Smooth mobile operations

The market for mobile phone operating systems hots up, with around six of these vying for your attention. The battle to conquer the market for mobile phone operating system (OS) is hotting up. From just three mobile OSes — Research in Motion (RIM), Symbian and Windows — available in India in 2006, the number has now reached six.

While Symbian leads the pack in India, with 74 per cent market share, according to Statscounter, Sony Ericsson and Samsung together claim 13 per cent. Other operating systems like Windows, Android and BlackBerry have a share of 10 per cent, while Apple hovers at around 1 per cent in OS market share.

Even within these operating systems, experts claim, there are concerns of further fragmentation. But how exactly do the new mobile OSes differ from each other? Let’s have a look.

iPhone iOS 4.0
TESTED ON: Apple iPhone 3GS

Smartphones, until a couple of years back, were largely restricted in the business market and mostly used for push email. But the Apple iPhone changed all of that with its new finger-friendly OS. In its latest OS upgrade, Apple has rectified many of its past mistakes. A smartphone that could not multitask was shameful, and Apple understood that. You can now multitask (run multiple applications in the background). For example, iPhone users can open a game app and then switch to mail or music without closing any of the running apps.

But, multitasking is nowhere close to perfection. Since it makes an effort to keep track of every single application that you have opened, while switching between apps, you would often find that Mail or Safari have been kicked over to the fifth or sixth pane of “currently running” apps. It’s a long line to walk, since it would be nice if it only kept track of your most recent eight to 10 apps. We found it was frustrating to scroll through 50 recently used apps — the total in our “currently running” apps panel. But the good news is, we know this will improve over time.

There’s been a shuffle in the Mail application too. Apple has finally aggregated multiple email account inboxes into a single scrolling list, removing the need to check separate accounts by tapping multiple times and flipping from inbox to inbox. An optional threaded view to the Mail application enables you to see collections of emails in clusters (representing an ongoing discussion between the recipient and other people). Mail also includes enhanced support for Google Gmail accounts, including archiving messages that should benefit many users.

The next big change is, for the first time, Apple allows you to nest as many as 12 apps together into a single icon (the parent folder) that expands when you press it. The space saved alone can be staggering. We consolidated from our 10 screens to five within the first day of use of iOS 4.0.

Apple insists it has added 11 other major features in iOS 4.0, besides multitasking. But, that isn’t exactly true. Improvements like digital zoom in camera, and faces and places support in photos are definitely minor add-ons. Apple applies dimming, drop shadowing and anti-aliasing effects to enable its own icons and text to stand out against the backgrounds, but the imagery otherwise is left unchanged in scale, positioning, and vertical orientation from the way you set it up.

The main thing that iOS 4.0 still misses out on is an Adobe Flash Player. But, that’s not a big problem yet.

VERDICT: If you have set your heart on the iPhone 4, we would suggest you upgrade your existing iPhone or iPod Touch (second generation) to iOS 4.0 for first-hand experience. The iOS 4.0 is a free upgrade for iPhone 3GS and 3G models and the second- and third-generation iPod Touch, while Apple’s first generation smartphone does not get an upgrade at all.

Android OS
TESTED ON: HTC Legend

Android is an open mobile phone platform developed by Google, which has also created the Gmail service, an online suite of applications, and its Chrome browser. The open nature of the Android platform allows handset manufacturers to customise the software on their handsets. This is why Android looks and feels different on each handset. We tested the OS on HTC Legend and it restored our faith in Android.

The Legend runs Android 2.1, the latest version, and HTC has designed its own user interface over Android OS — that sits somewhere in between a nicer theme and additional applications for Android.

Users can add and sync multiple mail accounts, contact synchronisation, including exchange accounts on their device. Like Apple’s iOS 4.0, Android 2.1 also gives users unified inbox view to see all mails aggregated in a single location.

The user interface of HTC Legend is centred on its homescreen widgets, which can run alongside Android’s standard widgets across any of the Legend’s seven revolving home-screens. Friend Stream widget has been newly introduced. This aggregates and gives access to your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr friend updates. Clicking through to the full Friend Stream app enables you to filter all updates — status, images, and links. You can also, of course, update your own status across Facebook and Twitter, as well as reply or comment. But the most visible update of Android 2.1 is ‘live’ wallpapers or the interactive backgrounds. Users are bound to be awed by the shifting, swirling backgrounds as they navigate around homescreens or a few based on music or finger taps.

