CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

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 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND:

Symbian OS is an operating system designed for mobile devices, with associated

libraries, user interface, frameworks and reference implementations of common tools,
developed by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC and runs exclusively
on ARM processors.

On 24 June 1998, Symbian Ltd. was formed as a partnership between Ericsson,

Nokia, Motorola and Psion, to exploit the convergence between PDAs and mobile
phones. Symbian was previously owned by Nokia (56.3%), Ericsson (15.6%), Sony
Ericsson (13.1%), Panasonic (10.5%) and Samsung (4.5%). Ten years later to the day,
on 24 June 2008, Nokia announced that they intended to acquire all shares that they
did not already own. The acquisition was of €264 million, or $410 million.

On 24 June 2008 the Symbian Foundation was announced with the aim to "provide
royalty-free software and accelerate innovation".

1.2 ORGANIZATION OF PROJECT REPORT:

The paper is organized as follows. The second section represents the design of the
Symbian OS. The third section represents the competition in market. The forth section
represents the structure of Symbian OS. The fifth section represents the history of
Symbian OS. The sixth section represents the open source software’s for Symbian
v9.1. The seventh section represents the security & malware related to Symbian OS.
The eighth section represents the open source nature of Symbian OS. The ninth
section represents the devices that have used Symbian OS. The tenth section
represents the developments on Symbian OS. The eleventh section represents the
ways to hack Symbian OS.

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 CHAPTER 2: DESIGN

DESIGN :

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Symbian OS, with its roots in Psion S/W's EPOC, features pre-emptive multitasking
and memory protection, like other operating systems (especially those for desktop
computers). EPOC's approach to multitasking was inspired by VMS and is based on
asynchronous server-based events.

Symbian OS was built to follow three design rules: the integrity and security of user
data is paramount, user time must not be wasted, and all resources are scarce. This led
to the writing of a microkernel, a request-and-callback approach to services, the
concept of separation between UI and Engine (the business logic of a Symbian
application). The OS is optimised for low-power battery-based devices and for ROM-
based systems (e.g. features like XIP and re-entrancy in shared libraries).
Applications, and the OS, follow an object-oriented design, MVC.

Later OS iterations diluted this approach in response to market demands, notably the
introduction of a real-time kernel and a platform security model in versions 8 and 9.

Fig.1 Symbian OS Layout

There is a strong emphasis on conserving resources, using Symbian-specific

programming idioms such as descriptors and a cleanup stack. There are similar

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techniques for conserving disk space (though the disks on Symbian devices are
usually flash memory). Furthermore, all Symbian OS programming is event-based,
and the CPU is switched off when applications are not directly dealing with an event.
This is achieved through a programming idiom called active objects. Similarly the OS
approach to threads vs. processes is driven by reducing overheads.

Symbian OS kernel (EKA2) supports sufficiently-fast real-time response such that it

is possible to build a single-core phone around it—that is, a phone in which a single
processor core executes both the user applications and the signalling stack. This is a
feature which is not available in Linux. This has allowed SymbianOS EKA2 phones
to become smaller, cheaper and more power efficient

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CHAPTER 3: COMPETITION

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 COMPETITION:

Symbian OS is the leading OS in the "smart mobile device" market. Statistics

published November 2008 showed that Symbian OS had a 46.6% share of the smart
mobile device market, with Apple having 17.3% (through iPhone OS), RIM having
15.3% and Microsoft having 13.5% (through Windows CE and Windows Mobile).
Other competitors include Palm OS, Qualcomm's BREW, Google Android, SavaJe
and MontaVista Software.

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 CHAPTER 4: STRUCTURE

STRUCTURE :

The Symbian OS System Model contains the following layers, from top to bottom:

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  UI Framework Layer
 Application Services Layer
o Java ME
 OS Services Layer
o generic OS services
o communications services
o multimedia and graphics services
o connectivity services
 Base Services Layer
 Kernel Services & Hardware Interface Layer

Fig.2 Layers in Symbian OS

The Base Services Layer is the lowest level reachable by user-side operations; it
includes the File Server and User Library, the Plug-In Framework which manages all
plug-ins, Store, Central Repository, DBMS, and cryptographic services. It also
includes the Text Window Server and the Text Shell, the two basic services from
which a completely functional port can be created without the need for any higher
layer services.

