Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. But in the last few years, Symbian has seen more than its fair share of changes. In 2008, Nokia, one of Symbian’s largest customers, acquired a major share in the company. Nokia then created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the platform as an open source project, and began the process of opening up the source code that year.

Meanwhile, the operating system has seen new rivals crop up. Google’s Android, which is based on a Linux kernel, has become a favorite among handset makers such as Motorola and HTC. And it’s based on an open source foundation too.

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.

Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

Symbian is also ahead of Android in that it will publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, he says. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features.

“Open source is also about open governance,” says Williams. “It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

But will that be enough for Symbian to steal away customers lured by a snazzier and younger rival?

The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. But in the last few years, Symbian has seen more than its fair share of changes. In 2008, Nokia, one of Symbian’s largest customers, acquired a major share in the company. Nokia then created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the platform as an open source project, and began the process of opening up the source code that year.

Meanwhile, the operating system has seen new rivals crop up. Google’s Android, which is based on a Linux kernel, has become a favorite among handset makers such as Motorola and HTC. And it’s based on an open source foundation too.

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.

Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

Symbian is also ahead of Android in that it will publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, he says. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features.

“Open source is also about open governance,” says Williams. “It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

But will that be enough for Symbian to steal away customers lured by a snazzier and younger rival?

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Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free

Mobile-review.com First look at Nokia RX-51 aka Nokia N900

Please note – This article is nothing but our first impressions of the device and some musings about what’s going to happen. The N900 itself has reached the stage when most of its elements are operable, so we decided we could publish this lowdown. Just one more remark, had it not been for so many leaks regarding the N900 you wouldn’t have seen this write-up in the first place. But alas, Nokia have failed to keep their main 2009 announcement in secret, so here we go.
Positioning

If you are not a frequent reader of Mobile-Review.com you might ask how come Nokia decided to put aside its favorite S60 platform and switch to Maemo, which is all another way of saying that they ditched S60 for Linux OS. As most of you know, until recently Maemo has been used exclusively in pair with Internet Tablets.

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First look at Nokia RX-51 also known as Nokia N900

Nokia RX-51 tablet captured in the wild

Not long at all after that mysterious Nokia RX-51 passed through the FCC comes shots from Indonesian message board Kaskus of the tablet-like device in the wild. The blurred box shot and the label behind the battery clearly say RX-51 prototype, and the design is unmistakably similar to the rumored press photo for the Maemo 5-powered Rover from back in May. We can’t help but notice the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens and, more importantly, SIM card slot and an ear piece, which would be perfect for placing calls on, say, T-Mobile’s network. Few more shots after the break, and hit up the read link for the gallery of photos.

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Nokia RX-51 tablet captured in the wild

Intel Said to Win Nokia as Customer for Mobile Chips (Update2) – Bloomberg.com

June 22 (Bloomberg) — Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, will supply Nokia Oyj with processors for mobile devices, a breakthrough in its effort to enter the phone market, a person familiar with the matter said.

The deal will be announced on a conference call tomorrow, said the person, who declined to be identified because the details are confidential. Intel scheduled the call for an “important announcement” with Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president of the company’s ultra-mobility group.

Intel, whose microprocessors run more than 80 percent of the world’s personal computers, has struggled for about a decade to get a foothold in the market for mobile-phone chips. Chandrasekher leads a group that sells a scaled-down version of Intel’s personal-computer processor. The chip, called Atom, is designed for mobile devices that access the Web and send e-mail.

“Even if they get just a piece of Nokia’s business, it’s a big deal,” said Will Strauss, a Cave Creek, Arizona-based analyst for research firm Forward Concepts. “Nokia is still the biggest cell-phone maker in the world.”

Claudine Mangano, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara, California-based Intel, declined to comment. Laurie Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Nokia in the U.S., didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

Otellini’s Plan

In 2006, Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini scrapped his predecessor’s $5 billion investment in chips for mobile devices, after the company was late to the market and failed to win enough customers.

Now Otellini is again pushing to get Intel’s chips into phones, a bid to lessen the company’s reliance on computers, which account for than 90 percent of sales. A total of 1.21 billion mobile phones were sold globally last year, according to ABI Research in Oyster Bay, New York.

Intel shares fell 33 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $15.68 today on the Nasdaq Stock Market. They have gained 7 percent this year. Espoo, Finland-based Nokia fell 46 cents, or 4.3 percent, to 10.29 euros.

Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said in February that the company needed to land one of the top five mobile-phone makers if it wanted to build a significant business.

Texas Instruments

Intel is challenging Texas Instruments Inc., the largest maker of chips used to run programs in mobile phones. San Diego- based Qualcomm Inc., meanwhile, supplies the majority of communications chips for phones. Both companies have said that Intel would struggle to break their dominance because its products use too much power.

Intel announced in February it had landed LG Electronics Inc., the world’s third-largest phone maker, as a customer. LG will use an Intel processor to make a mobile Internet device, a cross between a mobile phone and a computer.

Intel’s attempts to create a mobile business have foundered before after early announcements of interest from customers, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at Scottsdale, Arizona-based research firm In-Stat.

“They’ve been dreaming of getting a significant win at Nokia,” he said. “It’s a big announcement, they’re a key guy. The only question now is whether they will actually come out with a product.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net

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Intel Said to Win Nokia as Customer for Mobile Chips

Our goal is to provide you with a great YouTube experience wherever you want to watch videos — whether it’s on your computer, on your television, or on your mobile phone. While YouTube has been available for many mobile phones for over a year, today we’re taking a big step forward with a new version of our mobile YouTube application. It’s optimized for most Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 devices (a list of supported Nokia S60 devices is available here). In addition to providing YouTube on more phones than ever before, it’s also much faster — up to 90% faster starting up, searching, and video loading — and gives you better video quality that’s automatically optimized to your WiFi or 3G network.

