Symbian - Whats that?!

Author: Victor Hall, exclusively for Midlet Review

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Have you ever heard of ‘Symbian' before?
If you haven't, you may be surprised to find out that ‘Symbian' might be on your mobile phone.

So what exactly is ‘Symbian'? Well, to be precise, ‘Symbian' is the name of an operating system that is run across a wide spectrum of mobile devices. Not only is it included in a vast majority of today's smart phones, but it is also the leading operating system used in high end mobile devices.

Symbian also represents an operating system that comes in a few variants. These variants are more commonly known as ‘Series 60', ‘Series 80' and ‘UIQ' based mobile phones. Each variant comes with its own specific editions and extensions. However, the ‘Series 60' variant is the main ‘Symbian' operating system.

However, what people are unaware of, and this includes owners of a ‘Series 60' mobile phone, are the capabilities of the ‘Symbian' platform as compared to ordinary mobile phones. While being intuitive and easy to use, in reality, they are small computers that can handle multi-tasking as well as being highly customizable and extendible with additional software. This goes beyond the regular run-of-the-mill customizable ring tones as there are a few thousand applications covering many categories of software such as web browsing, email on the go, office tools, music players, photography tools, dictionaries, city guide and of course, mobile games.

In fact, games are where ‘Symbian' phones really shine. Don't be too impressed with the N-Gage's graphics as just about any other ‘Symbian' phone can play games just as well. The reason behind this is because Symbian allows developers to code not only in the more common Java (J2ME) but also in C++. Without getting too technical, C++ programs are faster than Java ones as they are compiled into native machine code. The coding efficiency of C++, coupled with the smart phone's computational power, offers potential comparable to computers of about ten years ago. This translates into mobile phones having the potential to play games likened to that of ten year old PC games.

Furthermore, ‘Symbian' is an open platform and this means that anyone with programming knowledge can develop programs for it. Software development kits, more commonly known as ‘SDKs' are free and resources are a dime a dozen on the Internet. However, the learning curve can be a little steep since ‘Symbian' was designed for devices with limited resources and therefore use some specific concepts such as ‘descriptors', ‘cleanup stacks' and ‘active objects'.

Even if you are not a programmer, you can still customize the phone to your liking – all you need to do is to download some utilities off the Internet that will allow you to manipulate your phone's settings. These includes user customizable phone themes, MP3 based ring tones and much more!

Since 2002, when the first ‘Series 60' phone, the Nokia 7650, was shipped, many other manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic have jumped on the bandwagon to produce mobile phones powered by Symbian. Just to deviate a little off topic, ‘Symbian' is derived from the biological term ‘symbiosis' as ‘Symbian' started as a collaboration between Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Psion. During the last couple of years, ‘Symbian' has evolved from version 6.0 to the current version 9.1, which among other innovations, also introduces solutions to guarantee security from viruses and other harmful software. Unfortunately, this security comes at a price of backwards compatibility which means that applications written for ‘Symbian' prior to version 9 need to be ported. However, this hiccup should be a one-ff event, which certainly won't stop the flow of third-party applications being developed for ‘Symbian' today.

On top of everything else, the phones are no longer clumsy and heavy bricks. Newer models are sleeker and much more stylish, giving them mass appeal. In March 2006, the 100 th ‘Symbian' based mobile phone started shipping and growth forecasts predict that at least one-fifth of all handsets will be powered by ‘Symbian'. This can only mean good things for ‘Symbian' as it will gain more attention in the future. It will also be interesting to see how competing operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Linux fare when pit against ‘Symbian' for the top position in the market.

As mentioned earlier, there are many forums and resources related to the ‘Symbian' platform that can be found on the Internet. One such site, ‘http://www.s60.com', is a good starting place for people interested to find out what ‘Series 60' mobile phones are really all about. More comprehensive information about ‘Symbian' can be found at ‘http://www.allaboutsymbian.com' and ‘http://www.symbian.com', which incidentally, is the official ‘Symbian' site. For those keen on learning how to develop for ‘Symbian', I highly recommend ‘http://www.newlc.com' and ‘http://forum.nokia.com'. These sites feature many introductory articles, forums and SDKs for download. Besides that, there are many other independent forums and websites such as Midlet Review, which caters specifically to mobile gaming. Otherwise, a simple search on Google can yield plenty of results