An Introduction to Symbian Operating System

1
An Introduction to Symbian Operating System

• Prepared by
• Phang Seong Yee

2
Outline

• Trends For Mobile Application
• Mobile Application
• Mobile Computing Platform
• Mobile Operating System
• Symbian Operating System
• Evolution of Symbian OS
• Symbian OS Architecture
• Symbian Application Development
• Symbian Developer Tools
• Conclusion

3
Trends for Mobile Applications

• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• - To enable third parties to provide new
  services, such as billing, messaging.
• - To reduce the time for carriers to
  introduce new products to their customer.
• - It would come to the stage of
  Programmable APIs.
• Services Caching
• - Due to the advance devices with
  sophisticated processor and more memory,
  sophisticated multimedia-based and web
  services-based applications become possible.
• - The devices can be used to mask the
  vagaries of the network and services by caching
  services on the device itself.

4
Trends for Mobile Applications

• 3. Further Service Differentiation for carriers
• 4. XML-based Web Services
• - To enable application developers to use the
  existing services over the Internet quickly
  create new applications for mobile devices.
• - Since mobile terminal are constrained with
  respect to memory and processor power, new
  versions of XML processing had to be developed
  such as kXML, kSOAP, kUDDI.
• 5. Real Time Data Streaming
• - To enable the services beyond 3G, such as
  mobile TV (television channels from the mobile
  phone)

5
Applications 1 year ago
vMiles
Mobile Controls
Micrographs
Color Dialog
Signature Capture Control
Pocket ftCalc
Registry Control
Simple Wireless API
6
Applications Today
All Mobile Casino
GPS GolfPro
JL MobileXSales Rep
Microsoft CRMMobile
Pocket Humanity
Valentin IliescuChess
7
Mobile Application

• The number of applications is growing
  exponentially and different applications have
  different requirements.
• For example, distributed applications require
  interaction and coordination with remote
  applications, and therefore, leverage the
  middleware services.
• Some applications require the runtime environment
  to execute, while other applications run natively
  and interact with the operating system kernel.

8
Mobile Application

• Resource-poor mobile devices
• Limited memory and buffer space (typically no
  disk)
• Small screen
• Low processing capabilities
• Limited battery life
• Location of a mobile device may change frequently
  due to mobility
• Relative to network and other services
• Relative to other hosts

9
Mobile Application

• Capacity of the wireless channel is limited and
  may vary
• Communication is often unreliable
• Short-term fades high bit errors
• Long-term disconnects disconnected
  operationForced or voluntary disconnection
• Disconnected operation (read/write) requires
  system support
• Data caching
• Pre-fetching
• Integration

10
Mobile Application

• Applications in mobile computing fall into the
  following three broad categories
• Stand-alone Applications- run entirely on mobile
  terminals in disconnect (detached) mode.
• Simple Client-Server (C/S) applications - (e.g.,
  DB query). The connection time for C/S
  interactions is short.
• Advanced mobile applications - (groupware and
  distributed multimedia) - information exchanged
  is time critical (i.e., real time)

11
Mobile Application Evolution

• The functionality of the mobile terminals has
  evolved tremendously over last 10 years.
• Voice Transmission -Short Message Service (SMS)
  and Web Browsing
• (WAP and I-mode)
• -Interaction with Vending Machine and Multimedia
  Message Service (MMS)
• Video Conferencing and Interaction with the
  surrounding physical environment
  (I-area)-Object-to-Object Communication
  -Machine-to-Machine Communication -Car-to-Car
  Communication

12
Mobile Computing Platform

• The evolution of cell phone functionality is the
  result of the sophistication of supporting
  infrastructure running in the phones.
• The generic mobile computing platform that
  includes the building blocks shared by most
  existing approaches.
• The building blocks are
• Mobile Operating System
• Runtime Environment
• Middleware
• Applications

13
Generic Mobile Computing Platform
14
Mobile Operating System (1)

• It is the software responsible for managing,
  exporting and arbitrating the hardware resources
  provided by terminals.
• It is vital component that hides the underlying
  hardware complexity and heterogeneity and enables
  the construction of software.
• It is similar to the desktop operating system
  with restricted components.
• It is including low memory footprint, low dynamic
  memory usage, efficient power management
  framework, real-time support for telephony and
  communication protocols and reliability.

