History

We’ve been thinking since quite a time ago to start a series of articles presenting every detail of mobile operating systems available today. The development of this industry has accelerated incredibly: new devices are coming out weekly – or even daily – and so software and systems are evolving rapidly; it became pretty hard to comprehend the whole market. And then there are of course our inexperienced readers who don’t really know what phrases like “active standby” or “BlackUI” mean. We hope that this series of articles helps them in understanding these concepts.

To begin with, I would like to clarify a misunderstanding. Not only the so-called smartphones have an operating system, but all phones do. The definition of system goes something like this: a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole. It’s a bit harder to describe what an operating system is. The main tasks of such a system are to handle resources, operate processing systems, support input and output connections, interpret commands, provide the connection between man and machine and to protect the system from the user. Some say that expandability by the user also comes here, but it’s true that only a part of “standard” phones fulfill this criteria, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t have an operating system.

Nokia’s Series 40 platform is one of the oldest and most popular of systems currently in use. Today hundreds of millions of S40 cell phones are sold worldwide, which is due mostly to Nokia continuously developing and optimizing the platform. Many people would never change their Nokia phone they got to know thoroughly to a phone from some other manufacturer, they rather choose a device with a poorer price/value ratio and so they don’t have to learn basic usage again. The high number of users loyal to the brand are present mostly because this.

Nokia 5110

Many people think that the first Series 40 phone was Nokia 5110, but this is not true. This device used the long gone Series 20 platform, which had 3330, 5210, 8310 and 8910 as the last models based on it. The last three were built on the Series 20 2nd Edition platform, so they had two software keys, while the others had only one. It’s worth to mention the Series 30 system too, which has been merged with Series 40. The first such phone was 6310, this had a 96 x 65 pixel large display and two soft keys. Its predecessor, 6210, was an interesting handset; it can be perceived as pre-S30, since it only used 96 x 60 pixels. The first phone to use Series 40 was Nokia 7210, announced on 2002. March 12; this had the 128 x 128 display that had been used for a long time. A number of successors followed and the system evolved a lot during the time. The first S40 had a 4-way navigation control, which has been extended with an action button in the 2nd edition, so there were three labels on the bottom of the screen. The 3rd edition brought about a small, but highly important new feature, QVGA resolution. This has been followed by two other versions, 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and 2. 4th edition was omitted because of superstition, just like the 4000 series: 4 is an unlucky number, and although 0 and 8 ease the negative effect, Nokia didn’t even risk launching 4888, how sweet. The current version in use is 5th Edition Feature Pack 1, which has a downgraded version called LE, this is used in cheaper models; it’s considered the direct descendant of Series 30. The family had some queer fishes in it, like 6230i with a resolution of 208 x 208 pixels. Although its predecessor had a 128 x 128 display, because of the tons of negative criticisms, the company was forced to launch a hi-res edition. Other interesting phones were fashion models 7280 and 7380, built on a modified S40, which had a 208 x 104 screen and navigation dial and had no numeric keypad. All devices in Series 40 are built on ARM CPUs, but this might be the only thing that didn’t change during the years.

The first Series 40 phone: Nokia 7210

The Series 40 system doesn’t have such advanced features as its bigger brother, Series 60: it doesn’t support true multitasking and it doesn’t have a native code API, which would make the installation and use of third party software available. This has been partially solved with Java MIDlets, which run quite slowly, but the system itself is faster than the others. Nowadays there are two kinds of resolutions in use: 128 x 160 for entry level phones and 240 x 320 pixels for mid- to high-end phones. This has a serious effect on user experience; a great example being the fact that there is a huge difference in price between models with similar features but different screen resolutions. It’s probable that Nokia will close Series 40, but this will possibly take years. The signs of S40-S60 convergence have been present for quite a while, just like they were in the case of S30-S40 platforms. So union is almost sure, the question is when. Until then it seems that high-end phones (N-series) use S60, while fashion phones and low- to mid-end models will use S40.

Series 40 platform on a 128 x 160 (left) and a 240 x 320 pixel (right) display

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