Smart Phone operating systems

[Guest PaulWayne]

Can anybody explain the main differences of the "smart phone "operating systems produced by the following:-

Symbian

Palmsouce

Microsoft

Montavista's Linux

Paul

[Guest James]

Welcome to the site mate ;)

The Smartphone OS is only produced by microsoft.

[Guest Bazz]

Not the most helpful reply jlowap ;-)

MS market the Smartphone (note capitalisation) with a modified version of Pocket PC OS, but any phone with Camera and/or some form of pda facilities are also commonly know as smartphones. Whether MS hijacked the name or it got generalised is up for debate. MS are also changing their OS name perhaps in an attempt to clear up this mess. Phones with downloadable games could also be considered smartphones I suppose...

Don't have much experience of non-MS smartphones so can't really help with your question. The main thing is most do the same thing in different ways and they are not interchangeable (apps for one phone won't work on the other and currently an MS smartphone can't run Symbian OS). The one exception is java games are usually somewhat interchangeable. Think of them like Apples and PCs.

Symbian seems to have a bigger hold on the market at the mo but strangely, in my admittedly limit and biased view, there seems to be more games and apps for MS Smartphone.

[Guest PaulWayne]

Thanks for the response Bazz very helpful.

Do you know which of the various operating systems support touch screens for data input via a stylus?

Paul

[Guest goinnuts]

palm, and the p800 which is symbian. sybian yuk :wink:

[Guest James]

yeah i know it was not the most usefull in that respect...

i was trying to say that the SmartPhone was a MS os.

i did not know there were other types of phones called smart phones... ?

learn something every day! ;)

Posted from my SmartPhone!

[Guest Bazz]

Do you know which of the various operating systems support touch screens for data input via a stylus?

As goingnuts pointed out some Symbian phones (currently only the Sony Ericsson P800 AFAIK) and, I think, all Palm ones. There are also non touch-screen Symbian phones ( Nokia).

MS made a design-decision that their smartphones should have touch-screen for simplicity sake. However MS do have Pocket PC devices with in-built phone cabilities (e.g. the XDA). They are a lot more powerful (and cumbersome) than Smartphones.

Having played with both the P800 and the SPV I'm not convinced a stylus really works on a phone. If you need that level of control go for the PDA with phone option (XDA), rather than the phone with PDA option (SPV).

Barry

[Guest James]

i agree with Barry, i used to have a Ericsson R380 (the flip open one) with a touch screen and stylus great for showing off but crap when you just what to send a quick txt and you have to get your stylus out in the pub or night club.... turned out to be a reral pain in the ass. and i lost three of the stupid little stylus!

[Guest ranzz]

Okay, here's the deal with Symbian.

The nokia 3650/7650 are running Symbian 6.1 with the Series 60 UI, that DOESN'T support touchscreens. the 6600 is using Symbian 7.0s and will be the first one to use it (when it's released of course) but with Series 60 V2 UI, it too - will not support touchscreens.

The only Symbian phone that supports touchscreens and user handwriting recognition is the SE P800, running Symbian 7.0 (not s, s is newer and kicksazz) and the UIQ user interface, which actually gives it touchscreen support.

Nokia has one more phone with a touchscreen which is the 6108, it's kind of a feature phone as the stylus is placed on the back under inspiration from some Japanese fighters or something. anyway - it's only sold in the Far East and is hardly a smartphone, just a regular phone.

Got a little carried away there. let's get back to the subject:

A Smartphone, by definition - is a cellphone that combines PIM (Personal Information Manager) capabilities that are somewhat PPC/PALM alike.

Naturally, no phone really holds ALL the PIM options that the Handheld has, especially because of the lack of touchscreen, but that's the main essence of being a Smartphone.

Much like Bazz I would like to know what came first - the chicken or the egg (in other words - the MS Smartphone OS, or the definition for a cellphone - "Smartphone").