Symbian OS v6.0 and 6.1

Symbian OS v6.0 and 6.1

The OS was renamed Symbian OS and was envisioned as the base for a new range of smartphones. This release sometime is called ER6. Psion gave 130 key staff to the new company and retained a 31% shareholding in the spun-out business.

The first 'open' Symbian OS phone, the Nokia 9210 Communicator, was released in June 2001. Bluetooth support added. Almost 500,000 Symbian phones were shipped in 2001, rising to 2.1 million the following year.

Development of different UIs was made generic with a "reference design strategy" for either 'smartphone' or 'communicator' devices, subdivided further into keyboard- or tablet-based designs. Two reference UIs (DFRDs or Device Family Reference Designs) were shipped - Quartz and Crystal. The former was merged with Ericsson's 'Ronneby' design and became the basis for the UIQ interface, the latter reached the market as the Nokia Series 80 UI.

Later DFRDs were Sapphire, Ruby, and Emerald. Only Sapphire came to market, evolving into the Pearl DFRD and finally the Nokia Series 60 UI, a keypad-based 'square' UI for the first true smartphones. The first one of them was the Nokia 7650 smartphone (featuring Symbian OS 6.1), which was also the first with a built-in camera, with VGA (0.3 Mpx = 640*480) resolution.

Despite these efforts to be generic the UI was clearly split between competing companies, Crystal or Sapphire was Nokia, Quartz was Ericsson. DFRD was abandoned by Symbian in late 2002, as part of an active retreat from UI development in favour of 'headless' delivery. Pearl was given to Nokia, Quartz development was spun-off as UIQ Technology AB, and work with Japanese firms was quickly folded into the MOAP standard.

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