C++ was created in 1979 - I doubt Symbian adopted it "very early".

Also, the standard doesn't specify "how exceptions work" even today, in the sense that a lot of what happens when running C++ is implementation dependent.

But I can see what you mean about sticking to pre-C++11 (maybe even pre-C++98 ?) APIs.

The first C++ standardization was C++98, released in (you guessed it) 1998. Symbian's first release, under the EPOC32 name, was in 1997, with working starting on that OS in 1994 (and the company had a prior OS, EPOC16, that was from the late 80s)

In 1998 c++ was a totally different ballgame to c++ in 2010 let alone now