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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?"

3 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. 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.

  3. 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