15
Mobile Operating System (2)

• Symbian OS
• Palm OS
• Windows CE .NET OS
• Embedded Linux
• Qualcomm BREW

Note All the OS above follow the architecture
presented in previous slide except BREW
16
Mobile OS Example
PalmOS PocketPC Symbian OS
17
Market Leader

• Symbian leads the smartphone market with a 70
  share
• Linux 19, Microsoft 5, PalmSource 3
• (Source Canalys Q2 2006 worldwide smart
  mobile device research)
• 100m cumulative shipments since the formation of
  Symbian
• 12.3m Symbian OS shipments in Q2 2006
• A new Symbian OS smartphone model was shipped
  every
• week in Q2 2006

18
Symbian Platform Mobile Phone
19
Symbian Operating System

• Symbian OS is licenced to a large number of
  handset manufacturers, which account for over 80
  of annual worldwide mobile phone sales (Symbian
  2003).
• Symbian OS is an operating system, designed for
  mobile devices, with associated libraries, user
  interface frameworks and reference
  implementations of common tools, produced by
  Symbian Ltd.
• The version 8 is the first version that provides
  a real-time OS kernel and supports the following
  features
• 1) Rich suite of application services,
  including services for contacts,
  schedule, messaging, browsing and system control
• 2) Java support, Real time, Hardware Support
  (different CPUs, peripherals, and memory types),
  messaging with support for MMS, EMS, SMS, POP3,
  SMTP, and MHTML
• 3) Graphics with a graphic accelerator API,
  Mobile Telephony, International Support, Data
  Synchronuization, Device Management, Security,
  wireless connectivity, including Bluetooth and
  802.11b

20
Is Symbian OS opensource???

• A common question is whether Symbian OS is
  "open". It is not open in the sense of Open
  Source software - the source code is not publicly
  available. However, nearly all the source code is
  provided to Symbian OS phone manufacturers and
  many other partners. Moreover, the APIs are
  publicly documented and anyone can develop
  software for Symbian OS. This contrasts with
  traditional embedded phone operating systems,
  which typically cannot accept any aftermarket
  software with the exception of Java applications.

21
Evolution of Symbian OS (I)

• EPOC16-Psion released several Series 3 devices
  from 1991 to 1998 which used the EPOC16 OS, also
  known as SIBO.
• EPOC OS Releases 13-The Series 5 device,
  released in 1997, used the first iterations of
  the EPOC32 OS.
• EPOC Release 4-Oregon Osaris and Geofox 1 were
  released using ER4.In 1998, Symbian Ltd. was
  formed as a partnership between Ericsson, Nokia,
  Motorola and Psion, to explore the convergence
  between PDAs and mobile phones.
• EPOC Release 5 a.k.a. Symbian OS v5-Psion Series
  5mx, Series 7, Psion Revo, Psion Netbook, netPad,
  Ericsson MC218 were released in 1999 using ER5.

EPOC is a family of operating systems developed
by Psion for portable devices, primarily PDAs
22
Evolution of Symbian OS (II)

• ER5u a.k.a. Symbian OS v5.1
• u Unicode. The first phone, the Ericsson R380
  was released using ER5u in 2000. It was not an
  'open' phone - software could not be installed.
  Notably, a number of never released Psion
  prototypes for next generation PDAs, including a
  Bluetooth Revo successor codenamed Conan were
  using ER5u.
• Symbian OS v6.0 and v6.1-Sometimes called ER6.
  The first 'open' Symbian OS phone, the Nokia
  9210, was released on 6.0.
• Symbian OS v7.0 and v7.0s-First shipped in 2003.
  This is an important Symbian release which
  appeared with all contemporary user interfaces
  including UIQ (Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910,
  Motorola A925, A1000), Series 80 (Nokia 9300,
  9500), Series 90 (Nokia 7710), S60 (Nokia 6600,
  7310) as well as several FOMA phones in Japan.In
  2004, Psion sold its stake in Symbian.

23
Evolution of Symbian OS (III)

• Symbian OS v8.0
• First shipped in 2004, one of its
  advantages would have been a choice of two
  different kernels (EKA1 or EKA2). However, the
  EKA2 kernel version did not ship until SymbianOS
  v8.1b. The kernels behave more or less
  identically from user-side, but are internally
  very different. EKA1 was chosen by some
  manufacturers to maintain compatibility with old
  device drivers, whilst EKA2 offered advantages
  such as a hard real-time capability. v8.0b was
  deproductized in 2003.
• Symbian OS v8.1
• Basically a cleaned-up version of 8.0, this was
  available in 8.1a and 8.1b versions, with EKA1
  and EKA2 kernels respectively. The 8.1b version,
  with EKA2's single-chip phone support but no
  additional security layer, was popular among
  Japanese phone companies desiring the realtime
  support but not allowing open application
  installation.

