The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) is a software platform for mobile phones that runs on Symbian OS. S60 was among the most-advanced smartphone platforms in the world but was outdated by the proliferation of the touch screen user interface, particularly the success of iPhone (later named iOS) and Andoid systems. It was created by Nokia, who made the platform open source and contributed it to the Symbian Foundation. S60 has been used by mobile device manufacturers including Siemens mobile, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung.[1] Sony co-created the software with Nokia. Symbian (all Symbian products, including S40 platform) is the most popular smartphone OS on the market by 37.6% of the sector’s total sales, with 111.6m handsets sold in year 2010.[2]
In addition to the manufacturers the community includes:
- Software integration companies such as Sasken, Elektrobit, Teleca, Digia, Mobica, Atelier.tm
- Semiconductor companies Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Broadcom, Sony, Freescale Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics
- Operators such as Vodafone and Orange who develop and provide S60-based mobile applications and services
- Software developers and independent software vendors (ISVs).
The S60 software is a multivendor standard for smartphones that supports application development in Java MIDP, C++, Python[3] and Adobe Flash. Originally, the most distinguishing feature of S60 phones was that they allowed users to install new applications after purchase. Unlike a standard desktop platform, however, the built-in apps are rarely upgraded by the vendor beyond bug fixes. New features are only added to phones while they are being developed rather than after public release. Certain buttons are standardized, such as a menu key, a four way joystick or d-pad, left and right soft keys and a clear key.
Many devices are capable of running the S60 software platform with the Symbian OS. Devices ranging from the early Nokia 7650 running S60 v0.9 on Symbian OS v6.1,[6][7] to the latest Samsung i8910 Omnia HD running S60 v5.0 on Symbian OS v9.4.[8] In Symbian^3 the version of the revised platform is v5.2.
The table lists devices carrying each version of S60 as well as the Symbian OS version it is based on.
Symbian is now progressing through a period of organisational change to metamorph into an open source software platform project. As an OS, Symbian OS originally provided no user interface (UI), the visual layer that runs atop an operating system. This was implemented separately. Examples of Symbian UIs are MOAP; Series 60; Series 80; Series 90 and UIQ. This separation of UI from underlying OS has created both flexibility and some confusion in the market place. The Nokia purchase of Symbian was brokered with the involvement of the other UI developers and all major user interface layers have been (or have been pledged to be) donated to the open source foundation who will independently own the Symbian operating system. The new Symbian Foundation has announced its intent to unify different Symbian UIs into a single UI based on the S60 platform. (Announcements made in March 2009 indicated this would be the S60 5th edition with feature pack 1).
Info courtesy of Wikipedia.
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