Tom Krazit recently posted “Symbian CEO pitches middle ground between iPhone, Android” on the CNET news.com site which is well worth a read if you have an interest in mobile telephony.  Symbian is a dominant player in Europe on mobile phones but it looks like they may have their work cut out if they are going to maintain that lead in the wake of developments from Apple, Blackberry, Microsoft and Google.

Symbian evolved from Psion and its EPOC operating system and as the article indicates one of its strengths is multi-tasking. I have used a number of mobile phones in the past and some of the none Symbian ones have struggled to deal with an incoming call when running an application (after all incoming calls are quite important on mobile phones).

On a related note Brighthand reported that a “New Version of Symbian UIQ Announced” which is UIQ 3.3 and key feature is the inclusion of Opera 9.5. UIQ is a user interface platform that sits on top of the Symbian platform

Wiki have a good background on Symbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS
Wiki also has a good backround on UIQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIQ

The Symbian Website is: Symbian OS: the open mobile operating system
The UIQ Website is: UIQ Technology: Home