To download the app, visit http://m.youtube.com from your device. More cool features and app improvements are on the way, and the app will alert you as updates become available and allow you to upgrade with a single click.

Best,
David Stewart
Product Marketing
The YouTube Team

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Watching Video on Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 Phones

by Paul Miller, posted Feb 17th 2009 at 3:46AM

Sure, things looked pretty legit yesterday, but we were awaiting official confirmation from Nokia. That’s here, and now we can take a gander at the N86 purely on the up-and-up. The dual-slider (keypad on one end, camera and playback controls on the other) naturally centers on its 8 megapixel camera, which includes a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, AutoFocus, a mechanical shutter and a dual-LED flash, but there’s plenty of other N-series goodies like 8GB of storage, a 2.6-inch OLED screen, TV-out and a microSD slot. Nokia Maps, Ovi integration and all those other goodies are onboard — though the new email capabilities of its E-series brethren seem absent. The phone is due in Europe in Q2 2009 for around 375 Euro before taxes and subsidies.
Gallery: Nokia’s N86 makes its 8 megapixel debut

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Nokia?s N86 makes its 8 megapixel debut

If a picture is worth a thousand words is a video worth a thousand pictures? If so, at 30 frames per second, it would only take the N97 33-seconds to become worth it. We’re collecting all the Nokia 97 Videos we can find right here so this is worth… even more than a million words?

I never did like reading anyways…

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Nokia N97 Videos

New Smartphone Will Offer a Touch Screen, Fast Internet Access and Customized Features; Maps Show Landmarks in 3-D

Nokia Corp. unveiled an ambitious new smartphone with a touch-sensitive screen, a slide-out full keyboard, and access to a range of Web-based software applications, part of an emerging class of do-it-all mobile devices.

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Nokia

A prototype of Nokia’s N-97.

The company introduced the phone, dubbed the N-97, at an event in Barcelona Tuesday, but it won’t ship the device until the first half of 2009. It will sell for €550 ($699), though wireless carriers will likely discount the retail price. Nokia declined to discuss whether any U.S. carriers will offer the phone at launch.

Cellphone manufacturers generally make trade-offs for aesthetics, affordability and battery efficiency. But with fierce competition at the high end of the consumer market, there is pressure across the industry to stuff more and more features into a single device. The N-97 has the touch screen popularized by Apple Inc.’s iPhone, a real keyboard that appeals to users of BlackBerrys and Nokia’s own E-Series devices, and fast Wi-Fi Internet access to complement third-generation broadband access.

It will also let users customize their phones — even their home screen — with small applications called widgets. The programs, which will run off the Web rather than having to be installed on the device, could include news feeds, weather updates, games and tie-ins to social-networking applications such as Facebook.

‘Personal Internet’

“What we are giving consumers is the opportunity to have their own personal Internet with them all the time,” said Jonas Geust, vice president of the unit that produces Nokia’s Nseries phones. Mr. Geust said the N-97 will be Nokia’s flagship device for 2009.

Nokia

The new phone will carry building landmarks in 3-D on Nokia Maps.

The N-97 will carry an upgraded version of Nokia Maps, which the company is to release Tuesday. The new version builds on Nokia’s $8 billion acquisition this year of digital-map maker Navteq. It adds more details such as 3-D building landmarks and items that improve pedestrian navigation, like subway entrances and escalators. It also synchs with Nokia’s Ovi Web portal, allowing users to plan trips and routes from their computer and have them automatically transfer to their phone.

Handset makers are relying on high-end smartphones to help them weather an economic downturn that is expected to lead to an industry-wide sales slowdown next year of from 1% to 9%, according to various estimates. Analysts say phones with novel hardware or software features are more likely to lure stingy consumers to upgrade than midtier standard-feature phones.

Nokia — the largest cellphone manufacturer, with a 38% global market share — has been slow to catch on to some trends in the emerging consumer-smartphone category. Its first touch-screen phone, the Tube, ran into delays and was released late this year, after rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. had been marketing such devices for months.

State-of-the-Art Features

The N-97 is the latest in Nokia’s lineup of ultra high-end Nseries phones. It packs some state-of-the-art features, including a five-megapixel camera, DVD-quality video capture with an output jack that connects to a television set, and 32 gigabytes of onboard memory capacity — twice that of the iPhone. It has a built-in music player and users get a year of free access to Nokia’s catalog of four million tracks.

The results of cramming in so many features are evident in the physical design of the device, based on an early prototype. It is about 30% thicker than the iPhone, though about on par with the G1 from HTC Corp. and Google Inc. Its 3.5-inch screen slides out to reveal the keyboard, tilting upward at a 30-degree angle so users can more easily see what they are typing. Like the iPhone, the N-97 will have a piece of hardware called an accelerometer and can sense when the device is being rotated — a useful feature for games.

The Web browser aims to optimize content from the Web without any need for site publishers to make custom mobile pages, the company says. “We believe the Internet is as it is, and we need to support it,” Mr. Guest said.

Like other touch-screen phones that have emerged from Research in Motion Ltd. and Samsung, it won’t do some of the iPhone’s tricks. Users can’t zoom in and out of photos and Web pages by pinching or spreading two fingers. And, at least in the early prototype, users must scroll by touching and dragging a thin scroll bar, rather than simply flicking the screen up or down.

Write to Amol Sharma at amol.sharma@wsj.com

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Nokia Joins the Push to Do It All While on the Go