collection every 100K new()s or so. But the Win32-spawned waveIn() routines are a disgusting nightmare for both the device driver author and the API user. They suck beyond any reasonable measure. This fact results in WinCE devices with intermittent audio bugs, intermittent distortion, intermittent crashes and panics, incorrect calling semantics, and behavior inconsistent with the same Win32 functions.

    People always ask why their WinCE devices don't have decent audio integration with the phone. It's because WinCE audio drivers universally stink.

    Symbian, on the other hand, lets you prove your audio channels correct and step through the whole stack with your favorite debugger. I would give up stoopid Wind32 HWND semantics for that ability any day of the week. It's not "learning a new philosophy," it's, "getting rid of Microsoft's x86-based Win32 encumbarances and closed source." I am sure others who speak from experience agree.

  4. symbian on p900 is nearly perfect by PureCreditor · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The customization of Symbian OS for P900 is nearly perfect by all accounts. It feels like a phone but with powerful PDA functionality. MP3, video, touch screen, J2ME...you name it. Althought I think the UI on it has a bit too many colors, making it a bit fancy for those who prefer the simplicity of Palm OS (okay, PalmOS default GUI is rather plain). One thing though - the camera should be megapixel with flash and digital zoom (or better, optical). Symbian did a great job on the P900 and the Nokia 6600 because it's so flexible to each manufacturer's specification. I'd hate to see the OS becoming Nokia centric (very stable, but on the lagging edge of new features). My last point can be shown by how long it took Nokia to release a phone with a 65K color screen, a resolution better than 128x128, and omni-Bluetooth-presence. Also, the 8910i being dual-band does nothing to help expand its market share to the high-end executives in USA and Canada who have to settle with lessor products by Motorola....

    If Nokia can make all their medium and high end phones Series 60 (symbian based), that'll be good. Series 40 is nice but way too slow (comparable to T68i speed...imagine...) And I think Samsung

  5. Re:Please no. by nikster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Symbian is not independent - it's just "supported" by a range of mobile companies. This would be good, except that Nokia and SonyEricsson are the only ones in this alliance who openly oppose M$'s plans to take over the phone OS market.

    A takeover of Symbian wouldn't really help Nokia in this regard. Since they know that, the only good reason would be to grab the shares from uninterested Psion, and then open it up for all to use.

    The sooner the phone OS market goes to open source, the safer for the anti-M$ forces in the industry - be that an opened-up Symbian or embedded linux... if there was a stable linux based phone OS there would be no stopping it.

    As it is, the industry is held back - and might eventually just give up all control to M$ - by infighting, jealousy, and distrust.