Following on from Ewan's thoughts yesterday on the freedom in the Symbian/S60 developer world, I have to say that I take a slightly different view. Over and over, I'm finding that applications I download (from developer sites, from AAS, from Handango, etc) can't easily be installed, each coming up with 'Expired certificate'. Read on for a Steve rant....
When your application is blacklisted because it duplicates the functions on the phone, something has gone wrong, thinks Ewan Spence, who considers the issue of a single monolithic app store, and tells why he thinks the Symbian way is better.
Not written from a Symbian viewpoint, but Michael Mace's latest missive, about smartphone/PDA ecosystems, is worth a read if you're a developer or if you're connected to a manufacturer. My initial reaction (again) is that Nokia's Download! system has the potential to be just as game-changing as the Apple example quoted - and it utterly defeats me why Nokia hasn't poured resources into this area.
There's an interesting interview here, on SymbianOne, with The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), who are behind the transitions and other animated elements in S60 3rd Edition FP2 and also, apparently, behind the Samsung i450's novel Music player application. While you're visiting you might also want to read this piece on a UIQ developer's perspective on the Symbian Foundation. Both are well worth a read over lunch or tea!
Symbian today issued another press release indicating that a further 10 companies (Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corporation, Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ) have added their endorsement for the planned foundation. Last week Nokia announced it had reached an agreement with Samsung to buy the remaining share in Symbian pathing the way for the completion of the plans outlined in June.
Samsung has now launched, in beta, its new developer website, Samsung Mobile Innovator, which aims to help software developers create applications for Samsung S60 phones. The site provides technical and marketing support as well as a number of developer tools. An early highlight is the provision of an API to access the touchwheel of the i450 phone and similar custom APIs, for other Samsung devices, are on the way.
You can't fault posts like this, listing some of the top recent Python applications written for S60-powered phones. Whether you're after some very useful example code for your own Python masterpiece or just some ideas for cool freebies to install and use, from a GPS tracker to game controller to equation solver, this is a good starting point, as will be the hosting Croozeus PyS60 Applications section, as it accumulates the results of similar choices and postings. In each case, there's full source code.
Nokia's 70,000 euro game concept competition closes tomorrow (8th of September) so you'd better get your skates on if you want to take part. They're not looking for any actual code, all they want are detailed ideas for Symbian, Java or N-Gage games optionally including mockup images and/or video too. Note that the competition is only open to professional development companies, private individuals cannot enter.
There's a new episode of Sauna Talk on the N-Gage developer site, where once again host Arnold Faber discusses mobile gaming with Nokia's Miikka Skaffari while not wearing any clothes.
...In which I am impressed by a couple of examples of superbly 'joined-up' applications from the iPhone world. Can the Symbian ecosystem compete? What advantages does the iPhone have to help the creation of joined-up apps and is there hope for similar software for S60 users? Comments welcome - can you think of any similarly impressive Symbian examples?
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....
Nokia has extended the deadline for entries to its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge to the 8th of September. The contest is looking for innovative game concepts (actual code isn't required) for S60, Java or N-Gage, with the top 3 concepts getting money and contracts to actually create the games. The concept can take the form of text, mockup images and optionally video too. It's only open to professional development companies though, private individuals cannot enter.
When goods are virtually free, why do people pirate software? Developer Cliff Harris took the simple step on his blog... to ask the pirates why they weren't buying his titles. While the Positech titles in question are for the desktop, the principles should apply to mobile games as well.
In case you hadn't gathered from the RMR news piece, NS Basic has now been formally released for Symbian. It's a Visual Basic-like development environment which "makes it easy to create apps for S60 3rd Edition and UIQ3 devices". The full press release is here. Comments welcome if you give this a try.
Nokia currently has three platforms in development simultaneously, for their smartphones (S60), normal phones (Series 40) and internet tablets (Maemo). They all have their good and bad points, but in this feature krisse looks at how S60 could learn from its two sister-platforms. We would like to hear what you think S60 can learn from Series 40 and Maemo in the comment thread.