Mobile goes Symbian

The world we live in has massive insecurities.  We want what we don’t have and when we get what we want, there is a better version already out.  It’s a win – lose situation.  A win, for the companies spawning these new ideas, and a loss for us, the eager, naive and gullible consumer.

People are living in a state of mind where – well, Freddie Mercury said it best – “I want it all and I want it now”.  So many insecurities.  I want what you have, but better, faster and cheaper. 

It is the way the markets are being driven today and cell phone manufacturers are jumping on that seemingly endless bandwagon.

Yes, the mobile world is here.  I know it’s been around for quite some time, but only now are we fully benefiting from the original idea that was the ‘mobile cellular phone’. 

Remember carrying around those brick cell phones back in the nineties?  It was probably used more as a weapon than a communicator.  Gran thought an SMS was a dirty act and that speed dial could potentially break your fingers.  Nowadays, if you don’t own or haven’t previously owned a cellphone, its considered ‘not normal’. 

There are many families who abandoned their landline phones for the benefits that mobile phone companies such as Vodacom and Cell C promoted.  I’m not saying that that is a bad move, it just increased the foothold that these companies have on the media and communication market. 

Companies such as the Symbian Foundation aim “to bring to life a shared vision of the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform – and to make it available for free”.  Symbian is an operating system which is designed for mobile phones and smartphones.

The Symbian Foundation and Nokia purchased Symbian Software Limited in 2008. The Foundation has only been up and running since early last year and it provides, manages and unifies the Symbian platform for download and development.  The source code has been available since February 2010 and is published under the Eclipse Public License.

The entire platform is available to everyone for free, bringing additional innovation and more frequent and widely-sourced code and feature contributions; and engaging an even broader community in future development.

Developers, designers and consumers worldwide can now contribute their creative skills and ideas to create new features that will revolutionize the mobile phone.

As I said before, we are truly only now benefiting from those early ideas.  Symbian is a product that is better, faster and definitely cheaper.