Mobile Operating Systems

A Mobile operating system, also known as a Mobile platform, or a Handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device—similar in principle to an operating system such as Linux or Windows that controls a desktop computer.

The shift away from cellular technology has triggered hectic competition among not only technology giants, like Microsoft, Apple, and Nokia in a bid to capture the bigger market share pre-emptively. But also relatively young tech firms like Symbian seem to be in the lead pack of the market, particularly in smartphones and PDA phones.

And in the growing niche of the market, Palm, Research In Motion and Ericsson are moving vigorously toward their own mobile platform objectives. As recently as in November 2007, Google formed a Linux-based open source alliance to make inroads into this mobile platform market, raising consumer awareness of the growing mobile platform frenzy.

Major Mobile operating systems:

1) Symbian

Symbian OS is an open operating system, designed for mobile devices, with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC and runs exclusively on ARM processors.

Nokia is paying 264m euros ($410m; £209m) to buy out the other shareholders in handset software firm Symbian. The Symbian Foundation, announced in June 2008, will bring about the biggest evolutionary leap in Symbian OS since its creation -- consolidating S60, UIQ, MOAP(S) and ultimately making the platform open source.

Types of Symbain operating systems

The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) is a software platform for mobile phones that uses Symbian OS. S60 is currently amongst the leading smartphone platforms in the world. It is developed primarily by Nokia and licensed by them to other manufacturers including Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung.

UIQ (formerly known as User Interface Quartz) by UIQ Technology is a software platform based upon Symbian OS. Essentially this is a graphical user interface layer that provides additional components to the core OS, to enable the development of feature-rich mobile phones that are open to expanded capabilities through third-party applications.

MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform) is the software platform for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service for mobile phones. MOAP(S) is supported by Symbian OS based phones from a number of manufacturers such as Fujitsu, Sony Ericsson Japan, Mitsubishi, Sharp and others. Unlike Series 60 and UIQ, other platforms based on Symbian, MOAP(S) is not an open development platform. MOAP(L) is supported by Linux-based phones from Panasonic and NEC. MOAP(L) is also not an open development platform.

Latest Version: Symbian OS v9.5

Announced in March 2007. It provides the concept of demand paging which is available from v9.3 onwards. Applications should launch up to 75% faster. Native support for mobile digital television broadcasts in DVB-H and ISDB-T formats and also location services. Additionally, SQL support is provided by SQLite.

Symbian OS v9.5 is the result of continued deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, the world’s leading handset vendors, and its user interface platform partners MOAP, S60 and UIQ.

2) Windows Mobile:

Windows Mobile is a compact operating system combined with a suite of basic applications for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Win32 API. Devices that run Windows Mobile include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centers, and on-board computers for certain automobiles. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows, feature-wise and aesthetically. Additionally, third-party software development is available for Windows Mobile.

Originally appearing as the Pocket PC 2000 operating system, Windows Mobile has been updated several times, with the current version being Windows Mobile 6.1, and a new release scheduled for 2010. Microsoft projected in 2008 that shipments of devices with Windows Mobile will increase from 11 million to 20 million units. Microsoft licenses Windows Mobile to four out of the five world's largest mobile phone manufacturers, with Nokia being the other

Latest Version: Windows Mobile 6

Windows Mobile 6, formerly codenamed "Crossbow", was released on February 12, 2007 at the 3GSM World Congress 2007. It comes in three different versions: "Windows Mobile 6 Standard" for Smartphones (phones without touchscreens), "Windows Mobile 6 Professional" for Pocket PCs with phone functionality, and "Windows Mobile 6 Classic" for Pocket PCs without cellular radios.

Windows Mobile 6 is powered by Windows CE 5.0 (version 5.2) and is strongly linked to Windows Live and Exchange 2007 products. Windows Mobile 6 Standard was first offered on the Orange's SPV E650, while Windows Mobile 6 Professional was first offered on the O2's Xda Terra. Aesthetically, Windows Mobile 6 was meant to be similar in design to the then newly released Windows Vista.

3) Research In Motion

Research In Motion is a Canadian wireless device company. It is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry handheld communication device.

RIM develops its own software for its devices, using C++, C and Java technology. RIM also develops and sells embedded wireless data components.

4) Android

Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes Google-developed Java libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code.

The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.When released in 2008, most of the Android platform will be made available under the Apache free-software and open-source

The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

Android will ship with a set of core applications including an email client, SMS program, calendar, maps, browser, contacts, and others.

