Ok, so you want to buy a smartphone. Great choice. Modern smartphones gives you robust email integration, great organization capabilities (notes, calendars et all), great internet browsing experience, and above all, great extensibility through applications. They are mini personal computers that you can carry around in your pocket.
Now, the next question is, which one ? The engine behind a smartphone is its Operating System (OS). This presents you with 5 great choices, each with its own pros and cons.
First lets see a few charts to set the context:
Ok, now that the figures are out of the way, lets hit the road and consider each OS on the 2 most important parameters – user interface (how does the OS ‘feel’), and application availability (i.e. how many applications are available to extend the functionality of the phone – think news, social networking, dictionaries, productivity and other apps).
User interface is more important for most users, so it will be ranked on a scale of 10, while application availability will be ranked on a scale of 5. The sum of these two scores will be the final score for each OS.
Please note that we are only considering the operating systems for touch screens (which form a majority of the smartphones these days) – in fact, operating systems such as iOS (iPhone OS) and Android are designed only for touch screens.
Now, lets look at each OS in detail. If you are interested in only the final scores, skip to the bottom of thi
Ok, so you want to buy a smartphone. Great choice. Modern smartphones gives you robust email integration, great organization capabilities (notes, calendars et all), great internet browsing experience, and above all, great extensibility through applications. They are mini personal computers that you can carry around in your pocket.
Now, the next question is, which one ? The engine behind a smartphone is its Operating System (OS). This presents you with 5 great choices, each with its own pros and cons.
First lets see a few charts to set the context:
Symbian is the most popular operating system with about 40% share in all handsets sold (as of Q2, 2010). RIM (BlackBerry), Android and iPhone OS follow behind with about 20% share each.