In addition, the new OS upgrade also extends the voice command functionality of the phone to allow users to speak into any text field. The photo gallery in Android 2.1 shows all of your images in a neat three-dimensional view.

VERDICT: All the features, bunched on to HTC’s Legend (Rs 25,990), make it a comparable rival to, if not better than, the iPhone 3GS (Rs 35,000 for a 16 GB model).

Bada OS
TESTED ON: Samsung Wave

Bada means an ocean or a sea in Korean. The latest mobile OS developed by Samsung is meant to give a chance to the brand to develop its own apps. Bada is based on Samsung’s much-admired TouchWiz user interface, which developers can harness to maximise advanced sensing capabilities.

We tested Bada on Samsung Wave, which costs Rs 19,100. The user interface is very intuitive, easy to use, fast and responsive. The OS allows multiple homescreens, filled with widgets.">/p>

Bada feels like a cross between Android and iPhone OS. Bada, like iOS 4.0 and Android 2.1, supports multitasking, allowing you to run multiple apps and switch between them. The Samsung Wave’s homescreen looks like Android in its feel and widgets, while one can move these icons around by holding them and dragging in exactly the same way you do on the iPhone. The notifications area is very similar to Android. It also allows you to switch on/off WiFi and Bluetooth directly from the notification area.

Bada comes with its own mobile browser, Dolphin, which is quite quick and uses multi-touch well. Double taps can make the text far too small, while at other times, the text scrolls past each side of the screen. It definitely needs some work. Samsung also has developers working on apps (like Apple’s App Store) and there are a few hundreds of apps available for it, including some very big titles. 

VERDICT: Samsung is probably the only mobile handset company prosperous enough to take on Apple and Microsoft — and has a fighting chance. The OS brings high-end features to mid-level devices.

Maemo
TESTED ON: Nokia N900

There’s no questioning the popularity of open source mobile OSes in 2010 and Nokia agreed, too. The Finnish major launched a powerful smartphone, Nokia N900, powered by the Linux-based Maemo five operating system — an OS which so far seems to have had no problems in meeting either Android, Apple or RIM head-on in the marketplace.

Using Maemo on N900 feels like you are holding a full computer in your hand — both in terms of weight and performance. The user interface (touchscreen) has been overhauled with the inclusion of a finger-based interaction model. It is easy to keep track of multiple applications you have opened on Maemo because you can tap a single button to view or switch between all open applications at any given time. Similar to Android, Maemo also has four work spaces on which you can place widgets, application launchers, and contacts for quick access. Maemo supports over-the-air (OTA) updates and, so, everything from minor application updates to firmware updates can and do occur without the need to connect to a host PC.
 

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
As new mobile OSes battle their way into the market, there’s a reason why the older mobile OSes have still dominated the mobile device space.

Windows OS 6.5
Windows 6.5 brought some finger-friendly features to devices, and gave the homescreen on devices a really neat look. Considering the OS goes on smartphones, Microsoft redesigned the Internet Explorer Mobile with a new engine, more touch-friendly interface and built-in Adobe Flash Lite support to appease those who missed Flash on other handsets.

Symbian
Until recently, almost every smartphone from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others was built using Symbian OS. It is the one OS that is familiar to users. The latest, Symbian S60 OS is not exactly a touch-friendly OS, but complements feature phones at the mid end. The interface is built around a rather plain homescreen that gives you a somewhat limited access to apps and features. Sure, you can personalise it, but in this age of multiple homescreens, Symbian seems laggard.

Maemo delivers one of the best mobile browsing experiences — the default web browser is quick and renders pages properly (including support for Flash). No wonder then that Mozilla chose Maemo as the first platform to release Firefox Mobile. The Ovi Store (accessible via mobile browser) offers easy one-click installation and has some good applications — both for purchase and free. The only problem with the Ovi store is that it currently has only about a hundred applications in it — a slim picking compared to the Android marketplace.

VERDICT: The biggest drawback, we could figure, is that Maemo is available on a single device (Nokia N900, which costs Rs 30,000) currently. But if you are game for the new face of Nokia devices, Maemo-based N900 is a good step forward.