Okay, this is just a post to get myself a bit more on track with a subject I am not yet familiar with: The phone’s Operating System (OS).
It is only since a short period of time that I have learned that some phones’ OS can be tweaked and others’ cannot. So for the N95, which is running on S60, I find it a nice case to sort things out.
The basics [from Wikipedia]:
The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) is a platform for mobile phones that uses Symbian OS.
Symbian OS is an operating system, designed for mobile devices, with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd.
Symbian is currently owned by Ericsson (15.6%), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens AG (8.4%), and Sony Ericsson (13.1%). Whilst BenQ has acquired the mobile phone subsidiary of Siemens AG the Siemens AG stake in Symbian does not automatically pass to BenQ - this will need the approval of the Symbian Supervisory Board.
The fun part come from the fact that there are multiple platforms, based upon Symbian OS, that provide an SDK (Software Development Kit) for application developers wishing to target a Symbian OS device - the main ones being UIQ, Series 60, etc. Individual phone products, or families, often have SDKs or SDK extensions downloadable from the manufacturer’s website too.
I have found out that you can find the SDK for (amongst others) the N95 over at the Nokia Forums, http://forum.nokia.com/devices/N95 and in general for S60 at http://s60.com/life.
I will go through most of this very interesting material and come back with some interesting material in plain language.