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Symbian OS
- Psion is a maker of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and modems. Symbian's product is a low-power, high-performance operating system called EPOC, originally designed for pocket computers. Eyeing the convergence between computing and mobile telephony, Symbian hopes EPOC will be the system of choice to power computer gadgets of all sizes and types, from smart phones to advanced wireless information devices.
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EPOC
EPOC is a family of graphical operating systems developed by Psion for portable devices, primarily PDAs. EPOC came from epoch, the beginning of an era, but was backfitted by the engineers to "Electronic Piece Of Cheese". -
EPOC16
EPOC16 featured a primarily 1-bit-per-pixel, keyboard-operated In the late 1990s, the operating system was referred to as EPOC16 to distinguish it from Psion's then-new EPOC32 OS.
Psion Series 3 -
EPOC OS Releases 1–5
Work started on the 32-bit version in late 1994. The Series 5 device, released in June 1997, used the first iterations of the EPOC32 OS, codenamed "Protea", and the "Eikon" graphical user interface. The Oregon Scientific Osaris was the only PDA to use the ER4. The Psion Series 5mx, Psion Series 7, Psion Revo, Diamond Mako, Psion netBook and Ericsson MC218 were released in 1999 using ER5. A phone project was announced at CeBIT, the Phillips Illium/Accent, but did not achieve a commercial relea -
Symbian OS 6.0 and 6.1
he OS was renamed Symbian OS and was envisioned as the base for a new range of smartphones. This release is sometimes called ER6. Psion gave 130 key staff to the new company and retained a 31% shareholding in the spun-out business. Bluetooth support was added. Almost 500,000 Symbian phones were shipped in 2001, rising to 2.1 million the following year. -
Symbian OS 7.0 and 7.0s
First shipped in 2003. This is an important Symbian release which appeared with all contemporary user interfaces including UIQ Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia Series 60 /80 /90, as well as several FOMA phones in Japan. It also added EDGE support and IPv6. Java support was changed from pJava and JavaPhone to one based on the Java ME standard. One million Symbian phones were shipped in Q1 2003, with the rate increasing to one million a month by the end of 2003. -
Symbian OS 8.0
First shipped in 2004, one of its advantages would have been a choice of two different kernels (EKA1 or EKA2). However, the EKA2 kernel version did not ship until Symbian OS 8.1b. The kernels behave more or less identically from user-side, but are internally very different. EKA1 was chosen by some manufacturers to maintain compatibility with old device drivers, while EKA2 was a real-time kernel. 8.0b was deproductised in 2003. Also included were new APIs to support CDMA, 3G, two- -
Symbian OS 9.1 and open source development
Released early 2005. It includes many new security related features, including platform security module facilitating mandatory code signing. The new ARM EABI binary model means developers need to retool and the security changes mean they may have to recode. S60 platform 3rd Edition phones have Symbian OS 9.1. Sony Ericsson is shipping the M600 and P990 based on Symbian OS 9.1. The earlier versions had a defect where the phone hangs temporarily after the owner sent a large number of SMS'es. Howev -
Symbian OS 9.2
Released Q1 2006. Support for OMA Device Management 1.2 (was 1.1.2). Vietnamese language support. S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 phones have Symbian OS 9.2. Nokia phones with Symbian OS 9.2 OS include the Nokia E90, Nokia N95, Nokia N82, Nokia N81 and Nokia 5700. -
Symbian OS 9.3
Released on 12 July 2006. Upgrades include improved memory management and native support for Wifi 802.11, HSDPA. The Nokia E72, Nokia 5730 XpressMusic, Nokia N79, Nokia N96, Nokia E52, Nokia E75, Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, and others feature Symbian OS 9.3. -
Symbian OS 9.5
In 26 March 2007 Symbian Ltd. announced v9.5 which includes native support for mobile digital television broadcasts in DVB-H and ISDB-T formats and also location services.[10] -
Symbian OS 9.4
Announced in March 2007. Provides the concept of demand paging which is available from v9.3 onwards. Applications should launch up to 75% faster. Additionally, SQL support is provided by SQLite. Ships with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD, Nokia N97, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5233, Nokia 5235 and Sony Ericsson Satio. Used as the basis for Symbian^1, the first Symbian platform release. The release is also better known as S60 5th edition, as it is the bundled inte -
Released as Free and Open Source Software
The Symbian Foundation was announced in June 2008 and came into existence in 2009. Its objective was to publish the source for the entire Symbian platform under the OSI- and FSF-approved Eclipse Public License (EPL). The release of the Symbian platform deprecated Symbian OS as a standalone product.
