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A Modern System
A full exploration of the Symbian kernel would take at least one book, not just a single article, but I hope that I've given you some idea of the kernel architecture. Symbian gets a lot of bad press, largely due to the fact that most of the userspace development environments are pretty horrible. At the kernel level, however, it's a very clean design.
Unlike a Linux or BSD kernel, Symbian doesn't come with a lot of legacy baggage. Some of the design dates back to EPOC16, but the current implementation is quite new. Symbian is designed for low-power, single-user devices that run untrusted code—which describes most personal computers today.
Symbian is open source now, so you can get at the kernel code, run it in QEMU, and play with it. It's quite unlike other systems, although if you're familiar with the design of the Windows NT kernel you'll find some concepts familiar. You may also recognize some ideas from systems such as Eros, and even a couple that HURD developers might claim. Symbian is about the closest of any modern system to how I would design a kernel if I didn't have to worry about legacy support (and had the time to design a kernel).