Operating System Used In Portable Devices Computer Science Essay

This report is about Operating system used in portable devices like PDA and laptops etc. As the passage of time consumer needs are becoming more and more demanding and life is becoming compact so as devices are also becoming more powerful and their OS also more advanced and complicated we will discuss some those most commonly used OS and their different uses and the devices they are used produced by different manufacturers and a brief introduction to OS and its types.

Operating system is the most important program which enables hardware to communicate with each other and humans also. Every program needs an operating system to run on computers or handheld devices. It is responsible of managing inputs given by user and transferring them into desired outputs by using devices like keyboard, mouse, printers and monitors etc. attached to motherboard. OS usually exists in hard drives of computers or in handheld devices in flash rom memory.

OS also arrange, manage organize all file and folders on computers. The more systems are larger the more complex the process in those system becomes so the OS used in these systems are more powerful and the task they perform are also exponential. They are capable of doing many tasks simultaneously without interference of each other and providing expected performance at the same time.

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Different type of OS available for desktop or laptops are Windows which is dos based and Mac OS which is Unix based, Ubuntu which is Linux based etc. and for handheld there are many choices as well like Symbian OS, Android, Windows mobile and apple iOS etc.

Operating system can be mainly of four types based on their use and support. They are as follows:

Real time OS

This OS is developed for devices which have limited memory and to make them efficient and fast less coding is used as resources are crucial and execution time needs to be minimal. Example is Windows CE.

Single user single Task

It is a advanced version of previously mentioned Real time OS. In this type one user can perform one task at one time. The palm top or PDA fits in this type. Example is Window mobile.

Single user multi Task

This is the most commonly used OS type nowadays. These OS are capable of Multitasking and capable of performing all user tasks as multimedia, internet ,games and all commonly used tasks Example of this type could be Window 7 ,Mac OS etc.

Multi User

These are the most powerful OS of all. They are capable of handling many users at same time and providing all of them with the resources they need. These OS are not like single user multi task where only one user can perform task at a particular time in this type many user can login at same time. Example is UNIX, Linux etc.

Literature Review

The increasing demand of handheld or portable devices created a new era in computing history as from year 2000 and onwards the approach of people regarding mobile devices changed and life started becoming fast and compact day by day so the need of business and entertainment devices and so the mobile OS started become popular and lots of computer hobbyist and developers started developing faster and efficient mobile OS and its applications. The use of internet, emails and messaging started becoming popular in devices and these facilities started becoming a part of handheld devices and some of those are discussed below.

1) PDA

PDA stands for Personal Digital Equipment usually called pocket pcs or pocket computers it is an handheld device which has functionalities like phone, internet, multimedia etc. all in pocket able size. User interact with these through a stick called stylus or nowadays mostly fingers some of these also have built in QWERTY keyboards for quick and better input. PDA also have features like hand recognition, voice recognition and gesture response.

1.1) Types of PDA

Some types of PDS available are as follows:

1.1.1) Palm

It is kind of PDA which runs its own OS called Palm OS example could be Palm TX, Palm Pilot etc. Palm became a very renowned name in portable computing industry. It played a major role in the development of PDAs it introduced a variety of different versions of devices in market. Palm OS can also be found in Sony Clie, Handspring Visor and Tapwave Zodiac.

1.1.2) Pocket PCs

These kinds of PDA are usually based on Microsoft Windows Mobile OS which uses Windows CE core. They are capable of all sorts of functionalities like video and music playback, Web browsing through built in internet explorer, fax sending, and email etc. There are many manufacturers of pocket pcs in market some of which are HP, HTC, Motorola, Dell etc.

2) Laptops

These are smaller, lighter and in most cases equally powerful in performance computers compared to desktops. They are meant to do computing on the move. laptops got large capacity ,more memory and better processors as compared to other mobile computing devices. They run Windows Xp, Vista or 7, Mac OS and Ubuntu etc.

2.1) Netbooks

These are a newer kind of laptops which are much smaller in size as well as computation. They include all components as normal laptops but in scaled down version there size is normally of a A4 size page and qwerty keyboard with a bit less keys then normal laptops. They are capable of performing normal day to day task as surfing web, using word watching HD YouTube widows (newer versions only).There battery life vary from 8 to 9 hrs. That is 4 to 5 times more than standard size laptops. Mostly Ubuntu, Android, Windows XP and Windows 7 starter are used as OS in netbooks.

3) Other Mobile OS

We have discussed Palm OS and Windows Mobile but there are very well known OS which are as follows:

3.1) Symbian OS

This OS is the most renowned in the industry and more than 85 percent of mobiles manufacturer use this as standard in their devices and lots of developers had become interested in developing their applications which totally changes the user experience of Symbian running devices. Symbian has released different versions of its OS like Symbian series 20 or 30 for low end handsets, Symbian series 40 and 60 for mid-range and series 90 for high end business communicators and uses 2.5G and 3G.

3.2) Android

This is the one of the most promising and trusted OS compared to others. It is verily used in devices like 3G internet tablets ,mobile phones and recently released a 4G version of their android also installed in HTC EVO 4G. It is mainly based on Linux kernels so the development is quite easier and lots of applications are already in market for this OS.

3.3) iOS

It is created and developed by apple Inc. It was knows as iPhone OS before it uses apple OS X also UNIX like OS. The new version iOS 4 is a hybrid system and it uses kernel type from Darwin foundation uses 4 abstraction layers. It also supports multitasking and features like video calling, VoIP (Voice over internet protocol), background music playback etc.

Conclusion

Operating System of devices like PDA and Laptops solves many user problems as the passage of time these mobile devices are more and more compact and high performance so their OS is also becoming more and more complex to develop. As we can see from this research that plenty of mobile devices companies are paying more attention to their OS because if its poorly designed whole device no matter how best the hardware is will change whole user view about device. If the device is losing its internet connection every second or hanging or giving unexpected errors means its OS is not properly developed and tested after implementation on device under different scenarios and environment. The best examples of well-designed OS in mobile industry are Android, iOs, Symbian etc. as mentioned in this report. Laptops on the other hand can run any desktop version OS according to their hardware capabilities and netbooks usually use lighter version of these OS as we have seen in this report.