SYMBIAN OS

Just like PCs have an operating system like Windows, Symbian is the O.S for mobile phones. But unlike PC design, mobile phone put constrains on a suitable O.S. The operating system has to have a low memory footprint, and low dynamic memory usage, and efficient power management framework and real time support for communication and telephony protocols. Symbian OS is designed for the mobile phone environment .It addresses constraints of mobile phones by providing a framework to handle low memory situations, a power management., and a rich software layer implementing industry standards for communication , telephony and data rendering .

Symbian OS is designed for the specific requirements of open, advanced , data enabled 2G , 3G mobile phones . Compact enough to fit in the memory of a mobile phone, Symbian OS was planned from the beginning to be a full operating system in terms of functionality. Symbian OS is already available in Ericsson R380 smart phones, Nokia 9200 communicator series, the Nokia 7650 and Sony Ericsson P800

Key features of Symbian OS are:

• Rich suit of application engines – Including contacts, schedules, messaging, browsing, office, utility and system control

• Browsing – fit for the purpose of browsing engine, for full web browser support and WAP stack for mobile browsing
• Messaging – multimedia messaging using MMS, picture messaging with EMS and text messaging using SMS

• Multimedia – shared access to screen, keyboards, phones and bitmaps; audio recording and play back, and image related to functionality (support for all common audio and image format)

• Communication protocol – wide area networking stacks including TCP, IP version 4 , IP version 6 and personal area networking stacks including Blue tooth , and USB.

• Software development – 3 main programming and content development options: C++, Java, WAP.