Symbian OS was the dominant smartphone computing platform until 2010 when Android OS conquered its territory. It was once under the full control of Nokia and many of their smartphone units run the OS.

Unfortunately, its evolution has ended with Nokia 808 PureView as its last descendant. It is considered as one of the foundations in the smartphone industry before Android and iOS completely left it in the dust.

Symbian was designed and maintained by Accenture and originally developed from Psion's EPOC OS. Then it became an open-source platform similar to what Android is now and developed by Symbian Foundation in 2009. Later, it was used by many major mobile phone brands such as Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Nokia.

Nokia acquired Symbian in 2008 and most of its devices back then run on Symbian OS until the shift to Microsoft's Windows in 2011, making the once-lead OS as its franchise platform.

Even though Symbian is departing the tech world, it did leave notable key features that made its identity worthwhile.

1. Performance: Symbian OS is designed not to stress the batteries due to its low memory. It does not make tasking demands to the device.

2. Multitasking: All applications in Symbian OS are designed to be cooperative so that memory, speed, and battery will not compromise each other.

3. Standards: Open-source platform capability ensures that all applications installed are stable, portable, and user friendly.

Notable Symbian Smartphones

1. Nokia E75 - A qwerty-slider smartphone with candy-bar form factor.

2. Nokia E72 - With QWERTY keyboard and long battery life.

3. Sendo X - A British-designed phone with stereo music output, screen status elements and camera LED flash.

4. Nokia 9500 - Full QWERTY keys with good stereo sound and VGA camera.

5. Nokia 6220 classic - A Symbian unit with Xenon flash but lacks Wi-Fi support.

6. Nokia E51 - Considered the toughest among Symbian-made devices.

7. Nokia N-Gage Classic - Packed with hardware MP3 player and radio line-in recording.

8. Nokia 6630 - First to offer 3G, digital stereo sound, and megapixel camera.

9. Nokia N79 - One of the most flexible candy-bar smartphones in 2008.

10. Nokia E5 - Notable for qwerty keys, candy-bar form, 600MHz processor, and 256MB. It was one of the ultimate devices in 2010.

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