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Symbian OS has a microkernel architecture, which means that the minimum
necessary is within the kernel to improve robustness, availability, and responsiveness.
It contains a scheduler, memory management, and device drivers, but other services
like networking, telephony, or filesystem support are placed in the OS Services Layer
or Base Services Layer. The inclusion of device drivers means the kernel is not a true
microkernel. The EKA2 real-time kernel has been termed a nanokernel, containing
only the most basic primitives and supporting an extended kernel to implement any
other abstractions.

Symbian OS is designed to emphasize compatibility with other devices, especially

removable media file systems. Early development of EPOC led to adopting FAT as
the internal file system and this remains in the Symbian OS but an object-oriented
persistence model has been placed over the underlying FAT, providing a POSIX-style
interface and a streaming model. The internal data formats rely on using the same API
that create the data to run all file manipulations - this has created the problems of
data-dependence and associated difficulties with changes and data migration.

There is a large networking and communication subsystem, which has three main
servers: ETEL (EPOC telephony), ESOCK (EPOC sockets) and C32 (responsible for
serial communication). Each of these has a plug-in scheme. For example ESOCK
allows different ".PRT" protocol modules, implementing different types of
networking protocol scheme. The subsystem also contains code that pertains to short-
range communication links, such as Bluetooth, IrDA and USB.

There is also a large volume of user interface (UI) Code. Only the base classes and
substructure are contained in Symbian OS, while most of the actual user interfaces are
maintained by third parties. This component is known as UIKON. The OS also
contains the graphics, text layout, and font rendering libraries.

All Symbian applications are built up from three classes defined by the application
architecture: an application class, a document class, and an application user interface
class. These classes create the fundamental application behaviour. The remaining
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required functions, the application view, data model, and data interface, are created
independently and interact solely through their APIs with the other classes. UIQ and
S60 both extend this approach, in two different ways.

Many other things do not yet fit into this model – for example, SyncML, Java ME
providing another set of APIs on top of most of the OS and multimedia. Many of
these are frameworks, and vendors are expected to supply plug-ins to these
frameworks from third parties (for example, Helix player for multimedia codecs).
This has the advantage that the APIs to such areas of functionality are the same on
many phone models, and that vendors get a lot of flexibility. But it means that phone
vendors need to do a great deal of integration work to make a Symbian OS phone.

Symbian OS device manufacturers also get supplied with an example user-interface

layer called "TechView". It provides a basis to start customisation and is also the
environment in which much Symbian OS test code and example code runs. It is very
similar to the user interface from a Psion Series 5 personal organiser, so it is not used
for any given phone user interface.

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CHAPTER 5: HISTORY

HISTORY

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Psion

In 1980, Psion was founded by David Potter.

Symbian OS v6.0 and 6.1

The OS was renamed Symbian OS and was envisioned as the base for a new range of
smartphones. This release sometime is called ER6. Psion gave 130 key staff to the
new company and retained a 31% shareholding in the spun-out business.

The first 'open' Symbian OS phone, the Nokia 9210 Communicator, was released in
June 2001. Bluetooth support added. Almost 500,000 Symbian phones were shipped
in 2001, rising to 2.1 million the following year.

Development of different UIs was made generic with a "reference design strategy" for
either 'smartphone' or 'communicator' devices, subdivided further into keyboard- or
tablet-based designs. Two reference UIs (DFRDs or Device Family Reference
Designs) were shipped - Quartz and Crystal. The former was merged with Ericsson's
'Ronneby' design and became the basis for the UIQ interface, the latter reached the
market as the Nokia Series 80 UI.

Later DFRDs were Sapphire, Ruby, and Emerald. Only Sapphire came to market,
evolving into the Pearl DFRD and finally the Nokia Series 60 UI, a keypad-based
'square' UI for the first true smartphones. The first one of them was the Nokia 7650
smartphone (featuring Symbian OS 6.1), which was also the first with a built-in
camera, with VGA (0.3 Mpx = 640*480) resolution.

Despite these efforts to be generic the UI was clearly split between competing
companies, Crystal or Sapphire was Nokia, Quartz was Ericsson. DFRD was
abandoned by Symbian in late 2002, as part of an active retreat from UI development
in favour of 'headless' delivery. Pearl was

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given to Nokia, Quartz development was spun-off as UIQ Technology AB, and work
with Japanese firms was quickly folded into the MOAP standard.

