|
|
Is Symbian a Frankstein Windows?
| Wed, 2007-09-12 22:48 | |
 |
Hi, I'm starting to work with Symbian (another guy from our company created everything), and, looking at the exe, dll, vc6, etc... i was thinking: what REALLY is the Symbian OS? Seems to me that, since it uses alll Windows files, it is just a Windows-based OS with another C++ API. Am I correct? Best Regards, Guilherme Campos Hazan (guich), MSCC |
Forum posts: 1144
No, Symbian is as much an OS as any other, written from scratch, with no Windows or even DOS roots whatsoever.
I think what probably confuses you is the emulator. This is an interesting piece of software: It is the Symbian OS compiled with an x86 C++ compiler, together with device drivers that do not work with true phone hardware (quite obviously), but interface with Windows.
This is quite different from what Microsoft is providing for their device emulators: There you have the same ARM code running on Windows like on the phone, with the help of software that emulates the ARM CPU itself in x86 code. Of course, here also special additional code is needed because no real phone display is present for the emulator, but only a display that is under the control of Windows.
The fact that with Symbian the code of programs for the emulator is x86 code is an ever-present potential pitfall: Beginners often try to install code compiled for the emulator on the phone, where the poor ARM CPU has zero chance in hell to execute the x86 code...
René Brunner
Forum posts: 607
Check out Symbian OS Internals book by Sales et al (Wiley): http://developer.symbian.com/main/learning/press/books/os_internals/index.jsp
Or these whitepapers on the actual OS: http://developer.symbian.com/main/oslibrary/symbian_os_papers/platform.jsp
You'll see that Symbian OS really is an OS nothing todo with Windows, except that we (have to) use Windows as the programming environment in developing Symbian software.