Sony Ericsson G900C manual Symbian OS operating system, Key features of Symbian OS, General

White paper G900c

Symbian OS operating system

Symbian OS is the open operating system licensed by the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers. It is designed for the specific requirements of advanced 2G and 2.5G mobile phones. Symbian OS combines the power of an integrated applications environment with mobile telephony, bringing advanced data services to the mass market.

Symbian OS supports a wide range of device categories with several user interfaces, this includes UIQ, which is the software platform used in G900c.

Key features of Symbian OS v9.1

General

•Improved system performance, especially at start-up.

•New multimedia framework supporting record- ing, playback and streaming.

•Graphics – direct access to screen and key- board gives high performance; graphics accel- erator API; increased UI flexibility (support for multiple simultaneous display, multiple display sizes and multiple display orientation).

•Java™ support – supports the latest wireless Java standards. For more information, see Java™ on page 55.

•Communications protocols – wide area net- working stacks including TCP/IP and WAP 2.0, personal area networking support including Blu- etooth connectivity and USB; support is also provided for multihoming and link layer Quality- of-Service (QoS) on GPRS network.

•International support – supports the Unicode Standard version 3.0.

•Data synchronization – over-the-air (OTA) syn- chronization support using OMA standards (OMADS 1.2); PC-based synchronization over USB and Bluetooth connections; a PC Connec- tivity suite providing the ability to transfer files and synchronize PIM data.

•Improved device management which provides network Operators and enterprises with new capabilities to manage phones in the field. This includes OMA DM 1.1.2 support and OMA client provisioning 1.1.

•Support for Bluetooth wireless technology eSCO and Bluetooth stereo headset profiles have been implemented.

Security

The aims of the security developments in Symbian OS v9.1 are to protect the integrity of the phone, provide extra control over user billable events and to prevent malicious software corrupting executables and data. The aims have been met by:

•Providing platform security by a proactive sys- tem defence mechanism based on granting and monitoring application capabilities through Symbian-signed certification. The infrastructure allows applications to have private protected data stores.

•A proactive defence mechanism against mal- ware. The platform security infrastructure uses a capability-based model, which ensures that sensitive operations, such as, modifying user data, making calls and using network connec- tions, can only be accessed by applications which have been certified by an appropriate signing authority.

•Data caging, which allows applications to have their own private data protection. This allows applications a guaranteed secure data source. This can be used for applications, such as, ecommerce. An application can access other directories marked as open but cannot access another application’s private directory.

•Additional platform security includes full encryption and certificate management, secure protocols (HTTPS, SSL and TLS) and WIM framework.

53 August 2008