With a long lineage backed up by Nokia, the Symbian OS had undoubtedly a large market share with great user base –but, as they say, nothing is permanent and the introduction of Android OS ensured that. Mobile phones used for calling and messaging are quite the idea of the bygone days with the ever-so-developing smartphone technology. Being more necessity than luxury, mobile phones these days need more and more features. Android is also been in the market for significant time and has been able to acquire more market shares than Symbian with its rapid growth. While Symbian is the predecessor since its functionality with QWERTY keyboards, the successor Android has always been the forerunner with its functionality with touchscreen devices by utilizing the GUI.
Quick Comparison Of Features
While both Symbian and Android have their own plus and minus points, here is a brief comparison regarding their features –
- Web Browser –Symbian has Web-Kit based Native browser but Android has open-source search engine with Web-Kit layout. In Symbian, Opera was earlier the default browser.
- Messaging –While both support SMS and MMS service, Android stands one step ahead with threaded messaging compatibility
- Media Compatibility –Symbian is compatible with almost all types of audio formats and video formats like WMV, H.263-34, MPEG4, XviD, DivX, MKV etc. Android on the other hand is compatible with WebM, AMR, AAC, MP3, H.263-64, MIDI, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, WAV, GIF, PNG, BMP, JPEG etc
- 3rd Party Software –Symbian with proprietary source model offers software from OVI Store. Android with open source model offers software from Android market, generally Google Play Store. For Symbian, the package manager is .sis or .sisx while that for Android is .apk.
- Availability Of Apps –From OVI Store, Symbian users can download apps but they can in no way compete with the huge number of free and paid Android apps offering smooth functionality, flexibility, personalization and customization. Learn more about communication apps in the market.
- Device Support –Symbian is mostly limited to Nokia devices but Android is compatible with wide variety of devices from different manufacturers and in some cases, even offers custom RAMs.
- Privacy –In case of sharing personal information, Symbian is one step ahead as OVI Store does not need mandatory email configuration but Android needs configuration with Google account.
- Power Consumption –Symbian devices consume much less power than Android devices where applications remain active even when the device is not in use.
Advantages Of Android Over Symbian
Here are the factors that define Android superior than Symbian –
- Android devices can be upgraded at a great extent unlike Symbian
- Menu styles, phone book and other interface looks better in android than Symbian
- Android devices have processors with more frequency, offering much efficient performance
- Android ensures multitasking with multiple home screen toggling
- With fast and simple algorithm, Android browsers are faster than Symbian.
Other features like voice recognition, video calling, screenshot support, multi-touch input, SQL Lite support and Adobe Flash player feature are available in the latest versions of Symbian, which the Android versions have acquired since starting.
