Mobile Operating Systems

Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation on mobile computers. Last year, more than 67 million smart phones were sold in the United States. Not all mobile computers are the same; these devices, have different hardware and operating systems. Each different mobile device and operating system has unique features and is targeted to a distinct demographic. For example, Blackberry devices are marketed as the business smartphone, on the other hand, the numerous amount of applications available for the iPhone make this device a favorite among the average youth. Mobile operating systems are often compared by its features and applications, Blackberry OS is known by its email application, and the iPhone OS is known by its outstanding MP3 player. But it is rare to see mobile operating systems compared by its internal architecture and organization. Our presentation will focus on the most used mobile operating systems; iPhone’s iOS, Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s Blackberry OS, Palm’s WebOS, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. We will analyze the programming language used to build these operating systems, the kernel, frameworks, libraries, and features such as multithreading. We will also demonstrate step-by-step how to build a small application for the Android OS