Symbian OS
Symbian OS is an operating
system with associated libraries, user interface
frameworks and reference implementations of
common tools, produced by Symbian. It is a
descendent of Psion's EPOC.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Panasonic, Nokia,
Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.
There are multiple user interface flavours that
use the Symbian OS, such as UIQ and Nokia's
Series 60. The adaptability of the user
interface enables the use of Symbian OS on
various form-factors of hand-held devices:
clam-shell or tablet, keyboard and/or pen, PDA
or mobile phone, and others.
Symbian OS is structured like many desktop
operating systems, with pre-emptive
multitasking, multithreading and memory
protection.
Symbian OS's major advantage is the fact that it
was built for handheld devices with limited
resources that may be running for months or
years. There is a strong emphasis on conserving
memory, using Symbian-specific programming
idioms such as descriptors and a cleanup stack.
Together with other techniques, these keep
memory usage low and memory leaks rare. There
are similar techniques for conserving disk space
(though the disks on Symbian devices are usually
flash memory). Furthermore, all Symbian OS
programming is event-based, and the CPU is
switched off when applications are not directly
dealing with an event. This is achieved through
a programming idiom called active objects.
Without using these techniques properly, an
application can wear down the battery of a phone
in just a couple of hours; with them, the
battery lasts for a week.
All of this makes Symbian OS's flavour of C++
very specialised, and difficult to program.
However, Symbian OS devices can also be
programmed in OPL, Python, Visual Basic, Simkin
and Perl - together with the J2ME and Personal
Java flavours of Java.
The current Symbian OS is derived from the
EPOC32 operating system, which was used in Psion
Series 5, Revo, Sienna, and NetBook PDAs and
originally developed by Psion Software. The
Symbian OS has since gone though many revisions.
In 2004 the first worm for mobile phones using
Symbian OS, Cabir, was developed, which used
Bluetooth to spread itself to nearby phones.
Devices that
have used the Symbian OS
Nokia 9210 Communicator smartphone
(32-bit 66Mhz ARM9-based RISC CPU) (2001), 9300
Communicator (2004), 9500 Communicator (2004)
using the Nokia Series 80 interface
Sony Ericsson P800 (2002), P900 (2003), P910
(2004) using the UIQ user interface.
Nokia Series 60 (2002)
Nokia Series 60 is used in various phones, the
first being the Nokia 7650, then the Nokia 3650,
followed by the Nokia 6600 and Nokia 7610. The
Nokia N-Gage and Nokia N-Gage QD gaming/smartphone
combos are also Series 60 platform devices. It
is also used on other manufacturers' phones such
as the Siemens SX1 and Sendo X.
Nokia 7710 (2004) using the Nokia Series 90
interface.
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