I am not new to computers or anything, so I've used MAC, Windows, Linux, but debating on buying a touch phone, will not be buying an iphone, anyways, seeing as how windows, and apple have basically put a mini OS version to the mobile phone, I really would like a more understanding on symbian os though, as I've heard of it but really have no idea on it. my questions are

1. Is symbian os similiar to any os that can be compared to

2. Pros & Cons of this operating system

3. Have you had any experience using this OS on a mobile phone, if so can you provide user experience?

4. can you provide any useful links for more besides wikipedia, and symbians own website.

any answers would be useful as I liked to be informed before buying

Symbian offers software developers a lot more options, so you can get more powerful and flexible software for Symbian phones, can multitask and they tend to come with larger screens that are good for reading email, surfing the web etc (hence the term 'smartphones'). The downside is that better software is also accompanied by better *bugs*.

In my experience symbian phones are more powerful but also less reliable than your ordinary Series 40 Nokia (which offer quite a lot of functionality these days anyway). I'd rather have a Windows Mobile based phone to be honest. You can get more software for those and they integrate with office to some extent.