The Platform Promise

[slitchfield]

With the influx of a series of new S60 phones from Samsung, there are serious questions to be asked about software compatibility, both intentional and unintentional, from the viewpoint of Nokia, S60, Samsung and the many third party developers. Richard Bloor has taken four of Samsung's latest handsets and tested their compatibility with a typical 'power user' set of applications. The results make interesting reading, especially so for the companies involved. Many challenges ahead, methinks....

Read on in the full article.

[Tzer2]

Hmm, interesting. The weirdest results are where apps work on some of the Samsungs but not all of them, it doesn't make much sense.

Another interesting point is the amount of Nokia-only stuff on S60, you don't notice it until you try to move to a non-Nokia S60 device. Will Samsung step in and fill this gap with their own equivalent Samsung-only apps? Or will they be lazy and just buy licences from Nokia?

[pennas]

This issue is the one thing stopping me from going out and buying an i8510/INNOV8; will all of my software work on it?

I have an upgrade due right about now from my current N95-1. The i8510 seems perfect (and perfect timing), but i'll have to wait for some fairly detailed reviews before taking the plunge, to find out what will and won't work.

Stuff that is of interest to me: -

Nokia conversation (little chance, I guess)
Nokia podcasting (ditto)
Slingplayer mobile
Device search
TomTom (and GPSD ), although if R66 is bundled with the phone this is not such an issue.
Python
Convertor / other "util" apps - are they provided?
Live Messenger
Google/Yahoo search - if there is no pencil key then i'm guessing these won't work
What about a PC suite equivilent - will we be able to sync/backup contacts/calender, and even install applications from a PC in the same way?

On a more shadowy note: will the latest s60 hacks work, and would they get around any of the certificate issues in installing any of the above?