5) Palm OS

Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is an embedded operating system initially developed by U.S. Robotics' owned Palm Computing, Inc. for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management. Besides Palm, several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. The currently licensed version from ACCESS is now called Garnet OS

Latest Version: Palm OS Cobalt

Palm OS Cobalt (6.0) was introduced on February 10, 2004, but is not offered anymore from ACCESS (see next section). Palm OS 6.0 was renamed to Palm OS Cobalt to make clear that this version was initially not designated to replace Palm OS 5, which adopted the name Palm OS Garnet at the same time.

Palm OS Cobalt introduced modern operating system features to an embedded operating system based on a new kernel with multitasking and memory protection, a modern multimedia and graphic framework (derived from Palm's acquired BeOS), new security features, and adjustments of the PIM file formats to better cooperate with Microsoft Outlook.

Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 presented standard communication libraries for telecommunication, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity. Despite other additions, it failed to interest potential licensees to Palm OS Cobalt.

6) Brew

BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) is an application development platform created by Qualcomm for mobile phones. It was originally developed for CDMA handsets, but has since been ported to other air interfaces including GSM/GPRS. BREW is a software platform that can download and run small programs for playing games, sending messages, sharing photos, etc. The main advantage of BREW platforms is that the application developers can easily port their applications between all Qualcomm devices. BREW runs between the application and the wireless device's chip operating system so as to enable a programmer to develop applications without needing to code for system interface or understand wireless applications.

7) iPhone OS

iPhone OS is the operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the iPhone and iPod touch. Like Mac OS X, from which it was derived, it uses the Darwin foundation. iPhone OS has four abstraction layers: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer. The operating system takes less than half a gigabyte (GB) of the device's total memory storage

The latest released version of iPhone OS is 2.0, released on July 11, 2008

8) SavaJe

SavaJe (pronounced savage) was the developer of the SavaJe OS, a Java OS for advanced mobile phones. Based on Sun Microsystems' Micro Edition, their phones offer a Swing-based development platform for creating richer user interfaces.

9) Mobilinux

Mobilinux is a Linux-based operating system targeting smartphones. It was announced by MontaVista Software on April 25, 2005. Mobilinux is based on open source and open standard technology, designed for scalability and maximized battery power usage for single-chip mobile phones. More than 35 million phones and other mobile devices run on Mobilinux, far more than any other commercial Linux.

10) Maemo platform

The Maemo platform is the software stack for Nokia Internet Tablets, which includes Internet Tablet OS and the Maemo SDK. The Maemo platform is developed by the Maemo Software department within Nokia.

11) Red Flag Linux

Red Flag Linux is a Chinese Linux distribution. Red Flag's logo is Tux carrying a prominent red flag. Red Flag Linux 6.0 was published on September 29, 2007. Version 6.0 is based on the Linux distribution Asianux 3.0, which was released on September 22, 2007. It includes Linux 2.6.22.6, KDE 3.5.7 and X.Org 7.2.

12) JavaFX Mobile

JavaFX Mobile is a Java operating system for mobile devices initially developed by SavaJe Technologies and purchased by Sun Microsystems in April 2007. It is part of the JavaFX family of products. The JavaFX Mobile operating system provides a platform for PDAs, smartphones and feature phones. It features a Java SE and Java ME implementation running on top of a Linux kernel.

13) DoJa

DoJa profile is Java environment specification for DoCoMo's i-mode mobile phone.

DoJa is based on the Java ME CLDC API that is defined in the Java Community Process (JCP). DoJa is a profile defined by NTT DoCoMo to provide communications and other input-output processing, user interface (GUI) and other features/functions unique to i-mode, and extension libraries defined by individual phone terminal makers to add original functions. However, in contrast with other Java ME profiles like Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) or Information Module Profile (IMP), DoJa is not defined as a Java Specification Request (JSR), hence it's often called a "proprietary" Java ME profile.

14) Openmoko Linux

Openmoko Linux is an operating system for smartphones developed by FIC. It is a general-purpose Linux distribution comprising various pieces of free software. Openmoko Linux is part of the Openmoko project to create a family of completely open source mobile phones. Openmoko Linux uses the Linux kernel, GNU libc, the X.Org server plus their own graphical user environment built using the GTK+ toolkit and the Matchbox window manager. The OpenEmbedded build framework and a modified version of ipkg package system, called Opkg, are used to create and maintain software packages.

15) Qtopia

Qtopia is an application platform for Embedded Linux-based mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, mobile phones, and web pads. It is being developed by Trolltech.