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Operating Systems Software Handhelds

Mobile Operating Systems Comparison? 37

Posted by Cliff from the king-os-of-the-handhelds dept.
dozerbull asks: "I'm working at a Canadian telecom research lab. They are looking into the creation of tools that would facilitate the development of mobile applications. Symbian OS seems to be the lead target platform candidate. There is however a small crowd that is pushing for Microsoft stuff (Pocket PC and Smartphone). How do other systems (Linux and PalmOS) stack up? What would the Slashdot community advise by way of a choice of an operating system for mobile?"
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Mobile Operating Systems Comparison? More

Mobile Operating Systems Comparison?

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  • Uhhh (Score:1, Informative)

    by j0nkatz ( 315168 ) *
    Don't forget RIM.
    Their OS targets the Corp. world very well.
  • Never done it before, don't have the skills, etc. But....

    1) Take a cue from Apple. They have hardware control and OS control, which means it is relatively easy to make an OS for that hardware - no (nearly) endless possbile combination of HW components.

    2) Make it as easy as possible for 3rd parties to make software/utilities.
    • Actually, that would be taking a cue from Palm -- who published their SDK and quite a few development tools and helped out on an open source implementation of a gcc tool chain.
  • I would use linux as it can be as light wieght as you need it to be (Cheack out damn small linux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ [damnsmalllinux.org]) or more robust to suit your needs. Also here's a fine example of a linux pda http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2134869242. html [linuxdevices.com] I personally think it is the most simple route to go as it's free and people will be more than will to make their own software for it.

  • Windows CE vs. Linux (Score:2, Informative)

    by toddbu ( 748790 )
    I've done dev work on both Windows CE devices (AutoPC) and Linux (Zaurus) and I can tell you hands-down that Linux is way easier to work with. Windows CE's roots are that it's a hacked version of Windows 95, so you never know what's there and whether it will work. The Linux flavors are just that - same kernel compiled a different way. There' s not a special set of tools for the platform that your targeting, rather an enhanced set that build on top of an already great system. It's also great to have tool

    • Windows CE is not a hacked version of Windows 95. It is a completely new codebase based on two Microsoft project teams codenamed Pegasus and Pulsar.

      I have coded for many Windows CE flavors (Pocket PC, Smartphone, CE.NET) and for Symbian (Nokia Series 60). The Windows CE dev tools are FAR superior to the Symbian dev tools. CE dev tools are free (beer). Symbian's are expensive. CE supports easy remote debugging. Symbian is rumored to support remote debugging, but you must buy some crappy Borland C++ compiler
      • You forgot couple of things..

        First, Windows CE has a s**t load of documentation in MSDN and device manufacturers produce more. Symbian on the other hand has so lousy documentation that it's dangerous to human psyche to read that and it has many errors and so on.

        Second, Windows CE emulators works as a dream. Sybmian emulators are like crippled version of the real phone with many features missing. This means that you can't debug any software that uses for example phone features.

        • yes, you are absolutely correct. I also forgot that the Symbian requires that you use RAS/PPP to run the emulator on a second PC. You can't remote debug your phone, but you are REQUIRED to remote debug your emulator?! Yes, there are now hack DLLs (not from Symbian or Nokia, I believe) that allow you to run the emulator on just one machine.

  • As one working in mobile application development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:05AM (#12293085) Homepage Journal
    you are giving us zero information to answer your question. So what you're going to get is a bunch of opinions on why you should like one platform versus another.

    Which is totally useless in deciding which platform you should use.

    Are you doing a proof of concept, or something that will be shipped by the hundreds of thousands?

    What are the characteristics of the user?

    What are the marketing considerations? E.g. if this is something that you are planning to market as an add-on for cell phone users, if you multiply the number of users of each platform times the proability of a user of that platform will buy the product, what is the potential user base. Alternatively, if you are planning to drive the adoption of mobile technology in an area, how much will it cost your users to buy a device, and will it suit their other needs?

    Do you need access to a particular kind of peripheral? To a particular library or framework? What are your developers familiar with?

    You really have to do a bit of work to frame your question. Every platform out there works for some users for some purposes. There are still users who swear by their Newton MessagePads.
  • You forgot Java, specifically J2ME for mobile environemnts, and the accompanying MIDP and CDLC specs for libraries and interfaces.

  • Hmmm (Score:2)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 )
    I'm going to assume that this is for internal use, i.e. that you are not making actual product to send to customers. See note below as to why I make this assumption.

    In which case, probably the best place to start is to download the SDKs for each device and look at them. do they suit your current dev tools? Can they work with your current compiler or IDE? What language are you planning to develop in?

    Symbina and MS are probably a good focus to start on since they have the most variety of handsets and form f
  • I know this may sound strange, but you might consider targeting AmigaAnywhere. It'll allow you flexibility to run on many different platforms (WinCE, PocketPC, SmartPhone, Linux, etc...) without having to rewrite code. The AmigaAnywhere platform is based on the Tao Group's virtual processor so it's write once, run anywhere. I'm not deeply familiar with how it all works, but I've heard good things. Something to consider at least.

