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Symbian Source Code

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Re: Symbian Source Code

#71
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a windows port of the GNU toolchain, so it would only work on windows. But even on windows it had a lot of warts (because these tools were build for unix in the first place, so e.g. drive letters and back slashes were problematic). About a decade ago I worked on a project for a South Korean cellphone vendor whose name I'll not cite for somewhat obvious reasons. The build system was similar to what you describe: a p…

Is Odin still a thing?

Yep, but a bit out of date...

https://www.odinflash.com/odinchangelog

Re: Symbian Source Code

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I remember attending parties when 1 or 2 millions of a model had been sold. At the same time Nokia sold over 100 million of feature phones a year. Edit: As you write they were expensive. So while Nokia was the undisputd leader in the segment for a couple of years the absolute numbers were not that big. I remember some year the worldwide phone market was 400 million a year. Nokia had over 100 million of them, but…

One model, N95, sold 10 million units. It was priced at around $500. That's 5 billion revenue from one model alone. I'm sure feature phones sold a lot more, but that's irrelevant.

Yes, 10 millions for the N95 sound possible to me. But that was after 10 years of development with many 1000 developers. Revenue is not earnings. The orginal claim was that they earned billions.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#73
post #39

I used to work for Nokia Research during the mid 2000's. I remember how hard it was to get the source code for this back then as internal employees... One of my colleagues was working on a research prototype that needed tighter integration with the system than what you could achieve with a deployed app. So he needed the source code and the build environment for the OS. And for that he needed quite a few people to agr…

Now that nobody cares about this crap anymore, they release the source code.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#75
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Odin still a thing?

I don't know. Last time I re-imaged a Samsung phone, I used Heimdall[1]. It is open source and runs on linux. [1] https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall

It works well, compiled and used it last week.

LineageOS said it was out of date, but it worked for me on Ubuntu 22.04.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#76

Anyone else feel sad coming across something like this? So many hours spent for a product that is largely forgotten. Glad to see the pieces out in the open though.

It is the destiny for most code written.

Anyone who has been in this business for any length of time will look back at a long legacy of retired, obsolete projects. Very little in this space lasts. The high profile, long lived projects we see are just an tiny fraction of the software that's created, used, forgotten, and deleted.

I like to look back and note some of the companies I helped in that little window of time I could contribute, but those contributions are long gone.

We don't build bridges in this business, thats for sure.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#77
post #39

I used to work for Nokia Research during the mid 2000's. I remember how hard it was to get the source code for this back then as internal employees... One of my colleagues was working on a research prototype that needed tighter integration with the system than what you could achieve with a deployed app. So he needed the source code and the build environment for the OS. And for that he needed quite a few people to agr…

I was on the Networks side between 2004 and 20011.

I painfully remember all the hoops that Symbian went through during those years until the last days of Carbide.

Yet, sometimes I still miss it when comparing with NDK development experience on Android.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#78
post #21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbian, the Ozymandias of smartphone operating systems. They had a lot of the right ideas very early. They started building a high-resolution graphical mobile OS for 32-bit ARM in the mid-1990s, when most phones barely could display two lines of text and receive an SMS. Many concepts in iOS and Android today were pioneered by Symbian. IMO, the biggest failing of Symbian was to disown the UI and focus on the lower la…

I think as long as it was companies like nokia who liked to create smartphones that where primarily phones with texting first and computers a very distant second Symbian did not have a chance. I know that they made stuff like the 9x00 communicators but they where never intended as mass market products. Nokia was never able to craft a desirable product that brought applications to the mainstream user, most people who…

Third-party apps for Symbian may not have been mainstream, but third-party games definitely were. Even before that, Java ME games were popular on feature phones.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#79
It feels like Garmin devices are still dependent on this era's tools. When someone asks me about issues with using my Garmin Edge 1030 for navigation, I often say it works fine enough but it is sort of like using a Symbian phone in the early 2000s.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#80
post #39

I used to work for Nokia Research during the mid 2000's. I remember how hard it was to get the source code for this back then as internal employees... One of my colleagues was working on a research prototype that needed tighter integration with the system than what you could achieve with a deployed app. So he needed the source code and the build environment for the OS. And for that he needed quite a few people to agr…

Now that nobody cares about this crap anymore, they release the source code.

Symbian was open sourced in 2010. https://www.wired.com/2010/02/symbian-operating-system-now-o...
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