This documentation is for a very old version of the OS (I think it got up to 9.4 by the time it was sunsetted?).

Here is how it did its version of std::string:

http://n-gage.org/symbian-sdk-doc/6.1/developerlibrary/Commo...

It actually wasn't too bad once it was beaten into you by the compiler and code reviews. Non-embedded C++ devs can count their lucky stars.