    Amiga Incorporated [amiga.com]
    • To be honest that sounds like J2ME.. Most 'smart phones' and PDAs that like compatibility will support J2ME applications out of the box, or with a little tweaking (my iPaq didn't like J2ME applications when I was running WinCE, but now that it runs linux it loves them). If your aiming for the mobile market target for J2ME, for the PDA market target for Windows AND Symbian (your developers will crucify you for the decision to support both btw). I'm still not sure I properly understand your question though
  • Opinions count for nothing.

    If you want something well supported in mobile devices with loads of information on how to do stuff, use Linux or Symbian (though Symbian is really more of a phone OS... at least it's tuned for that role)

    If you want Outlook connectivity that's second-to-none, use Windows Mobile. I have a Smartphone that I think is great for what it does.

    If you want reliability and a rock-solid OS or are running older hardware, do some homework and pick a good RTOS.

    If you want raw speed, try as

  • How do you define mobile? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:17PM (#12293834) Homepage
    You mention Palm and Symbian. You mention Linux.

    They generally tend to different niche markets.

    Linux, NetBSD require at least 4MB ram for anything usable (yeah heard of linux-tiny uclibc etc) and are aimed at larger mobile devices that require lots of functionality and expandability. You can put perl, java apps, develop QT apps etc on these, and theyre heavily used in routers, PC104 industrial and medical machines and other custom embedded systems that arent quite mobile.

    Then theres QNX, Palm and Symbian. Palm is entirely focused on PDAs and PDA-like personal devices. It has great graphics and personal-apps, mostly on ARMs and dragonballs. Symbian runs on ARMs, and is focused on even smaller devices, specifically cellphones. Both palm and symbian are very user-oriented, and cant support a great deal of multitasking since they dont support MMUs, except the latest palmos.

    QNX and vxworks are non-user-oriented. vxworks was used in the mars rovers for instance, and is commonly used in ethernet switches and routers.

    So you cant use symbian in routers, cant use palmos in mars rovers(efficiently), cant use linux in the smallest and simplest cellphones without the memory overhead, cant use 32-bit OSes in 8-bit microcontrollers and so on.

    So please ask a more specific question.
  • because that's the most limited, but with most installed devices and pretty much the easiest to churn out code for(as long as you don't try to do anything impossible on it). and fucking every phone nowadays runs it(so you'll have HUGE, HUUUUGE installed device base). also if it's just something real simple you could introduce the service through a simply built web interface - if it's simple enough it'll be usable from any 'connected' device, be them mobile phones, pda's or laptops. and you'd be surprised fo
  • Crudely:

    > 2mb RAM = vxworks
    2-6mb RAM = NetBSD
    >4mb RAM = Linux

    Symbian? Symbian's a bit crazy. I feel that in order to have progress things need to die. Symbian is actually a rehash of PalmOS; very old. WinCE is actually ok, but again, it's just a rehash and you're not free. Linux is okay if you got the resources, convienient for porting. vxworks is a nightmare, check out the vx-explode mailing list!! It's like they don't want you to know anything about it since important things run on it... like cab
  • The question is a bit generic, as others have already commented. I will share some of my findings however.

    Symbian is mature and used on lots of phones (Nokia, Sony Ericsson and more). However, if you look at which models actually runs Symbian and allow the owner of the phone to actually put more Symbian stuff on it, those are usually limited to the very expensive high-end phones. I can only speculate why this is so, but it does not seem unlikely that the phone network operators have little or no interest i
  • First off, "Smartphone" is a class of phones and not a specific OS. Pretty much all those platforms you mention are Smartphones. (I guess you could make a Linux non-Smartphone, but I've never heard of one.)

    Now just what are you making? They are looking into the creation of tools that would facilitate the development of mobile applications. Is pretty general. And "Telecom" can be anything from a mobile phone manufacturer to a mobile service provider.

    If you want to make applications for the general pulic: G
  • can run terminal services.
    is there even a VNC client for Symbian?

    with terminal services/vnc, you can run the largest server in the world on your handheld readily..

    • Re:pocket PC and some palms (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There are two for J2ME:

      http://www.freeutils.net/vnc2go/index.jsp
      http: //j2mevnc.sourceforge.net/
  • Forget Windows Mobile and Palm... what you need is PSP. Productivity to the max! :D
  • Check out handhelds.org [handhelds.org] and the Familiar project [handhelds.org]. Most of the new stuff is on the wiki [handhelds.org], and on the mailing lists (recent archives of which can be viewed through gmane.org [gmane.org]).

    We think Familiar provides a base operating system and application set that seriously rivals (if not outdoes) other mobile offerings. The only major issue we have on devices such as the iPAQ that don't run Linux out of the box is that getting all of the hardware supported is a difficult job. However, this situation is improving - commerc

  • I'm working at a Canadian telecom research lab. They are looking into the creation of tools that would facilitate the development of mobile applications. Symbian OS seems to be the lead target platform candidate. There is however a small crowd that is pushing for Microsoft stuff (Pocket PC and Smartphone). How do other systems (Linux and PalmOS) stack up? What would the Slashdot community advise by way of a choice of an operating system for mobile?

    Your question does not make any sense. Choose whatever y

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