Symbian OS 7.0 and 7.0s

First shipped in 2003. This is an important Symbian release which appeared with all
contemporary user interfaces including UIQ (Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910,
Motorola A925, A1000), Series 80 (Nokia 9300, 9500), Series 90 (Nokia 7710),
Series 60 (Nokia 3230, 6260, 6600, 6670, 7610) as well as several FOMA phones in
Japan. It also added EDGE support and IPv6. Java support was changed from pJava
and JavaPhone to one based on the Java ME standard.

One million Symbian phones were shipped in Q1 2003, with the rate increasing to one
million a month by the end of 2003.

Symbian OS 7.0s was a version of 7.0 special adapted to have greater backward
compatibility with Symbian OS 6.x, partly for compatibility between the
Communicator 9500 and its predecessor the Communicator 9210.

In 2004, Psion sold its stake in Symbian. The same year, the first worm for mobile
phones using Symbian OS, Cabir, was developed, which used Bluetooth to spread
itself to nearby phones. See Cabir and Symbian OS threats.

Symbian OS 8.0

First shipped in 2004, one of its advantages would have been a choice of two different
kernels (EKA1 or EKA2). However, the EKA2 kernel version did not ship until
Symbian OS 8.1b. The kernels behave more or less identically from user-side, but are
internally very different. EKA1 was chosen by some manufacturers to maintain
compatibility with old device drivers, while EKA2 was a real-time kernel. 8.0b was
deproductized in 2003.

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Also included were new APIs to support CDMA, 3G, two-way data streaming, DVB-
H, and OpenGL ES with vector graphics and direct screen access.

Symbian OS 9.0

This version was used for internal Symbian purposes only. It was de-productised in
2004. 9.0 marked the end of the road for EKA1. 8.1a is the final EKA1 version of
Symbian OS.

Symbian OS has generally maintained reasonable binary code compatibility. In theory

the OS was BC from ER1-ER5, then from 6.0 to 8.1b. Substantial changes were
needed for 9.0, related to tools and security, but this should be a one-off event. The
move from requiring ARMv4 to requiring ARMv5 did not break backwards
compatibility.

A Symbian developer proclaims that porting from Symbian 8.x to Symbian 9.x is a
more daunting process than Symbian says.

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 CHAPTER 6:
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR
SYMBIAN 9.1

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 OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR SYMBIAN 9.1

The following open source software has been ported or rewritten for Symbian 9.1:

Utilities

 Mobile Web Server, a port of the Apache HTTP Server

 Nokia Internet Radio, an Internet radio player, that works with SHOUTcast
directory
 PuTTY, a telnet/ssh client
 Python for S60, a general port of the Python programming language
 SymTorrent, a bittorrent client
 Symella, a gnutella client

Game emulation

 ScummVM
 Nokia Square

Fig.3 Nokia Square Game

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Multimedia

 OggPlay – Audio player with ogg vorbis audio format support

Frameworks

 Qt (toolkit) for S60.

 Symbian also announced P.I.P.S. (PIPS Is POSIX on Symbian) which may

increase the number of open source projects written for Symbian 9.1.

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 CHAPTER 7:
SECURITY AND MALWARE

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Symbian OS has been subject to a variety of viruses, the best known of which is
Cabir. Usually these send themselves from phone to phone by Bluetooth. So far, none
have taken advantage of any flaws in Symbian OS – instead, they have all asked the
user whether they would like to install the software, with somewhat prominent
warnings that it can't be trusted.

However, with a view that the average mobile phone user shouldn't have to worry
about security, Symbian OS 9.x has adopted a capability model. Installed software
will theoretically be unable to do damaging things (such as costing the user money by
sending network data) without being digitally signed – thus making it traceable.
Commercial developers who can afford the cost can apply to have their software
signed via the Symbian Signed program. Currently, developers also have the option of
self-signing their programs. However, the set of available features is smaller, and
certain operators have opted on fully disabling certificates other than the Symbian
Signed certificates.

Some other hostile programs are listed below, but all of them still require the input of
the user to run.