24
Evolution of Symbian OS (IV)

• Symbian OS v9.0
• This version was used for internal Symbian
  purposes only. It was deproductised in 2004. v9.0
  marked the end of the road for EKA1. v8.1a is the
  final EKA1 version of SymbianOS.Symbian OS has
  generally maintained reasonable binary
  compatibility. In theory the OS was BC from
  ER1-ER5, then from 6.0 to 8.1b. Substantial
  changes were needed for 9.0, related to tools and
  security, but this should be a one-off event. The
  move from requiring ARMv4 to requiring ARMv5 did
  not break backwards compatibility.
• A Symbian developer proclaims that porting from
  Symbian 8.x to Symbian 9.x is a more daunting
  process than Symbian says.

25
Evolution of Symbian OS (V)

• Symbian OS v9.1
• Released early 2005. It includes many new
  security related features, particularly a
  controversial platform security module
  facilitating mandatory code signing. Symbian
  argues that applications and content, and
  therefore a developers investment, are better
  protected than ever, however others contend that
  the requirement that every application be signed
  (and thus approved) violates the rights of the
  end-user, the owner of the phone, and limits the
  amount of free software available. The new ARM
  EABI binary model means developers need to retool
  and the security changes mean they may have to
  recode. S60 3rd Edition phones have Symbian OS
  9.1. Sony Ericsson is shipping the M600i based on
  Symbian OS 9.1 and should ship the P990 in Q3
  2006. The earlier versions had a fatal defect
  where the phone hangs temporarily after the owner
  sent hundreds of SMSes. However, on 13 September
  2006, Nokia released a small program to fix this
  defect.

26
Evolution of Symbian OS (VI)

• Symbian OS v9.2
• Released Q1 2006. Support for Bluetooth 2.0 (was
  1.2) and OMA Device Management 1.2 (was 1.1.2).
  S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 phones have
  Symbian OS 9.2.
• Symbian OS v9.3
• Released on 12 July 2006. Upgrades include
  native support for Wifi 802.11, HSDPA, Vietnamese
  language support.
• On November 16, 2006, the 100 millionth
  smartphone running the OS was shipped.
• Symbian OS v9.5
• Released in March 2007. Featured up to 25
  reduced RAM usage resulting in better battery
  life thanks to introduction of Demand paging.
  Applications should launch up to 75 faster.
  Native support for mobile digital television
  broadcasts DVB-H ja ISDB-T and location services.
  Also supports SQL.

27
Symbian Product
28
Symbian Based Platform
MOAP-mobile-phone-oriented application platform
(NTT DoCoMo's Symbian based MOAP
platform ) UIQ- User Interface Quartz
29
References Model
Series 60 UIQ Series 80 Series 90
Nokia N-Gage, N-Gage QDNokia 7650, 3650, 3660Nokia 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6682, 7610Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, Nokia 3250, E60, E61, E70, N70, N80, N90, N91 and others, coming out each month Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910i, P990i, W950i, M600Motorola A920/A925/A1000 Nokia 9210, 9210iNokia 9300, 9300i, 9500 Nokia 7710
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UIQ

• UIQ is stylus-based interface (heavily influenced
  by the easy-to-use Palm OS one). The best known
  examples of UIQ devices are the Sony Ericsson
  P800 and P900/P910i, although there are others,
  including the Motorola A920/925/1000. Look beyond
  the Palm-like interface and you'll see glimpses
  of stuff that's familiar from Psion days.
• But only glimpses. The biggest downside of UIQ 2
  is that some of the benefits of multitasking have
  been removed by the way programs revert to a
  neutral state when sent to the background. So you
  switch away to check your calendar or answer the
  phone and then have to re-open your document and
  find your place all over again. And again.
• UIQ 3 promises to restore proper multitasking,
  thankfully, but this won't be available until the
  Sony Ericsson P990i, W950 and M600 arrive mid to
  late 2006.

