Pretty simple question here, I know a bunch of you will be able to help me out.

Just wondering -- because I have little experience with either system and am debating on which would work best for me -- which is a better mobile OS: Windows Mobile or Symbian?

Which has more useful features, is more easily hacked, and is more customizable?

I don't know much of either, but I don't particularly care for PalmOS. The web browser sucks and Opera Mobile won't work right.

FYI.

What about OSX lololol

In this case its more.. samsung omnia i910 or omnia HD. I've played around with the i910 opera browser and its seriously nice. I'd dare to say a safari rival.

I have an N95 so I'm pretty familiar with Symbian (runs S60 3rd edition). It's a really solidly thought out OS and I like it a lot better than any Windows Mobile device I've used (though the last Windows Mobile OS I've actually used was like five years ago). There are a -ton- of 3rd party Symbian apps, most of which are free. I have some pretty cool ones, like one called Movino that lets me use my phone as a wireless webcam for my laptop via bluetooth or tcp/ip. Movino itself is for OS X, but I think there's one called WWIGO for Windows (stands for Webcam Wherever I Go).

Anyway, Symbian gets my vote. The 95 lacks a really good input mechanism (I'd kill for a QWERTY tumbboard), but I don't really find myself missing it that much. I can type quite fast with T9 enabled.

To give you an idea of the power of Symbian, someone recently ported Quake 3 to it. You could actually use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to play Q3 on the phone and even have the phone output to a TV. That's pretty impressive in my opinion.

Only qualm I have with S60 is switching between apps is a bit laggy and leaves weird screen artifiacts while it's switching from one to another. If you have any questions feel free to ask. You might want to PM me if I forget about the thread.

WebOS will destroy all competitors.

That said, Symbian, as poor as it is, is better than Windows Mobile, which hasn't seen a proper update in YEARS. (Everything new you see is essentially reskins)

Its funny, as big a fan as I am of Palm, I just can't get interested in this "WebOS".

Maybe if it included a PalmOS emulator...

What's a smartphone?

Why? WebOS is so sickeningly easy to write for, and it still maintains a good level of performance.

Thanks for the input guys.