 Drever. A is a malicious SIS file trojan that attempts to disable the automatic
startup from Simworks and Kaspersky Symbian Anti-Virus applications.
 Locknut. B is a malicious SIS file trojan that pretends to be patch for Symbian
S60 mobile phones. When installed, it drops a binary that will crash a critical
system service component. This will prevent any application from being
launched in the phone.
 Mabir. A is basically Cabir with added MMS functionality. The two are
written by the same author, and the code shares many similarities. It spreads
using Bluetooth via the same routine as early variants of Cabir. As Mabir. A
activates it will search for the first phone it finds, and starts sending copies of
itself to that phone.
 Fontal. A is an SIS file trojan that installs a corrupted file which causes the
phone to fail at reboot. If the user tries to reboot the infected phone, it will be
permanently stick on the reboot, and cannot be used without disinfection – that
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 is, the use of the reformat key combination which causes the phone to lose all
data. Being a trojan, Frontal cannot spread by itself – the most likely way for
the user to get infected would be to acquire the file from untrusted sources,
and then install it to the phone, inadvertently or otherwise.

Fig.4 Cabir Virus

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CHAPTER 8: OPEN SOURCE

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Symbian is not open source software yet. However, phone manufacturers and other
partners are provided with parts of its source code. The APIs are publicly documented
and up to Symbian 8.1 anyone could develop software for Symbian OS.

Symbian 9.1 introduced capabilities and Platform Security framework. To access

certain capabilities, the developer has to digitally sign their application. Basic
capabilities are user-grantable and developer can self-sign them, more advanced
require certification and signing via the Symbian Signed program; which uses
independent Test Houses and/or phone manufacturer approval. For example file
writing is a user-grantable capability, and accesses to Multimedia Device Drivers
require phone manufacturer approval. A TC TrustCenter ACS Publisher ID certificate
is required from the developer for signing applications.

In 2008 Nokia announced plans to acquire full ownership of Symbian and start the
Symbian Foundation, which will be an independent force for the future development
of Symbian OS. They stated that Symbian OS (including the platforms S60, UIQ and
MOAP(S)) will become open source in the first half of 2009.

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 CHAPTER 9:

DEVICES USING SYMBIAN OS

Devices that have used the Symbian OS :

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 Motorola A1000
 FOMA F880iES
 Nokia 3230
 BenQ P30
 FOMA F900iC

 Nokia 7710
 Sony Ericsson P910
 FOMA F901iC
 Arima U300
 Nokia 7610
 Panasonic X700
 Lenovo P930
 FOMA F900i
 FOMA F900iT
 FOMA F900iC
 Nokia 7710
 Sony Ericsson P910
 FOMA F901iC
 Lenovo P930
 Panasonic X800
 Motorola A1010
 Nokia N-Gage QD
 … and many more

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 CHAPTER 10:
DEVELOPING ON SYMBIAN OS

Developing on Symbian OS

Applications can be created with NetBeans. Other tools include SuperWaba, which
can be used to build Symbian 7.0 and 7.0s The native language of the Symbian OS is
C++, although it is not a standard implementation. There are multiple platforms based
upon Symbian OS that provide an SDK for application developers wishing to target a
Symbian OS device – the main ones being UIQ and S60. Individual phone products,
or families, often have SDKs or SDK extensions downloadable from the
manufacturer's website too. The SDKs contain documentation, the header files and
library files required to build Symbian OS software, and a Windows-based emulator

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("WINS"). Up until Symbian OS version 8, the SDKs also included a version of the
GCC compiler (a cross-compiler) required to build software to work on the device.

Symbian OS 9 uses a new ABI and so requires a new compiler – a choice of

compilers is available including a new version of GCC (see external links below). In
terms of SDKs, UIQ Technology now provides a simplified framework so that the
single UIQ SDK forms the basis for developing on all UIQ 3 devices, such as the
Sony Ericsson P990 and Sony Ericsson M600.

Unfortunately, Symbian C++ programming has a steep learning curve, as Symbian

requires the use of special techniques such as descriptors and the cleanup stack. This
can make even relatively simple programs harder to implement than in other
environments. Moreover, it is questionable whether Symbian's techniques e.g. the
memory management paradigm are actually so beneficial. It is possible that the
techniques, developed for the much more restricted mobile hardware of the 1990s, do
cause unnecessary complexity in source code; programmers are required to
concentrate on bug-prone low-level routines instead of truly application-specific
features. It is difficult, however, to make a move towards a more high-level and
modern programming paradigm in Symbian, because the platform is so tightly bound
to semi-obsolete thinking models about mobile software development.

