As I am sure many here will be keen to hear (not 
), Nokia is pulling the plug on Symbian from Jan 2014.
Now, I hear you all ask, a phone is a phone, so what is actually going to happen?
Each Symbian app has a certificate, which is verified by the O/S upon each app start. This includes a crypto hash over the whole binary so you can't do app patches... This certificate has a lifetime - typically 3 years but sometimes less. An installed app will run for ever but you cannot do an install or a re-install of an app whose cert has expired. The latest Symbian is really amazingly secure; much more so than Windows or anything else I have come across. Hacking it has been very hard, and was eventually done only with a really cunning antivirus software hack whereby you installed a hacked Norton AV app (whose cert gave it deep privileges) with the quarantine directory specially prepared with hacked O/S files, and then restored the quarantined files. Something which a real anorak will appreciate 
Nokia have been operating an online facility for issuing certificates to developers. They are pulling this. They are even pulling the one which issues an IMEI-specific certificate which allows a developer to test an app on his phone.
They will also be blocking all app updates in the Nokia app shop.
Fortunately the structure of Symbian is well understood - short of a complete disassembly which is not really feasible on several hundred MB of C++ code, unless you are the Russian team which reverse engineered the VAX11/780 - and one can now flash a phone with a custom ROM image which not only removes the certificate checking but also strips out all kinds of garbage (e.g. the National Geographic app).
But most phones won't be hacked or flashed (the estimate for IOS devices is only 10%) so this will end even the low level app development which has been carrying on since Apple got 99% of app developers to move to IOS c. 2010.
In practice, the phone and all the stuff on it will of course keep working. What you will gradually lose is access to the "social" sites (facebook, twitter, etc) and uploading to sites like youtube, flickr, dropbox, as these change their APIs from time to time. Whether this matters to you depends on your usage...
One has to wonder why Micro$oft-owned Nokia would implement such a vindictive corporate policy move...
One theory is that they are cheesed off that Symbian is still outselling their Windows (WP) phones, which is hardly a suprise given the banal user interface.
What would really miff off most serious users would be if Nokia pulled the free worldwide Maps (satnav) function which has been one of the biggest selling points - far superior to anything on IOS for example.
That is sad. I shut down my last Nokia phone with Symbian last Friday. Nokia has lost with Microsoft, I will not buy one of the new windows phones.
As a conservative user of technology (in aviation as well as in telecomms...) I am not really concerned - I never owned/used any phone that could run "applications" and never felt the need. And stories like this confirm that approach: there is no stability even at medium term - how long had the Symbian thing been available? - so better not engage unless one needs to.
That said, the sale of Nokia to Microsoft is a very sad event - I was always happy to buy their phones, am using one right now, to full satisfaction; but it's been the last.
PS Peter, I am much impressed by the hacking insights you show; only I hope you are not suggesting the VAX O/S was written in C++ };-)
only I hope you are not suggesting the VAX O/S was written in C++ 1977? never. Pure assembler.
I didn't even know that existed at all ;-) (Really, no kidding. I always thought "Symbian" was some kind of alternative nutrition like "vegan"...)
I am still using the 808 and will continue until it becomes pretty useless - because with its 40MP camera it has a huge utility value. It is a good phone which happens to outperform any pocket sized camera, for most straightforward photography situations.
And I can read EuroGA on it
In fact I have a second 808 which I am going to flash.
how long had the Symbian thing been available?
Much longer than I remember... goes back to Psion etc. These have been serious productivity tools for serious users, for all those years.
Nokia still sell close to 100M phones every quarter but most of them are the cheap ones (non-Symbian I think). It is only the relatively wealthy people in the world that can afford smartphones.
Hacking it has been very hard
That was already true when I tried some 5 years ago (S60 3rd try ^ Wedition). But that was mostly not due to certificates, but due to the horribly buggy tools (compiler, simulator)
only I hope you are not suggesting the VAX O/S was written in C++ 1977? never. Pure assembler.
Not true. Very large pieces in VMS - mostly utilities, but even some kernel-level stuff, were written in BLISS.
Cheese us, is this really an aviation forum? None but IT'ers around, seemingly (almost wrote "IT-freaks" but of course I am not a freak, not me for one..!) and most of them fearsomely aware of the distant past!
Can we all please move to the present century? You sound like a bunch of dinosaures ... just like all the engines we are flying with .. Technology of the fifties and sixties.
