A mobile operating system

Mobile Operating Systems

According to Sarwar and Soomro (2013), a mobile operating system is a sort of system software that resides only on a mobile computing device and whose goal is to govern the device’s hardware and offer an interface via which its user can access hardware resources. Smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are just a few examples of mobile computing devices. As a result, these devices are controlled by mobile operating systems such as iOS, Android, Windows RT, and Windows Phone OS. Although they all provide the same primary function, they differ in some ways on a technological level.

iOS

Developed by Apple Inc., iOS runs exclusively on the company’s mobile devices belonging to the iPhone family of products, tablets like the IPad, and portable music players such as the iPod touch as the iPad. According to Tilson, Sorensen, and Lyytinen (2012), iOS is coded in C, C++ and Objective-C programming languages.

Android

On the other hand, the Android operating system developed by Google runs not only on Google’s mobile products but also on others manufactured by other companies (Tilson, Sorensen, and Lyytinen, 2012). It is written in C, C++, and Java programming languages.

Windows Phone OS

Windows Phone OS is another mobile OS. Developed by Microsoft Corporation, it runs on a variety of mobile devices just like Google’s Android (Gronli et al., 2014) The operating system is coded in C and C++ programming languages.

Windows RT

Lastly, Windows RT is an adaptation of the Windows 8.x operating system for mobile device and runs only on gadgets specifically designed to use it (Gronli et al., 2014).

Role of Mobile Operating Systems

Reflecting on personal experiences with mobile devices, I appreciate the role of mobile operating systems. I have had the opportunity to experiment with phones running Android, Windows, and iOS operating systems and noticed they share some basic functionalities. They all provide a way of turning off the device, controlling the volume levels, managing power consumption, making phone calls, and sending messages to other mobile devices. These functionalities are executed by pressing buttons on the device or making gestures which the device can interpret.

References

Sarwar, M., & Soomro, T. R. (2013). Impact of Smartphone’s on Society. European journal of scientific research, 98(2), 216-226.

Tilson, D., Sorensen, C., & Lyytinen, K. (2012, January). Change and control paradoxes in mobile infrastructure innovation: the Android and iOS mobile operating systems cases. In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1324-1333). IEEE.

Gronli, T. M., Hansen, J., Ghinea, G., & Younas, M. (2014, May). Mobile application platform heterogeneity: Android vs Windows Phone vs iOS vs Firefox OS. In Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA), 2014 IEEE 28th International Conference on (pp. 635-641). IEEE.