“Operating System” Articles

After all the OS switching in such a short period of time, it seems that Nokia’s new MeeGo OS is starting to gain some headway. Earlier today, Imad Sousou, Director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Centre, announced that the MeeGo development is now officially underway. After opening the repositories and moving all the ongoing development work into the open, developers can now begin to work their magic. Unfortunately if you own the Nokia N900, this doesn’t mean you can begin using MeeGo today, however the first public release of MeeGo is set to be unveiled in May.

As the release of Symbian^3 draws inevitably close, the anticipation for what Nokia has in store is becoming pretty exciting. Today we managed to get our hands on a couple of very cool videos demonstrating some of the features of the upcoming Symbian^4 OS. The first video takes a quick look at the multiple homescreens, implemented with versatile widget support, similar to that of the Nokia N900. The second video showcases the Photo Gallery application, which is pretty cool and has a sort of thumbnail mini map when viewing photos in full screen. All I can say is that the delay in releasing a new device can only mean that there is something big about to hit us soon, and the excitement is definitely building up here. Check out the video demos at the break, and let us know what you think.

The Symbian Foundation has just announced that Symbian, the worlds most popular smartphone operating system, is now officially open source. In 2008, Symbian Software Limited was acquired by Nokia for USD 410 million, and in April 2009 a new independent non-profit organisation called Symbian Foundation was established. The foundation includes Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. The Symbian Foundation’s decision to make its code open source means that any organisation or individual can now use and modify the code for ‘any purpose.’