BenQP30
Motorola M1000
Arima U300
MotorolaMOTORIZR Z8
SE P990
31
Series 60

• Down at the other size extreme, Nokia has been
  very successful with their small-screen 'Series
  60' interface. Again this is recognizable Symbian
  under the hood, but again there's no touch-screen
  and this time Nokia has written many of its own
  applications from scratch, ditching the standard
  Psion/Symbian ones presumably because they
  wouldn't suit the one-handed, button-driven
  interface and generally smaller screen.
• There's multi-tasking power here under the hood
  and many third party applications have been
  ported to Series 60/S60, but everything's
  restricted to some degree by the screen size and
  keypad text input.

LG KS10 JoY
Samsung SGH - D720
Panasonic X800
Nokia N93i
Nokia N95
32
Series 80

• Historically, Nokia have opted for Symbian
  devices which don't need a fragile touch-screen.
  The well-known Nokia 9210 effectively ran EPOC
  version 6 and is extremely similar to an old
  Psion Series 5mx in many, many ways, with the
  minor difference that the lack of a touch-screen
  necessitated a set of programmable command
  buttons to the right of the screen. Nokia refer
  to this interface as 'Series 80'.
• You get almost the full range of built-in
  applications (including Word, Sheet, etc.) and
  there's full (and proper) multi-tasking, so you
  can have dozens of programs and documents open at
  once, switching between them as needed.

Nokia 9500
33
Series 90

• 'Series 90', as seen in Nokia's idiosyncratic
  7710. It uses much the same operating system and
  applications as Series 80, but tweaked to support
  a slightly larger, touch-sensitive screen. But
  there's no keyboard, of course, so input is via
  gesture recognition, virtual keyboard or
  Bluetooth keyboard. The interface has been
  orphaned by Nokia, alas. The 7710 is still a good
  choice for ex-Psion owners though, with similar
  software and interface - just make sure you use
  it with a Bluetooth keyboard!

Nokia 7710
34
Symbian OS Architecture
35
System view of Symbian OS
36
Symbian OS v8
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Symbian OS v9
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(No Transcript)
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Symbian Development
40
Software Development Kits (SDK)

• Software development kits
• The starting point for developing applications
  for Symbian OS is to obtain a
• software development kit (SDK). SDKs for
  Symbian OS support development in
• both C and Java. They provide
• -binaries and tools to facilitate building and
  deployment of Symbian OS applications
• -full system documentation for APIs and tools
• For the independent software developer, the
  most important thing to know in targeting a
  particular phone is the associated UI platform.
  Next you need to know the Symbian OS version the
  phone was based on. This combined knowledge
  defines to a large degree the target phone as a
  platform for independent software development.
  You can then decide which SDK you need to obtain.
  In most cases you will, working with this SDK, be
  able to target with a single version of your
  application all phones based on the same UI
  platform and Symbian OS version. The Symbian OS
  System Definition papers give further details of
  possible differences between phones based on a
  single SDK.

41
What are the Symbian OS Development Kits?

• Symbian creates 4 development environments
• 1.) Symbian OS Customisation Kit (CustKit)
• The Symbian OS Customisation Kit is the
  development environment
• that is licensed to handset manufacturers. It
  is a superset of the Symbian
• OS Development Kit, including some extra
  tools and source. The license terms are different
  to those for the DevKit.
• 2.) Symbian OS Development Kit (DevKit)
• Colloquial name for the Symbian OS Development
  Kit.
• 3.) Symbian OS Binary Access Kit (BAK)
• A binary-only DevKit. Provides access to
  most APIs in the DevKit but does not contain
• the source tree
• 4.) Symbian OS Technology Preview SDK (TPSDK)
• Technology Preview SDK. An early release SDK

42
Developer tools (I)

• Nokia Carbide Development Tools for Symbian OS
  C
• Carbide.c is a family of Eclipse-based
  development tools supporting Symbian OS
  development on S60, Series 80, UIQ and MOAP. The
  Carbide family consists of
• Carbide.c Professional, performance
  tools for advanced users
• Carbide.c Developer Edition
  Productivity tools for creating applications
• Carbide.c Express For developers new
  to Symbian, Academia
• Nokia Carbide Development Tools for Java -
  Carbide.j
• Carbide.j (formerly Nokia Developer's Suite for
  J2ME) is a software development tool for Java
  Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) developers
  that enhances the development and verification of
  applications for Nokia devices.
• It provides tools for creating Mobile
  Information Device Profile (MIDP) and Personal
  Profile (PP) applications and deployment
  packages, signing applications, and deploying
  applications to devices. It is also an essential
  tool for managing, configuring, and running
  emulators for various Nokia platform and device
  SDKs.

