Forum Nokia, Nokia's developer portal, has unveiled a new look for its website. The structure of the site has changed; it is now divided into three key areas: design, develop and distribute - matching the three key parts of mobile application and service development. The website aims to provide access to a wide range of learning resources, tools and technical documents. However there's also an emphasis on helping developers connect with each other, which is achieved through the community section of the site.
A post on the Qt blog explains that Nokia is planning to move Qt towards a more open governance model. The move would see the community having shared control over decisions about Qt and its future roadmap. It follows on from the move to the LGPL license and opening up of the Qt contribution process last year. The planning for the move is at an early stage, but the Qt team are keen to have an open discussion with the community about the details and implementation of an open governance model.
Following a presentation at the recent Towel Day, Symbian’s Lars Kurth has blogged an update on their Incubation Projects (community initiated projects where more help is needed to deliver on the promise of the projects). Coming along nicely are the Wild Ducks handset, GCC Compilation of Symbian ^3 and Python.
American pollsters Nielsen have released details on a survey of mobile users and their attitudes to mobile applications. Being a US company, the 4,200 people surveyed provide a good cross section of which genres are popular, and the huge le-up that built in applications receive. Any developer looking for a new project should be taking notes.
The Symbian Foundation today announced the Symbian^2 platform is being used in four of the seven Symbian based handsets announced by NTT DoCoMo a few weeks ago. The F-07B (Fujitsu) went on sale on May 21st; it features a dual orientation screen (swivels from portrait to landscape) and a 12 megapixel camera. The SH-07B (Sharp) went on sale a week later; it features a 12 megapixel camera with full HD video recording and is partially waterproof. The F06-B and F-08B will go on sale later in June. These are the first Symbian^2 handsets to ship worldwide.
The initial website for this years annual Symbian show recently went live. They reveal that SEE 2010 will take place in Amsterdam at Beurs van Berlage on the 9th and 10th of November. On the site you can find the basic information about the event and register your interest in attending as well as find out more about sponsor and speaker opportunities. SEE 2010 could be the venue for the first substantive look at the new UI of Symbian^4 and will set the scene for the Symbian ecosystem as it moves towards what is likely to be very busy 2011.
During an interview with Reuters, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, has said that the first Symbian^3 phone will come from an Asian manufacturer rather than Nokia, although he declined to say which one. He also indicated that the Symbian^3 code is "nearly ready" and than he expected to have a "very mature" Symbian^4 ready in the first quarter of 2011.
One of the side effects of being part of an ecosystem of an 'open' operating system is that, at some point, you'll be roped in to help out. One such thing is happening with the Symbian Foundation's Bug Squad, which convenes regularly for bug-squashing days (e.g. today), here's how you can get involved.
Noted security technologist Bruce Schneier has pointed to a Microsoft research paper on the design of software applications that ask for user authority to access certain functions. While primarily looking at web based apps, this is a relevant area for mobile design, and ties in with the security model employed by Symbian.
With location based services the latest “next big thing” it’s interesting watching the major and minor players slowly set out their stall to end users and developers. Today it’s the turn of Google, as they announce the public API for their Latitude service.
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, here are the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
Following on from our review of Gravity Surf on Ovi Gaming earlier this month, developers Synqua games have been in touch to thank us for the balanced review, and to let us know that one of the ideas we posted (controlling the game via the accelerometer) has been implemented. This is the perfect example of how to build up a business in the competitive online world of applications. Let me explain…
The Symbian Foundation has made a major new version of the Symbian^3 reference library available for product developers. The previous release was eight months ago and the new version is more comprehensive, more cohesive and has an "open source tool chain to allow us to combine the content with API reference built from doxygen comments in code". There's more on this on Symbian's blog.
Nokia has today released beta versions of Qt 4.7 and Qt Creator 2.0. Qt 4.7 brings a number of important enhancements, including Qt Quick (easy UI creation) and update to Qt WebKit (increased stability and performance). The beta of Qt Creator 2.0 offers an early preview of Quick Designer (a WYSIWYG editor to layout application UI), which is built on top of the Qt Quick technology. Nokia has also released an updated version of the Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian, which aims to ease the installation of Qt-based programs on existing Symbian devices. Read on for further details.
