The Pocket OS Choices

There are 3 main ‘advanced’ mobile phone OS’s that are currently dominating the (UK) mobile market today:

Symbian

Symbian is the oldest of the 3 mobile OS’s having been around for numerous years and can primarily be found on a range of Nokia handsets.

The most popular version of the user interface (UI) for Symbian OS is Series 60 or S60 as it is more commonly known.  This in-turn has a few different versions, with the most popular being 3rd Edition which is popular on a variety of Nokia Nseries handsets, such as the N73 and N95.

The latest S60 Edition to hit the streets is S60 5th Edition which has just appeared in the Nokia N97.

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iPhone

Apple came into the mobile phone arena in 2007 with the launch of their iPhone – a ground-breaking touch mobile phone. The OS that runs on the phone is a variant of the UNIX operating system that can be found in Mac OSX.

The user interface (UI) of the iPhone is purely driven by touch, with features like pinch to zoom in-and-out of pictures, and flick to move through image collections.

iPhone OS 2.0

On 18th July 2008 Apple released a major update to the iPhone OS at the same time as the launch as the iPhone 3G.  The update brought with it the iPhone App Store a marketplace for software developers to promote their applications for the iPhone.

iPhone OS 3.0

On 17th June 2009 Apple launched the iPhone 3GS along with OS 3.0. The update brought with it many features that people had wanted since the first iPhone had launched including  MMS, Cut, Copy & Paste.

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Android

Google came into the mobile phone market in late 2008 with their G1 handset running Android. The OS, based on, Linux was developed by Google but then handed over to the Open Handset Alliance.

Currently there are only four handsets that run Android, these are:

• HTC Dream (G1)
• HTC Magic
• HTC Hero
• Samsung I7500

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