Symbian phone software now available for free

md5 · Post by **md5** » Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:18 pm

Symbian ^ 3 is going to be open, and free

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_ ... e_software
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ ... -and-free/

Great news

Anotherguest · Post by **Anotherguest** » Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:31 pm

Ohh yes.. working on that too!

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:43 pm

So now well over 50% of the smartphones out there are powered by an open-source OS. Awesome news indeed.

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Tue Feb 09, 2010 3:35 pm

Not really. All those phones are using older versions of Symbian, and I believe that the majority of them cannot be upgraded to a later version. Hence they are stuck "closed source" for all relevant purposes.

But maybe new phones will be better... Maybe they'll even make good and *free* developer tools available, so that one can write apps without a major headache?

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:20 pm

One thing I really hope for now is that the default music player in Symbian will eventually be able to handle more music formats, like ogg vorbis.

Anotherguest · Post by **Anotherguest** » Wed Feb 10, 2010 9:15 am

Getting a hw emulator to run on (using QEMU) will be great. Also easier access to the code, which makes it possible to add support for new codecs, like ogg. Actually ogg codec would be possible today, you just need to wrap it and package it and deliver it. libtremor would work great for that I think.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:54 am

Update: apparently, the code as it is won't compile, as it was built with proprietary (and now old) compilers and libraries.

Symbian is working on creating a free toolchain and making the whole package compile with GCC-E
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/12 ... n_compile/
and
http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index ... initiative