14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung’s Mobile Innovator has just confirmed that it plans on terminating any form of support for the Symbian platform starting with tomorrow, December 31st.
The South Korean mobile phone maker informed those registered on the Samsung Mobile Innovator that the Symbian forum on the website is set to be closed today, while the content there would be deleted as of tomorrow.
The move was announced a while ago, and the first step to close the support for this mobile operating system was made back in October, when the Symbian Lab for developers was shut down.
Starting with January 1st, 2011, Samsung won't offer anymore support for this mobile platform, but it would focus more on the development of handsets powered by Android and Windows Phone 7, as well as by bada, its own OS.
We should note that Samsung is not the only mobile phone maker out there which killed-off support for the Symbian OS, and that Sony Ericsson announced a similar move not too long ago.
As for the South Korean mobile phone maker's plans for the future, they would include a greater focus on the development of bada, as well as on the designing of new mobile phones powered by it.
The mobile platform was announced officially about a year ago, and was already made available on half a dozen mobile devices.
Today, the handset vendor announced the release of a new flavor of the bada SDK, namely version 1.2.1, which packs new features aimed at enhancing the application certification process.
According to the release notes for the new bada SDK, the changes packed in it would include the fact that “the application with a manifest file which is not issued from developer site cannot be executed on the target device. This helps to minimize failures in application certification.”
However, an article on Samsung Hub notes that the new development kit version comes with a checker meant to ensure that potential errors do not slip during packaging of the app. Moreover, bada developers would also have the possibility to use in-app advertising.
The new bada SDK 1.2.1 is available for download on Softpedia as well, via this link. Those who would like to learn more info on the new flavor of the tool should head to Samsung's website here.