4 ms·

Android, Symbian Expected To Become One OS

2 points by ideas101 18y ago

philmcn 18y ago
This is good news for everyone. As the iPhone OS takes off, Google and Nokia will be free to create a strong contender to this.
SwellJoe 18y ago
Is this even a realistic technical goal? I was under the impression that Symbian was a pretty dramatically different technology than Android. Symbian is a C++ platform from top to bottom (as far as I know), while Android is a Linux+Java platform with not a lick of C++ to be found anywhere (again, as far as I know). I'm having a hard time imagining how the two could combine in any meaningful way. One project or the other would have to move to the other platform, losing the majority of their existing work. If Google wanted to do that, they would have been the ones to acquire Symbian. If Nokia wanted Java, they would have acquired RIM (or did what Google did and hire the lead developer of the Sidekick and set him loose with more resources and orders to produce the next generation platform for mobile). The fact that a lot of the same companies are backing both projects is a null statement. Of course they are! They want to be able to offer whichever one takes off, the moment there is consumer demand. They also want to appear to support open platforms (even if they're a little nervous about the idea). It's going to be a competitive landscape for the foreseeable future, and that's fine. iPhone needs some serious competition, and the only way to compete with something like iPhone is to go the opposite direction on some major point. In this case, iPhone is a thoroughly closed platform--everything goes through Apple, or it goes nowhere--and so the smart money among competitors is going into an open platform. Which one wins isn't really all that important to them...they just need reasonable plans for taking on the iPhone.
- wmf 18y ago
  It's about as realistic as merging Mach, FreeBSD, NeXTSTEP, and Mac OS. It was done, but it took years, cost a lot, and left a lot of legacy crap in the system.

2 points by ideas101 18y ago

This is good news for everyone. As the iPhone OS takes off, Google and Nokia will be free to create a strong contender to this.

SwellJoe 18y ago

Is this even a realistic technical goal? I was under the impression that Symbian was a pretty dramatically different technology than Android. Symbian is a C++ platform from top to bottom (as far as I know), while Android is a Linux+Java platform with not a lick of C++ to be found anywhere (again, as far as I know). I'm having a hard time imagining how the two could combine in any meaningful way. One project or the other would have to move to the other platform, losing the majority of their existing work. If Google wanted to do that, they would have been the ones to acquire Symbian. If Nokia wanted Java, they would have acquired RIM (or did what Google did and hire the lead developer of the Sidekick and set him loose with more resources and orders to produce the next generation platform for mobile). The fact that a lot of the same companies are backing both projects is a null statement. Of course they are! They want to be able to offer whichever one takes off, the moment there is consumer demand. They also want to appear to support open platforms (even if they're a little nervous about the idea). It's going to be a competitive landscape for the foreseeable future, and that's fine. iPhone needs some serious competition, and the only way to compete with something like iPhone is to go the opposite direction on some major point. In this case, iPhone is a thoroughly closed platform--everything goes through Apple, or it goes nowhere--and so the smart money among competitors is going into an open platform. Which one wins isn't really all that important to them...they just need reasonable plans for taking on the iPhone.

wmf 18y ago
It's about as realistic as merging Mach, FreeBSD, NeXTSTEP, and Mac OS. It was done, but it took years, cost a lot, and left a lot of legacy crap in the system.