43
Developer tools (II)

• AppForge Crossfire 6.5
• Crossfire is a unique technology platform that
  allows Microsoft Visual Studio Developers to
  leverage the skills and knowledge they have and
  apply them to create mobile applications that
  will run on market leading devices and operating
  systems. Crossfire includes integration and
  support for the following
• Microsoft IDE Integration
• -Visual Studio .NET (2005 / 2003)
• -Visual C .NET 2003
• -Visual Basic .NET 2003
• -Visual Studio 6.0 Professional
• -Visual Basic 6.0
• Language Support
• -Visual Basic .NET
• -C
• -Visual Basic 6.0

44
Developer tools (III)

• Wirelexsoft VistaMax
• Wirelexsoft is a provider of technology and
  solutions for the mobile, the web and the
  desktop. We provide Rapid Application Development
  (RAD) Tools and IDEs that save significant
  development effort and reduce cost and time to
  market.
• Wirelexsoft offers VistaMax for development on
  Symbian - S60 and UIQ - and VistaFei for AJAX
  Application Development based on Google Web
  Toolkit. VistaMax and VistaFei are based on
  Eclipse.

45
Opensource developer tools

• SymbDev
• This is a set of free and open source plug-ins
  for Eclipse that provide support for the
  development of Symbian C applications. The
  plug-ins can automatically detect the installed
  SDKs while the building process is based on the
  Symbian command-line building tools which are
  executed as background tasks from the Eclipse
  IDE.
• Xcode Plugin for Symbian OS
• This is a free and open source plugin for the
  Apple Xcode development environment for Apple
  Macintosh computers running the MacOS X operating
  system. It was developed by Tom Sutcliffe and it
  currently has the following main features
• -Import MMP files into Xcode projects
• -Edit settings and build targets (exactly like
  you would for any other Xcode project)
• -Work with multiple SDKs - UIQ, S60, Series 80
• -Build SIS files and send them via Bluetooth to
  your Symbian OS phone for testing, as part of the
  build process
• -GCC and other Symbian OS-specific tools
  included (no need to download or compile them
  yourself)
• -Projects mostly work 'straight from the box'
  i.e. no change is needed to code developed on a
  PC for it to compile in Xcode
• -The plugin is free and open source. The source
  is covered by the GPL and is available on
  tigris.org

46
Development Language

• C
• Java
• Open source -
• -Ruby
• -OPL-dev
• -Perl
• -Python for S60
• -Python for UIQ
• -Simkin

47
Conclusion

• In summary, mobile phone manufacturers are given
  a large amount of way in relation to how much or
  how little of Symbian OS they incorporate into
  their phones.
• They have taken only limited advantage of this
  freedom, differentiating products by adding
  functionality rather than removing or replacing
  Symbian OS components. Where components have been
  removed this trends to be at the UI platform
  level, i.e. the components removed are perceived
  as inappropriate for the class of phone at which
  the UI platform (SDK) is targeted.
• Where components have been replaced, this is
  because handset manufacturers have previously
  developed their own versions of those components,
  sometimes with additional capabilities, which
  they prefer to use.

48
References-Useful Link (I)

• http//www.symbian.com/
• -symbian ltd website
• http//developer.symbian.com/
• -tools,tutorial,source code on symbian
  software development
• http//www.allaboutsymbian.com/
• -all about symbian news ,software
• http//www.allaboutseries80.com
• -Sites on S80 devices, applications
• http//www.s60.com/
• -Sites on S60 devices, applications
• http//www.i-symbian.com/
• -Latest news on symbian phones and application
• http//www.uiq.com/
• -UIQ technology site
• http//www.newlc.com/ (symbian C developer
  forum)
• -SDK, Development tools, Guide, Example source
  code

49
References-Useful Link (II)

• http//pf128.krakow.sdi.tpnet.pl/symbdev/
• -symDev opensource developer tools
• http//www.wirelexsoft.com/
• -website for wirelexsoft IDE
• http//www.appforge.com/
• -website for appforge IDE
• http//www.forum.nokia.com
• -everything on starting to develop
• symbian application
• http//symbian.org
• -opensource project for Symbian OS