VIVEK RAI

IT-VI-B(0813313101)
What?
An operating system for mobile devices with limited
resources, multitasking needs and soft real time
requirements. Based on a modular, layered, micro-
kernel approach.
Requirements?
Resilient power-management
Careful use of memory resources
Multi-tasking (e.g, phone calls, messages, alarms,
games, wap browser,
camera, bluetooth app, etc.)
Soft Real-Time (e.g., incoming phone call)
Robust
• Small and mobile, but always available
Mobile phones are both small and, by definition, mobile.
This creates high user expectations.

• Addressing the mass-market

Reliable.
Data loss in a personal mobile phone causes a loss
of trust between the user and the phone
• Handling occasional connectivity
Mobility constraints generally make a wireless connection
preferable - whether wide area (using wireless telephony)
or personal area (such as infrared or Bluetooth). Wireless
connectivity is patchy, caused by different protocols

• Open platform
An operating system for the mass-market must be open for
third-party development.
• 1.5 billion mobile phone users (ITU)

• Mobile device capabilities are significantly

advanced than those in the past

• Key question

• Are we going to face the same level of threat to security

of mobile devices as that of in desktop environment?
• Operating System (OS)
o Process Management

o Memory Management

o File Management

o I/O Management

o Networking
• Real Time Operating System (RTOS)

• Characterized by timing constraints

• Mobile Operating System (Mobile OS)

• RTOS running on a mobile device

• Symbian established as a private independent
company in June 1998, owned by Ericsson,
Nokia, Motorola and Psion.
• Symbian is a software licensing company that
develops and supplies the advanced, open,
standard operating system – Symbian OS – for
data-enabled mobile phones.
• Release v6.1 2001,
• Release v6.2 Q1/2002,
• Release v7 2003 including Multimedia
Framework (MMF)
• Release v8 2004 allowing manufacturers
to build Symbian OS
• Release v9 2005 supporting the latest
generation .
• A platform for wireless services
Symbian OS supports complex requirements of network
protocols worldwide and enables a broad, international
community.
• Providing wireless services
Open standards ensure global network interoperability,
allowing mobile phones users to communicate with anyone,
anyway, at anytime.
• Developing wireless services
Software developers are able, for the first time, to build
applications and services for a global mass market of
advanced, open, programmable, mobile phones
Supported Hardware
Nokia 3230
BenQ P30
Nokia 7710
Sony Ericsson P910
Nokia 7610
Panasonic X700
Lenovo P930
Nokia 7710
Sony Ericsson P910
Lenovo P930
Panasonic X800
Motorola A1010
Nokia N-Gage QD
Layers in SymbianOS
Key Features (v7)
 Rich suite of application engines
 the suite includes engines for contacts, schedule, messaging, browsing, utility
and system control; OBEX for exchanging objects such as appointments (using
the industry standard vCalendar) and business cards (vCard); integrated APIs
for data management, text, clipboard and graphics
 Browsing
 a WAP stack is provided with support for WAP 1.2.1 for mobile browsing
 Messaging
 multimedia messaging (MMS), enhanced messaging (EMS) and SMS; internet
mail using POP3, IMAP4, SMTP and MHTML; attachments; fax
 Multimedia
 audio and video support for recording, playback and streaming; image
conversion
 Graphics
 direct access to screen and keyboard for high performance; graphics
accelerator API
Cont.
 Communications protocols
 wide-area networking stacks including TCP/IP (dual mode IPv4/v6) and WAP,
personal area networking support include infrared (IrDA), Bluetooth and USB;
support is also provided for multihoming capabilities and link layer Quality-of-
Service (QoS) on GPRS/UMTS
 Mobile telephony
 Symbian OS v7.0s is ready for the 3G market with support for GSM circuit
switched voice and data (CSD and EDGE ECSD) and packet-based data (GPRS
and EDGE EGPRS); CDMA circuit switched voice, data and packet-based data
(IS-95, cdma2000 1x, and WCDMA); SIM, RUIM and UICC Toolkit; Other
standards can be implemented by licensees through extensible APIs of the
telephony subsystem.
 International support
 conforms to the Unicode Standard version 3.0
 Data synchronization
 over-the-air (OTA) synchronization support using SyncML; PC-based
synchronization over serial, Bluetooth, Infrared and USB; a PC Connectivity
framework providing the ability to transfer files and synchronize PIM data.
Cont.
Security
 full encryption and certificate management, secure protocols
(HTTPS, WTLS and SSL and TLS), WIM framework and
certificate-based application installation
Developing for Symbian OS
 content development options include: C++, Java (J2ME) MIDP
2.0 (Mobile Information Device Profile) and PersonalJava 1.1.1a
(with JavaPhone 1.0 option), and WAP; tools are available for
building C++ and Java applications and ROMs with support for
on-target debugging
User Inputs
 generic input mechanism supporting full keyboard, 0-9*#
(numeric mobile phone keypad), voice, handwriting
recognition and predictive text input 2.1
• Windows Mobile 5.0

• RAM is used exclusively for running

programs.

