Choosing a PDA - Symbian

While the name Symbian may be unfamiliar to many in North America, the operating system is widely used for handheld device overseas and powers many of the cellular telephones used domestically from Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Panasonic, Siemens AG, and Samsung. Those who are familiar with the platform likely also know that it does have a fair degree of support from third-party application developers who have created a variety of software programs that can be installed to applicable devices (because there are a wide range of devices using Symbian as their OS but that have different features and capabilities, not all Symbian devices can run all Symbian-compatible applications).

Because the operating system is more widely known outside of North America, the software library that is available for it tends to be based on content from areas like Europe (for example, a drug reference product for a Symbian device is more likely to be based on content from a print book published in the United Kingdom than from the United States).

Things to consider:

• Supports a wide range of third party applications
• Software applications are generally more suited to users outside North America.

For information on other operating systems, please visit the Tutorial section of our Resource Center.