Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

The Good and the Bad of Open Source Symbian

Dena Cassella
By
symbianopensource
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Open source anything is worthy of celebration, but we’re not sure whether the newly opened Symbian mobile operating system is in need of a party or some further investigating. There are a lot of things good and bad that will come with a new transition like this. We give some reasons for why an open source code could be good, or bad, for Symbian and the mobile market.

Contents


Good

Effortless Reinvention. Even though Symbian is the leading smartphone operating system in the world, it is kind of old news and Nokia knew that—hence moving it to open source. Now that it is open source the waning platform will be maintained and further developed without any effort or investment from Nokia.

Recommended Videos

Options. After Google demonstrated how effective an open source mobile operating system can be—thanks Android—more people will be willing to dive into Symbian. This will provide more options for users, developers and smartphone vendors who will customize and format new branches of this mobile OS.

Related

Bigger is Better. The sheer number of Symbian users is what will attract top notch developers and really get things rolling with this whole open source thing. This will definitely help forge relationships with better developers, perhaps even ones who have tried to hook up with Apple and Google.

No Slippery Slope. People love to pull slippery slope arguments out for situations just like this one, claiming that now that Symbian is going open source everyone will. Wrong. That is highly unlikely. You think closed off companies like Apple or Research in Motion are going let just anyone manage their mobile operating systems? We don’t think so—those guys are excelling in the mobile market all on their own.


Not So Good

Still Old OS. So there may be some reinventing going on, but when it really comes down to it, Symbian is still on its death bed. Nokia just recharged its heart with some open source defibrillaters, but unfortunately that could not be enough to get it to beat the way it used to.

Forkage. There could be too many creative lines crossing and confusion may ensue if too many devs get their hands on the Symbian OS. Different developers may take the code in different directions, making it difficult to know which Symbian will work with which Symbian smartphones.

Where Nokia Stands. The aging operating system has been widely associated with Nokia, and that fact itself may deter other smartphone vendors from pouncing on this open source opportunity. Essentially Nokia would be handing out Symbian to its competitors. Will smartphone vendors view Symbian as being a product of Nokia or just a neighboring system?

Editors' Recommendations

Dena Cassella
Dena Cassella
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Haole built. O'ahu grown
My first 2 days with the Pixel 6 Pro: The good, the bad, and the not-at-all ugly
Pixel 6 (left) and Pixel 6 Pro (right).

For the last two days, the Google Pixel 6 Pro has been my main smartphone, with the Pixel 6 also in tow, and although that's not enough time to fully evaluate it for a review, it is enough time to be seriously impressed by several aspects. Here are the best parts of the Pixel 6 Pro that I couldn't wait to tell you about, along with a few not-so-good things that I will be looking at very closely over the next week or so as I prepare my final review.

Let's start with what has really impressed me.
Design, materials, and colors
What an absolute breath of fresh air the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are. A far cry from the boredom of the old Pixel models, the new phones look and feel like they cost more than they actually do. They are very different, happily, from the understated-to-the-point-of-invisibility design ethos of their predecessors.

Read more
If you’ve got a OnePlus 9 phone, you can try the open beta of OxygenOS 12 now
OnePlus 9 Pro shown from the back.

You can now try a beta version of OnePlus’ Android 12-based OygenOS operating system, provided you own a OnePlus 9 or OnePlus 9 Pro. The latest OxygenOS 12 software contains various new features and design updates, plus it integrates Oppo’s ColorOS codebase, as revealed earlier this year after OnePlus and Oppo announced a closer working partnership.

The user interface has been given a visual overhaul. The design has been created around the use of light and shadow, which apparently increases ease of use and readability. More specifically, OnePlus says simplified icons and typography, along with more subtle gradients and the use of shadows, will help the software be more relatable and inclusive. It goes as far as calling OxygenOS 12 will a “safe and chill place.”

Read more
MediaTek opens up its top chip for phone makers to customize
mediatek dimensity 1200 1100 processor news

MediaTek has opened up the architecture of its top Dimensity 1200 mobile chip to smartphone companies, allowing them to customize various elements and tune different features to their own preferences. What it means to you is that phones using the Dimensity 1200 can be set up to make best use of a device’s other components, and incorporate a company’s own expertise in areas like artificial intelligence (A.I.).

MediaTek calls the initiative the Dimensity 5G Open Resource Architecture, and there are five key areas where a smartphone company can tweak the Dimensity 1200 to its own preferences. The camera processing engine is a great example of how it may change future phones. MediaTek has opened the image signal processor (ISP), allowing changes to the visual processing engine, which controls image stabilization, depth mapping, colors, and other aspects of the camera hardware.

Read more