This week an interesting announcement slipped into the Forum Nokia Wiki about a change in Java strategy on S60. Also a couple of new members joined the Symbian Foundation, and, if you don’t have enough information already, a Publish on Ovi webinar is coming up later in the week.

Java on S60 – two steps forward … ?

According to the Forum Nokia Wiki there will no longer be a tight correlation between S60 releases (for which we assume you can also read Symbian Foundation releases) and the Java Runtime (JRT) available in that release. So, while the Nokia 5800 MusicXpress runs JRT 1.3 (where 1.0 to 1.2 are presumably retrospective numbering of the JRT on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions of S60) the Nokia N97, also an S60 5th Edition device, runs JRT 1.4. This provides the Nokia N97 with the Mobile Sensor API (JSR-256) (which supports the accelerometer, battery charge sensor, charger state sensor, and network field intensity sensor) and Nokia UI API 1.3 (which adds support for SoftNotification, SoftNotificationException, and SoftNotificationListener classes) as well as a number of touch interface improvements.

The Nokia N97 already offers extensions to S60 5th Edition, such as the ability to run read-only WRT widgets on the device’s home screen, but the new Java naming goes deeper. The Forum Nokia Wiki states that the “aim (is) to provide more frequently new Java versions to the market. Key drivers for that are for example faster time-to-market for new features and a possibility to update Java Runtimes for S60 independently in the future via Nokia SW Update.”

This clearly suggests the possibility of devices of the same model offering different Java capabilities, depending on when they were shipped and whether or not their firmware has been updated. This could be an example of every silver lining having a cloud: Developers get new Java APIs sooner, but at the expense of a fragmented device base where they will need to code around the fact that a desired API may be missing.

If this was part of a Mobile Service Architecture (MSA) (JSR-248) implementation – so developers could just suck in any available but missing APIs – it would make sense. Relying on firmware updates seems much more problematic.

Given the Symbian Foundation is promising six monthly releases, muddying the Java API waters with intermediate releases - that may or may not be on any particular device - seems potentially counter productive. It certainly looks strange given that Nokia has been working harmonise Java APIs over the last few years. Any Java developers out there care to comment?

Symbian Foundation

While the main news from Symbian Foundation was the launch of its beta website, it is also worth noting that Innopath and the Eclipse Foundation joined the foundation last week too.

InnoPath offers a range of products for over-the-air customer care, including device management and firmware update for Symbian OS. David Ginsburg, Vice President of Marketing at InnoPath, stated that the company will “bring to the foundation real-world experience in further equipping the platform with compelling over-the-air frontline care capabilities.”

The Eclipse announcement, which involved reciprocal membership of the Eclipse Foundation for Symbian, was perhaps inevitable given the reliance on Eclipse for tools such as Carbide.c++. Although the various blog entries from Symbian and Eclipse suggest a broader cooperation, including work on promoting the EPL and sharing experiences in strategy and planning. Interestingly the Symbian blog mentions Carbide.c++ and the Aptana plug-in (which is currently branded as a Nokia product) but not Carbide.ui, given the nature of the blog entry there is probably no relevance to this, but it could mean not all Nokia’s Carbide tools will be heading to the foundation.

More on Ovi

Of course you will have read my interview with Eric John so probably won’t need this, but for anyone who is still wavering on whether to sign up – or perhaps simply wants to check they understand Ovi Store properly – there is the Forum Nokia webinar ‘publishing to Ovi: Reach millions of Nokia users’ running on 9 April with a EMEA/Asia session at 6am San Francisco, 9am New York, 4pm Finland, and 9pm Beijing and an Americas Session at 11am San Francisco and 2pm New York. Register for EMEA/Asia here and Americas here.