A guide to handheld operating systems

Rick Broida CNET

Published: 10 Aug 2006

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Go to section: Introduction Palm OS Windows Mobile BlackBerry Symbian Which handheld OS is right for you?

Symbian

Symbian OS appears primarily on mobile phones and smartphones, and offers a broad array of personal information management (PIM) features, including contact and calendar management and a robust library of third-party applications. Yet because the OS is usually tailored to individual hardware (in other words, it can look and act differently depending on the device that's running it), there are only so many conclusions we can draw.

Ease of use
As mentioned above, your experience with Symbian OS depends on the phone. For example, on the keyboard-equipped Nokia 9300, we found Symbian OS fairly easy to navigate, though it certainly wasn't as intuitive as, say, the Palm or Windows Mobile operating systems. On the candy bar-style Nokia 6681 phone, the interface struck us as downright confusing, while data entry was as painfully slow as you'd expect. Overall, we'd say that Symbian has the steepest learning curve of all handheld operating systems, but just how steep depends on the hardware.

Office compatibility
Symbian OS incorporates full support for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but again the ability either to create and edit these documents or to just view them depends on your hardware.

Email
When it comes to messaging, Symbian is as versatile as any other platform -- if not more so. Out of the box, it supports the usual POP3, IMAP4 and Webmail accounts. If you want something a little more robust, you can choose from several push email solutions, including BlackBerry Connect and Visto. Symbian also supports the Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange platforms for maximum compatibility in the corporate world.

Multimedia
Symbian OS is pretty adept at multimedia, with integrated support for audio and video playback and recording -- although not all those capabilities are realised on the devices themselves. The Nokia 9300, for instance, comes with both an MP3 player and the mobile version of RealPlayer, which enables playback of RealAudio, RealVideo and MP3 files. However, the 9300 can capture neither audio nor video.

Third-party applications
A recent check of software site Handango revealed more than 5,500 third-party applications for the Symbian OS -- not quite up to Palm and Windows Mobile levels, but far more than you'll find on other mobile phone operating systems. That's another big point in Symbian's favour, especially if you're weighing it against other phones.

Go to section: Introduction Palm OS Windows Mobile BlackBerry Symbian Which handheld OS is right for you?

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