Smartphone Operating System

Series 60 platform is targeted at Smartphone. A device
having the size and form factor of a normal phone,
while providing, a graphics-capable color screen,
value-adding applications such as messaging tools
(e.g. e-mail, advanced calendar, and contacts book)
and the ability to install new applications is
categorized as a Smartphone .
In addition to features easily noticed by the user,
there are other types of requirements for Smartphone.
As they are embedded systems (like all mobile
phones), behavior accepted for typical personal
computers cannot be tolerated . The operating
system of the Smartphone needs to be very reliable and
stable – system crashing and rebooting are most
undesired features. It must also fit into a very small
amount of memory and use the resources sparingly. A
real-time nature with predetermined response times is
required of the parts that deal with the cellular
networks. In addition it is preferred that the entire
system provides fast response times. The overall
quality of the operating system and the software
platform of the Smartphone need to be very good, as
the cost of replacing the software with a new version is
high. A Smartphone operating system must be
robust and support design principles that allow other
software to be reliable. Robustness of the operating
system is one of the key criteria to be considered when
selecting the platform for Smartphone.
The operating system of a Smartphone is the most
critical software component as it depicts the nature of
software development and operating principles .
The most important requirements are multi-tasking
(with multi-threading), real-time operation of the
cellular software, effective power management, small
size of the operating system itself. As well as the
applications built on it, ease of developing new
functionality, reusability, modularity, connectivity (i.e.
interoperation with other devices and external data
storage), and robustness.
The operating system defines the features,
performance, security level and the active
programming interfaces API. Thus, the technical
users of mobile relay on the operating systems when
they make their purchase decision instead of relaying
of the feature of the handset only. This is because a
good operating system can operate even on modest
handsets which cannot be achieved with other
operating systems besides performing the usual tasks
of multimedia presentation and SMS which are not a
measure of the devices quality.