There has been a rather cryptic countdown on Twitter from the Symbian Foundation and now we learn that the countdown was designed to alert folks that Symbian is now fully open source and 100% free (thanks Symbian Guru). This happened four months ahead of schedule and we should soon start to see Symbian-powered devices from different manufacturers. This new Symbian is different than the previous Symbian you are familiar with in S60. While Nokia is still a major contributor to Symbian, the Symbian Foundation stated that the goal by 2011 is to have Nokia contributing no more than 50% of the development work.
Android has been promoted as an open source platform, but I understand that it is actually open with limits while this new Symbian platform is full and completely open. This openness may encourage developers to work to bring us smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and other devices in the future and is actually quite exciting. FYI, the six companies currently part of the Symbian Foundation include:
- Fujitsu
- Huawei
- Nokia
- Samsung Electronics
- Sharp
- Sony Ericsson
As I have mentioned before, 2010 will be a very interesting and exciting year for mobile enthusiasts.
Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.
Disclosure
Matthew Miller
Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.
Biography
Matthew Miller
Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
