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 model,
and a rich software layer implementing industry standards for communications,
telephony and data rendering. Even with these abundant features, Symbian OS puts
no constraints on the integration of other peripheral hardware. This flexibility
allows handset manufacturers to pursue innovative and original designs. Symbian
OS is proven on several platforms. It started life as the operating system for
the Psion series of consumer PDA products (including Series 5mx, Revo and netBook),
and various adaptations by Diamond, Oregon Scientific and Ericsson. The first
dedicated mobile phone incorporating Symbian OS was the Ericsson R380 Smartphone,
which incorporated a flip-open keypad to reveal a touch screen display and several
connected applications. Most recently available
is the Nokia 9210Communicator, a mobile phone that has a QWERTY keyboard and color
display, and is fully open to third-party applications written in Java or C++.
The five key points - small mobile devices, mass-market, intermittent wireless
connectivity, diversity of products and an open platform for independent software
developers - are the premises on which Symbian OS was designed and developed.
This makes it distinct from any desktop, workstation or server operating system.
This also makes Symbian OS different from embedded operating systems, or any of
its competitors, which weren't designed with all these key points in mind. Symbian
is committed to open standards. Symbian OS has a POSIX-compliant interface and
a Sun-approved JVM, and the company is actively working with emerging standards,
such as J2ME, Bluetooth, MMS, SyncML, IPv6 and WCDMA.As
well as its own developer support organization, books, papers and courses, Symbian
delivers a global network of third-party competency and training centers - the
Symbian Competence Centers and Symbian Training Centers. These are specifically
directed at enabling other organizations and developers to take part in this new
economy. Symbian has announced and implemented a strategy that will see Symbian
OS running on many advanced open mobile phones.