• Flash memory is used for storage of

programs and data.

• Result: extended battery life but slower

performance
Multimedia Framework
Cont.
 The Multimedia Framework (MMF) provides a lightweight, multi-
threaded framework for handling multimedia data. The framework
provides audio recording and playback, audio streaming and image
related functionality. Support is provided for video recording,
playback and streaming.

 The image conversion library is a lightweight, optionally

multithreaded, client-side framework for still image codecs and
conversion; Plug-ins supplied by Symbian include JPEG, GIF, BMP,
MBM, SMS, WBMP, PNG, TIFF, WMF and ICO.
 Third party plug-ins are enabled through the extensible nature of the
framework.
 Camera support: An onboard camera API providing a consistent
interface to basic camera functions
Java
Java can run also on small devices. But a full Java
Virtual Machine is not implementable.
Therefore, a subset of the Java Virtual Machine is
implemented called Micro Edition.
J2ME Architecture

KVM - Kilobyte Virtual Machine

40 – 80 KB in size
For devices with 160 KB of memory and 16 or 32-
bit RISC/CISC microprocessors
Cont.
CLDC - Connected Limited Device Configuration
Provides core lower level functionality
 Bare minimum IO and utilities
Currently consists of java.io, java.lang, java.util,
java.microedition.io
Cont.
MIDP – Mobile Information Device Profile
MIDP provides the core application functionality for
mobile devices
 Network connectivity, data storage, and user interfaces
J2ME Applications
A J2ME app is called a Midlet

Midlet Lifecycle
• Multitasking

• Open system

• Robust & dependable

• Client-Server Architecture

• Object Oriented Design

• Data caging allows applications on a
Symbian OS device to have private data
which is not accessible by other
applications.

• It is about file access control. Opposite to

traditional “Access Control List”, it is
“Fixed Access Control Policy
• Supports RAM maximum of 2GB.

• Applications share RAM with operating

system but has exclusive access to their
allocated memory area

• Flash and expansion card memory is used for

storage.
• Symbian OS presents a virtual machine
model to all running programs
• Supports multitasking and multithreading.

• A process can have one or more threads.

• Uses preemptive multitasking.

• The thread with the highest priority being ready to

run will be scheduled next.

• All user processes have their own memory

address spaces and all threads within the same
process share the same memory address space.
• Semaphore:

• Wait() {count--; if(count<0) the calling thread is put in waiting state;}

• Signal()
{if(count<0) Mark the first thread waiting for this semaphore ready to
run; count--;}

• Critical Section:

Critical sections are used for synchronizing exclusive access to shared

resources within a single process
• Symbian OS is written in C++, so it is natural fit to
develop applications also in C++. This provides the
developer with the most flexibility and scope.

• However, this flexibility brings with it complexity

• In some cases it may be more appropriate to

develop an application in Java,
which is also well supported Symbian OS devices.
• One of the major design decisions taken in
developing Symbian OS was to optimize the
system for efficient event handling from the ground
up

• Symbian OS multitasking system eliminates this

problem by having only a single thread that
responds to events as they happen.

• An Active Scheduler implements

non-preemptive multitasking within the context of this
single thread.
• Operators will benefit from having a wide pool of
interoperable devices, built on open standards.
They will be able to select from a wide range of
terminal and infrastructure manufacturers with a
rich set of interoperable solutions.
• In terms of value that operators can add,
applications and content can all be made more
cost effectively supplied - given the common OS
shared across phones.
• Developers will benefit from being able to target
a greater number of consumers across one
platform. Their porting and development costs
will dramatically decline as the common OS
means that applications will need to be
developed once.
• Symbian OS is a robust multi-tasking operating system,
designed specifically for real-world wireless environments and
the constraints of mobile phones (including limited amount of
memory).

• Symbian OS is natively IP-based, with fully integrated

communications and messaging.
• It supports all the leading industry standards that will be
essential for this generation of data-enabled mobile phones.
Symbian OS enables a large community of developers.

• The open platform allows the installation of third party software

to further enhance the platform.