Symbian C++ programming is commonly done with an IDE. For previous versions of
Symbian OS, the commercial IDE CodeWarrior for Symbian OS was favoured. The
CodeWarrior tools were replaced during 2006 by Carbide.c++, an Eclipse-based IDE
developed by Nokia. Carbide.c++ is offered in 4 different versions: Express,
Developer, Professional, and OEM, with increasing levels of capability. Full featured
software can be created and released with the Express edition, which is free. Features
such as UI design, crash debugging etc. are available in the other charged for editions.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 are also supported through the Carbide.vs
plugin.

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Symbian OS's flavour of C++ is very specialised. However, many Symbian OS
devices can also be programmed in OPL, Python, Visual Basic, Simkin, and Perl –
together with the Java ME and PersonalJava flavours of Java.

Visual Basic programmers can use NS Basic to develop apps for S60 3rd Edition and
UIQ 3 devices.

In the past, Visual Basic, VB.NET, and C# development for Symbian were possible
through AppForge Crossfire, a plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. March 13, 2007
AppForge ceased operations, Oracle purchased the intellectual property, but
announced that they do not plan to sell or provide support for former AppForge
products. Net60, a .NET compact framework for Symbian, which is developed by
redFIVElabs, is sold as a commercial product. With Net60, VB.NET and C# (and
other) source code is compiled into an intermediate language (IL) which is executed
within the Symbian OS using a just-in-time compiler.

There is also a version of a Borland IDE for Symbian OS. Symbian OS development
is also possible on Linux and Mac OS X using tools and techniques developed by the
community, partly

enabled by Symbian releasing the source code for key tools. A plugin that allows
development of Symbian OS applications in Apple's Xcode IDE for Mac OS X is
available.

Once developed, Symbian OS applications need to find a route to customers' mobile

phones. They are packaged in SIS files which may be installed over-the-air, via PC
connect or in some cases via Bluetooth or memory cards. An alternative is to partner
with a phone manufacturer to have the software included on the phone itself. The SIS
file route is more difficult for Symbian OS 9.x, because any application wishing to
have any capabilities beyond the bare minimum must be signed via the Symbian

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Signed program. There are however various hacks, which allow installing unsigned
programs with any capabilities to Symbian OS 9.x.

Introduction of the Symbian Signed system in which application developers need to

pay in order to use some of the more attractive smartphone features (as contrasted to
platforms like Palm OS and Windows Mobile) is making it an increasingly unpopular
platform for Open Source projects, independent developers and small startups. This
situation is worsened by the fragmentation of user interface systems (UIQ vs S60 vs
MOAP), meaning that developers need to build and maintain multiple incompatible
versions of their software if they want to target multiple devices which use the same
underlying Symbian OS version.

Java ME applications for Symbian OS are developed using standard techniques and
tools such as the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit (formerly the J2ME Wireless Toolkit).
They are packaged as JAR (and possibly JAD) files. Both CLDC and CDC programs
using Java.

Nokia S60i phones can also run Python scripts when the interpreter Python for S60 is
installed, with a custom made API that allows for Bluetooth support and such. There
is also an interactive console to allow the user to write python scripts directly from the
phone.

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 CHAPTER 11: HACKING
SYMBIAN

Hacking Symbian :

S60 version 3 (OS 9.1, 9.2 & 9.3) devices can be hacked to remove the platform
security introduced in OS 9.1 onwards thus allowing users to install "unsigned" files
(files without certificates validated by Symbian) and allowing access to previously
locked system files. This allows changing of how the operating system works,
allowing hidden applications etc. to be viewable and possibly increases the threat
posed by mobile viruses as the operating system files are now exposed.

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CHAPTER 11: CONCLUSION

Conclusion

Symbian OS is a robust multi-tasking operating system, designed specifically

for real-world wireless environments and the constraints of mobile phones
(including limited amount of memory). Symbian OS is natively IP-based, with
fully integrated communications and messaging. It supports all the leading
industry standards that will be essential for this generation of data-enabled
mobile phones. Symbian OS enables a large community of developers. The
open platform allows the installation of third party software to further enhance
the platform
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 REFERENCES:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian

[2]"Symbian Foundation website, members section" -

http://www.symbian.org/members

[3] Japanese website: http://blog.symbian.org

[4] "Symbian OS 9.5". Allaboutsymbian.com

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