This article intends to highlight the various Operating Systems (OS) currently being deployed by various mobile phone manufacturers. There are many OS under development for the smart phones and we here only look at the most popular ones.

The popular operating software systems for Smart Phones are

1. Symbian OS

2. Embedded Linux

3. Java (J2ME)

4. Windows Mobile

Symbian OS is the most popular and widely used smart phone OS, enjoying more than 50 % market share with strong support from smart phone manufacturers including but not limited to Nokia, Sony Ericsson , Samsung etc.,

The Symbian OS is a highly developed version of Psion’s 32-bit EPOC platform.

Symbian was formed as a spin-off from Psion Software Ltd, co-owned by Psion, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. The main purpose of the spin-off was to improve and develop advance software platform for smart phones.

Symbian OS is the name behind the popular Series 60 phones in the mobile world. Symbian is the licensing company that develops and supplies the advanced , open standards operating system for data enabled mobile phones.

The processor used in the Smart Phones, to process various information, is named as ARM Processors i.e., Advanced RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers) Machines. They drive popular high-end phones like Nokia, Panasonic and Samsung.

ARM Processors are capable of running Symbian OS, Linux OS and Windows Mobile.

The table given below summarizes the various operating systems being deployed by the manufacturers onto the latest Smart Phones.

SDK Series Version Models
UIQ UIQ 3.0 Symbian OS version 9.1 Sony Ericsson P990

UIQ 2.1 Symbian OS version 7.0 Sony Ericsson P910

UIQ 2.1 Symbian OS version 7.0 Sony Ericsson P900

UIQ 2.1 Symbian OS version 7.0 Motorola A1000

UIQ 2.0 Symbian OS version 7.0 Sony Ericsson P800

UIQ 2.0 Symbian OS version 7.0 Motorola A902 Benq P30

S60 S60 3rd Edition Symbian OS Version 9.1 Nokia E60, E61,E70 N71,N80, N91, N92, 3250

S60 2nd Edition FP3 Symbian OS Version 8.1 Nokia N70, N90

Symbian OS Version 8.0 Nokia 6630, 6680, 6681,6682

S60 2nd Edition FP1 Symbian OS Version 7.0 Nokia 3230,6670, 7610,6620 ,62600

Panasonic X700, X800 Samsung D720

S60 2nd Edition Symbian OS Version 7.0 Nokia 7650, 3650, 3600, 3660, 3620

Nokia N-Gage XSiemensSX1

S60 1st Edition Symbian OS Version 6.0 Nokia 6600

S80 S80 Nokia Series Developer Platform 2 Nokia 9300, 9500