Mobiles

I'm sitting in a bar at the GC waiting for the darned train to arrive. I've went through most of my books and don't feel like straining over study texts I have compiled on my ebook reader. So here's a bit of rant on mobiles written on a mobile: my blackberry.
There are five major mobiles that are set to change the market in one form or the other. Here, by mobile I'm referring to what most people call 'smartphones.' You see, mobiles are like very weak, small computers with ridiculously good battery life. Meaning that unless you are trying to calculate coefficients of turbulent plasma at break-even temperature the hardware doesn't matter as much. Maybe for playing graphic intensive games and bragging to other kids, but outside of that what really matters is the software, the operating system. Operating systems are composed largely of two things, at least when we are talking about mobile systems.
1)Interface: interface as in interfacing between the human user and the circuitry guts of the mobile device that crunches numbers. Anything between the machine and the user is part of the interface. The screen, the keyboard, if any, the software installation routine, backup methods, email/message push techniques and how they are represented on the desktop, whether there will be a 'desktop' or not, the size of the machine to the color scheme and extensibility of the interface itself by the user which covers everything from applications to skinning. It's mind boggling. And with the limited size of the device combined with lack of universal specification it would be possible to write an encyclopedia on the issue.
2)Kernel: I'm no specialist when it comes to computing (scientists only use computers well. Knowing about computers is a whole different issue), so I'm just going to call it kernel like it is with linux. I'm talking about the very core of the operating system that is in the end a collection of filesystems that put stuff together so that the machine can process information in a form that is coherent to human beings. The nucleus of the cell that is the mobile device. This is the part that more or less remains the same across most devices, mobile or desktop, though mobiles to go through quite a bit of optimization aimed at reducing unnecessary processes to lengthen battery life.
 
Conventional 'mobiles' that aren't smartphones really don't fulfill the above two criteria of having an operating system. What they have are one-way java sandboxes with no real filing system to speak of, a one-way interpreter with no real way to compose content on those machines. The difference between regular cellphones and smartphones is the difference between a 99c calculator and a laptop.
 
So there are five mobiles that are set to change the ecosystem of mobile market for better or for worse. And the name of the mobiles are not names of the machines or their manufacturers, but names of the operating systems, some of which can be adapted to practically any machine with decent cpu and human interface.
 
Android, iPhone OS, WinMobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian. Each of those operating systems are results of the fantastically interesting evolution of human computing paradigms dating back to the days of mainframes and UNIX, the beginnings of the digitization of human society. Android, iPhone OS, and Symbian operating systems are direct descendents of the old UNIX systems that are still used to run the vast majority of real supercomputers across the world. Doesn't matter where you're from. The supercomputers North Koreans use in rocketry and nuclear weapons engineering runs a flavor of UNIX, albeit heavily modified, but still descended from the same origin as the UNIX based mainframes I use in my school. By descendent I'm not just talking about historical relations. I mean real codes, real architecture that still lives and breathes in all those operating systems from the mainframe that calculates some despot's hidden bank account balances to UNICEF's tracking data for sixty million insect nets and vaccination data for seven million children spread across half the world. And, of course, the laptops and mobiles as well, Android, iPhone OS and Symbian. Winmobile is a product of an attempt at producing commercial GUI based operating system that is itself inspired from UNIX based operating systems, though the main windows operating system is still playing catch-up to the dinosaurs of the past. BlackBerry OS is a hybrid of the java sandbox approach used in conventional cellphones with more conventional operating systems approach, built on top of a huge java virtual machine that translates human-readable computer code to machine code. The core of the BB operating system, the Java, is itself a product of the computer age, a distant cousin of the aftereffects of the operating systems revolution that more or less trace its lineage to UNIX, with the intepreted language structure tracing back to the grand-ancestors of all programming languages and de-facto artificial intelligence/mathematics modelling language called Lisp.
 
Each of these mobile operating systems have diverse technical/cultural/economical background to them that I can't go into detail here, with the limitation on the time and space (that train's going to have to come sooner or later, right?), but it's all quite fascinating and worth looking into if you're interested in that sort of thing.
 
The fact of the matter is that the five operating systems serve different types of customers at the moment, though not necessarily single type of customer.
 
Winmobile's primary customers are business users, not because winmobile operating system is great, but because it's the most widely distributed operating system that interfaces with the most widely distributed desktop operating system on the planet. Of course Winmobile is better built compared to its desktop cousin, with variety of push messaging technology and cryptography patterns built into it. It's only that the platform as a whole is significantly outdated compared to the competition and the interface portion of the operating system is almost painful to use.
 
iPhone OS's primary customers are twofold. First would be what I would call 'average joes.' Basically people who want smartphone without worrying about it too much. The remarkable interface design and resilience of the UNIX based platform (meaning it won't crash too much) makes it easy for first time mobile device user to approach it. The second class of users are professionals in scientific field who don't want to deal with nitty gritty details of the operating system yet want a powerful scientific programs and libraries they can access on the go. The UNIX based core means that it is relatively easy to develop applications for the mobile platform with minimal overhead, especially considering that most scientific applications are already running on UNIX operating systems.
 
Android OS, as the youngest one of the mobile os sibilings is still trying to find its niche. Though as an open platform that can be run on practically any kind of hardware with capacity for anyone to write java based programs for the operating system is quickly shaping up to be the coder's platform of choice, offering an intriguing mix of variety in applications ranging from torrent, augmented reality, shopping helpers to video streamer/editors and stock traders. There are moves to bring some portions of the Android os platform to third world computer/networking solutions, and from what I hear they are shaping up nicely.
 
Symbian is another UNIX/Linux based distribution for mobiles, though you need to use C/C++ language with rather incomprehensible set of libraries if you want to program for the operating system. Also, the symbian platform is closed source and until recently you needed to purchase a license to even program for the platform. The target audience for symbian tend to focus on the media-savvy and coders who want variety in their programs, something of a cross between Android and iPhone OS's target audiences.
 
BlackBerry operating system is a huge virtual machine optimized for BlackBerry hardware, based off Java. BlackBerries are commonly referred to as information junkie's main device. While lacking in freedom and variety of the applications, BB still offers significant stability and ability to organize through massive amount of information: webpages, texts, contact info, emails that number into hundreds. It's surprising how much information get passed around in form of text in this day and age.
 
Well, that's it for my short-ish overview of the mobile operating systems available at the moment. My wine's almost done and it's time for me to leave... I must say, I forgot to mention the web OS being developed by palm, but it isn't out on the market yet, so I guess it doesn't count. Maybe later.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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