Silverlight beta comes to S60 5th Edition

Microsoft naturally spent the overwhelming majority of its breath chatting up Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX10 earlier this week, but buried beneath the fanfare was a little morsel for a distinctly different platform. That's right, Symbian fans, you've now got a Silverlight runtime (for a few devices, anyway) some two years after Nokia announced that it'd be coming. Support right now is limited to S60 5th Edition -- that is, touch-enabled Symbian devices -- with both in-browser and standalone Silverlight apps available for the taking. It's just a beta right now, so don't have too much faith in the stability or feature-completeness of this thing -- but it's a start.

[fast Posted Mar 20th 2010 4:17PM]

So Flash on winmo 6.5 and under = bad, Silverlight on symbian = good.
See, that is why people develop grudges.

[rudiger Posted Mar 20th 2010 5:48PM]

“You know what else is free? Syphilis. And like the S60 5th operating system it comes dressed in a beautiful package that drives you mad just as soon as you turn it on.”

Syphilis is free?!?! I paid $300 for it!

[christexaport Posted Mar 20th 2010 11:58PM]

@rudiger

S60 5th is just a UI on top of Symbian. Its not actually an OS. And as you are seeing, Symbian leads the smartphone market because it supports the most diverse and advanced app frameworks. No other OS comes close.

[Johnny Rockets Posted Mar 20th 2010 6:13PM]

Symbian LOL

There's no room for you.

Bring Silverlight to Android, webOS and iPhone.

Then there'll be more than 2 comments.

[rudiger Posted Mar 20th 2010 9:07PM]

@Johnny Rockets
Actually, this isn't on the main site... :(

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 12:27AM]

@Johnny Rockets
yeah, that's smart. Microsoft is making sure if its smartphone OS doesn't return as a dominant force, it can align its Office suite and other apps with as large an audience and ecosystem as possible. And your simple mind decided to go with Android, iPhone, and WebOS, claiming not enough room for Symbian. Do you realize Symbian is a 33% larger piece of the market than all those other OSes combined??

[mars0212 Posted Mar 20th 2010 6:46PM]

I just jumped ship to Android leaving Symbian behind. I sure do hope Symbian will not be getting better, making me regret my choice. I plan to stay on Android at least until Symbian 3 hits.

[newone Posted Mar 20th 2010 6:52PM]

@mars0212

THat'll be 5 months until the release of ^3, and about 4 months until you can buy phones.

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 10:01AM]

@newone
correct me if I'm wrong, but S^3 is already released, and devices running it will be out in 3-4 months. S^4 devices will follow just 6 months later.

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 12:07AM]

Symbian will be sharing an app ecosystem with Windows Phone 7 and MeeGo, and will likely have Eseries devices shipping with Microsoft Office. Nokia has wisely directed its ship for long term dominance.

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 12:30AM]

This means Microsoft and Symbian will be the only mobile OSes capable of watching Olympic video streams in the browser withoutman app.

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 7:07AM]

So Symbian is in bed with the biggest software company in the world, the biggest chip maker in the world, the biggest cellphone manufacturers in the world, and the biggest collection of customers in the world. When will Engadget start showing them their proper respect?

[I was swhite237 I lost my passwo Posted Mar 21st 2010 7:54AM]

@christexaport When they start building good software, release it, stop fragmenting the market, and stop ignoring the U.S.

[christexaport Posted Mar 21st 2010 9:53AM]

@I was swhite237 I lost my passwo
Your opinion on what is good doftware may vary from mine. Much too much focus on visuals and user interface. These are the superficial elements that can easily be altered. I judge software on the design and robustness of the infrastructure, its adaptability, and whether or not it allows or prevents its intended function.

Symbian wasn't always pretty, but in a world of DOES, Symbian has the game on lock. That some find its S60 UI layer difficult to learn at first is a minus, but once you learn the intricacies of it, you discover an OS with far more capabilities.

The space shuttle isn't as easy to fly as a crop duster, but just because John Q. Pilot finds it easier doesn't put the prop plane over a solid fueled rocket powered shuttle. One is just more advanced and uglier than the other.

Symbian^3 HAS been released, and all new Nokia devices will be running this newer OS until December, when the new UI is released with S^4.

How is Symbian or Nokia fragmenting the market? They're the only OS that share app runtimes with other OSes. There's Qt from the WinMo/MeeGo/Linux/OSX/Windows7/Unix ecosystems, Silverlight from WinPho7, Windows7, etc., Python from WinMo, Windows7, etc... and many others. They also made the UIs of MeeGo and Symbian similar and from the same toolkit. Qt means apps can scale to any reasonable screen resolution. Instead of locking in services, they promote access and service agnostic platforms.

So where's all the fragmentation coming from?! How about Apple, blocking Flash from its browser while the world adopts it? Or Android with its multiple UI layers? Most Nokia devices run the same apps. Can't say the same for anyone else...

[Grusic Posted Mar 23rd 2010 1:28AM]

Symbian will be around for a long time to come. No worries there.

I happen to like S60 5th edition (Symbian^3) even though it's a bit clunky in it's current form. However, with Symbian going open source, and some of the biggest cell phone manufacturers around (Nokia and Sony Ericcson) developing phones for it, I don't think Symbian is in any danger of becoming extinct.