Symbian

So, you’ve decided to buy a new smartphone, have you? Better than the average one-trick-ponies I say. So, you’ll gloss over hardware comparisons and pick the one with the fancier specifications, but aren’t you forgetting something?

Yep, the software platform — the platform each smartphone is based on pretty much decides what it does well out of the box, how usable it is, and what functionality can be added to it later, if at all. Here’s our primer on how these platform compare.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6

It’s easy to understand why Windows Mobile scores high with many first timers — it has a familiar feeling that Windows users will appreciate. Now in version 6.1, Windows Mobile is available in two versions: Smartphone, for devices without touchscreens, and Professional, for devices with touchscreens.

You’ll also find plenty of software applications, especially productivity applications, like Microsoft Pocket Outlook, that run on Windows Mobile, as well as pocket versions of Acrobat, MSN Messenger etc. Just be sure to check about document creation capabilities, if that matters to you – some versions allow you only to view, not edit documents. And the fact that it has what every platform wants — handsets. By the truckloads, if you will.

The choice of hardware is impressive, yet buyers would be warned to approach entry-level models with some caution, because they tend to be sluggish running the Windows OS. It often locks up, and you’re left with little choice but to pull the battery out to reboot the device.

Windows Mobile

Apple iPhone OS X

The jury is still out on whether the iPhone qualifies to be a smartphone, but for all practical purposes, it is. It runs a stripped-down version of the extremely usable Mac OS X operating system, and is by far the sexiest item- number going.

It’s helped in large part by Apple’s hardware — the smooth animation, lag-free navigation, and the multi-touch navigation is still unmatched in other devices. And courtesy the Mac OS, the iPhone enjoys some best of breed applications – the music player (it’s an iPod!), the full desktop browser experience (Safari), and the classic Apple user interface — minimalist, understated, beautiful.

It’s even got a thriving Applications Store with a vibrant developer community, though the impact of this is limited by Apple’s tight controls over the closed ecosystem of the Applications Store, leaving you with a lot of games and pointless utilities, but not enough to broaden its appeal to serious business users. And for all its power, Apple still hasn’t got some basics right –—we need our phones to allow copy/paste and send MMSs. And Jobs isn’t telling when.

Rim blackberry

RIM BlackBerry

All work and no play, makes Black(Berry) a dull boy. Fighting the image that Blackberrys are meant solely for corporate e-mail, recent releases of the Pearl, Curve and the Bold are all part of BlackBerry’s mass acceptance gameplan.

That said, it’s just about finding its feet in the murky waters of consumer-oriented devices. The hardware-software one-two punch is a shining validation of the iPhone model — you make the phones, you make the OS — and the user gets the exact experience you intended. Though, to be honest, I’m mildly concerned with RIM doing away with the much-loved BlackBerry keyboard in the soon-to-be-released Storm.

All in all, the BlackBerry is still my recommendation for the suits alone, and here’s why. E-mail is rock solid, best of breed. It fits in well with the corporate deployment scenario with IT admins being able to control which third party applications get installed.

The platform is relatively secure, using end-to-end encryption to protect data between smartphones and the e-mail server. Sure, you do get over 1,500 business applications and life-style apps, but it’ll be some time yet before BlackBerry fully opens up its doors to third-party developers a la Windows Mobile and Symbian. Oh, and if you don’t like the devices much (but love the platform), I wouldn’t suggest you wait — it’ll be a cold day in hell before RIM licenses its software to other manufacturers.

Palm Garnet

Apple iphone os x

Once upon a time, there used to be a highly usable smartphone platform called Palm OS. Trouble is, the Palm OS of today looks and feels dated — because it is. Not much has changed over the past few years, and its fortunes have dwindled within the Palm smartphone family to be relegated to just two smartphones — the Palm Centro and one version of the Treo. Most other devices from Palm have moved onto Windows Mobile, and while there are rumours of a Linux-based platform overhaul around this year-end, I’m not leaving the light on outside for Palm.

Symbian

Here’s a little number to crunch. Approximately every second smartphone sold has the Series 60 variant of the Symbian platform on it, and it's buoyed by the tight integration that Nokia offers, say on its N-series or E-series offerings. Not to forget the strong developer community that continues to innovate on this platform, which means that applications that extend the functionality of your phone are in abundance.

When you buy a Symbian device, you get really powerful smartphone features — extremely capable synchronisation with your PC, for instance, via Nokia PC Suite. The e-mail client is excellent, as is the in-built browser, voice recognition and calendar utilities, though office document editing isn’t the most refined of the lot.

The whole package is very intuitive to use for first timers, far more than Windows Mobile ends up being with its complex menu and icon structure — and this is in spite of most of us being weaned on Microsoft Windows since we started using our PCs.

Google android

Now, its tight integration with Nokia is also its biggest weakness — if you don’t like Nokia design, you’re pretty much out of luck with getting yourself a Symbian phone. And on the lower end of the market, the platform suffers on slower hardware, getting to downright glacial on some entry-level smartphones. And the ultimate price of popularity — it’s also the biggest target of viruses and malware.

Google Android

The new kid on the block, Android is Google’s Linux-based open source mobile platform that’s built on the premise of ubiquitous Internet connectivity.

Early responses to the HTC G1, the only phone to currently feature the Android platform, seem to suggest the real strength of this phone lies in that fact that Google’s set no limits on what developers can do, ergo the wildest and most path breaking ideas will hit Android first. Or it could turn out to be a jungle. This one is too early to call — expect this space to heat up as the first phones hit Indian shores towards the end of this year.