Hasta La Gadget!

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?

See Also:

• By Open Sourcing Symbian, Nokia Kicks Off the Mobile Age
• Symbian CEO Disses Linux-Based Android, Tells Google to Bring It …
• Symbian Announces Big Profits
• OS X Surpasses Windows Market Share (On Phones)
• 7 Reasons Nokia Phones Get No Love in U.S.

Photo: (James Nash/Flickr)

We have absolutely no idea what kind of voodoo, pseudoscience, and black magic goes into making an analyst-grade industry forecast, but considering that our local weather dude can barely tell us whether it’ll be raining in a few hours — much less a year or two from now — you’ve got to take these sorts of things with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, we’re finding it pretty notable here that IDC’s latest worldwide smartphone shipment forecast through 2013 has Symbian continuing to dominate the field of ever-stronger competitors thanks “primarily to the strength of Nokia in markets outside of the United States,” while Android will surge past Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and iPhone to become number two in the world on shipments of some 68 million devices. Falling back a bit in IDC’s Utopian vision are generic Linux devices along with webOS, which — while “growing steadily” — will be held back by a wee number of carrier partnerships. Everything that IDC’s saying seems plausible enough, and we’ve got every reason to believe that Android’s going to continue to heat up — particularly with four of the top five mobile players (Nokia notably excluded) devoting significant portions of their smartphone lineups to the platform over the coming months. As for Symbian, it’s an absolute juggernaut by any measure, so we can see it staying king for a while even in a complete vacuum of serious innovation — it’ll just be interesting whether to see Nokia and the Foundation can keep these hungry upstarts firmly in their rear-view mirror for much of the decade.

IDC: Symbian should keep dominating the market, Android to take second originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The former Kurara caterpillar has now sprouted into a Vivaz butterfly, and what do you know, all its lustrous color options have already been handled and explored by Dutch site All About Phones. We’re told that early leaks and spy shots did a disservice to the handsome styling of the handset, which borrows some design cues from the Xperia X10. It’s smaller than you might think, apparently, and a delight to handle, though the back has an unfortunate taste for fingerprints. The Symbian S60 5th onboard is said to be “remarkably fast,” and an improvement over the implementation on the Satio. We couldn’t resist snatching one more photo with all four hues on display, which can be found after the break, but you’ll have to read that source link for the full dish and photoshoot.

Update: Hey, SE has been kind enough to supply us with a developer preview video, which you’ll find right after the break, thanks XRX.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Vivaz shows up in multicolored Dutch hands-on (Update: video!)

Sony Ericsson Vivaz shows up in multicolored Dutch hands-on (Update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the Bolt from CES 2009? Man, that was ages ago. If you’ll recall, projector phones were actually all the rage for around 4.67 minutes at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and ever since we’ve been dealt months of nothing alongside one lone ranger of something in the LG eXpo. Evidently Logic Wireless is hoping that we’ll forget all about the Bolt that never shipped and instead focus on the next best thing: the 150LGW. Available for order now at Skymall (of all places), the projector phone looks significantly slimmer and more stylish than the company’s first crack, and aside from the inbuilt PJ, there’s also twin SIM card slots, dual cameras, an Office file viewer, quad-band GSM radio, Bluetooth and Symbian running the show. We aren’t too sure we’d be willing to shell out $499 without any proof that this thing is worth its salt, but you can bet we’ll be on the hunt for it once CES 2010 opens up next week.

Logic Wireless 150LGW projector phone reminds us of that Bolt we once saw originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 10:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are plenty of ways to measure smartphone marketshare. IDC measures units shipped from manufacturers whereas Gartner measures units sold to consumers. Then there’s comScore, the research firm that conducts monthly surveys in the US to measure the total number of devices (and thus operating systems) currently in use. Its latest data is summarized above for the three-month period ending in October. See those yellow lines? If our kindergarten skills haven’t failed us, then this data shows iPhone usage surpassing the once mighty Windows Mobile OS for the very first time. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Google’s Android OS is set to accelerate significantly by the time the February 2010 data rolls in as is WebOS just as soon as Palm can bring its fledgling OS to Verizon’s subscriber base. What’s most troubling to Redmond about this report though, is where we found it: on FierceDeveloper, a site for mobile software developers who will presumably use the data to help determine which platforms deserve their focus. Oh Windows Mobile 7, where are you?

ComScore: iPhone overtakes Windows Mobile use for the first time in US originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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