From here I read S60 is currently amongst the leading smartphone platforms in the world.
However I can't understand:
What the S60 does, what is the need
for a platform when there already
exists an underlying Symbian OS?
If I write applications in Symbian
C++ or Java ME is it for the Symbian
OS or the S60 platform?
Can I directly write apps for the
Symbian OS bypassing the S60 layer.
S60 is essentially a UI framework and a collection of middleware components on top of Symbian OS. Historically, Symbian provided the base operating system (e.g. kernel, communications, multimedia services, core application engines, reference UI) and device manufacturers added their own code on top of it to differentiate from competition and to optimize their devices for a particular purpose.
S60 is one of these add-ons, originally developed for phones intended for one-handed usage with a keypad. There have been others UI frameworks on top of Symbian OS as well, for example Nokia's Series 80 and Series 90, UIQ and MOAP(S).
Now as Symbian is moving to the Symbian Foundation mode of operation, S60 and Symbian OS are essentially merged into one Symbian Foundation platform. The other UI frameworks have been discontinued. But devices currently on the market still have the distinction between Symbian OS and S60.
If I write applications in Symbian C++ or Java ME is it for the Symbian OS or the S60 platform?
Can I directly write apps for the Symbian OS bypassing the S60 layer.
Depends on which APIs you use.
With Java ME it's easier to write applications that don't rely on S60-specific add-ons. In C++ it's likely that you want some UI for your app and therefore have to use the S60 Avkon UI. Though, if you want more platform-independent UI for your C++ app, have a look at Qt for S60.
In any case, writing C++ apps so that the same binary can be run on all Symbian OS based devices is practically not possible. In Java, "write once run everywhere" works in theory, but in practice it's more like "write once test everywhere and try to work around the differences between devices".
In theory S60 is a UI framework (Avkon) and collection of applications, where as Symbian OS provides the fundamental OS services. In practice it is more complicated because S60 also features middleware and other services not limited to pure UI elements.
Symbian does feature a generic UI framework called UIKON but I don't think it is used very often. Also the Symbian world is pretty much dominated by S60 outside of Japan (which has it's own environment called MOAP).
Not sure about the Java question.
It depends what your application does whether it bypasses S60. You can write very simple apps and OS level services with no dependencies on S60.
Related
What's the most diffucult mobile platform for development? IOS,
Android, WP?
Which OS would take less time(if you're quite exprerienced)? And what's the most
comfortable mobile OS for development?
If you have just a little coding skills, and you have to make an app
as fast as possible, which OS is suitable more?
According to me , a slight difficult OS platform is Blackberry OS because of following reasons :
Various screen sizes/densities and button layouts.
Data connection.
Yes, making a data connection is not trivial on BlackBerry. OS
support. Currently foursquare supports OS 4.2.1 (OS running on 4
year old devices) and up.
Application distribution and updating.
Foursquare currently makes 3 different builds to satisfy varying OS
functionality and API features. Some companies go as far as making
up to 7 or 8 seperate build, one for almost every OS level.
If you have less coding skills, you can start developing an App with Android OS.
There are numerous tools and tutorials which help you to learn Android development.
I want to develop an application for Nokia mobiles. For that I need the Nokia OS and a suitable SDK
Where can I get these two, possibly with some sample applications to ease the learning?
This looks like pretty much everything you would need to know - I know it's not a specific answer but it should provide a great starting place:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/
Nokia phones use Symbian OS. Symbian is an open source OS, which was maintained by the Symbian.org.
Unfortunately, Symbian.org recently converted to a licensing body only and stopped any further development on the OS, and as part of that the Symbian official website was shut down. The Symbian platform is still accessible over FTP, until March 31, 2011.
The further OS development will officially be driven and maintained by Nokia. You can read the latest news about this from Nokia official Symbian blog. You can find some samples and documentation about the platform at Forum Nokia. There you can also find the latest Symbian SDK (S^3 SDK), along with other Nokia-specific SDKs and libraries, like S60 development library and Qt development library.
what you refer to as Nokia OS in fact:
legally not available to 3rd party
not suitable for "normal" binary apps - it had been designed to not have installable applications in order to protect telco environment from malware and other risks on terminal side
you can develop at least for S40 but you don't need "Nokia OS" for that, all necessary tools are available there - it is common J2ME programming with (optionally) some Nokia flavors
what are the operating systems which run on mobile devices?On which language are these developed?
For the major smart-phones:
As of Q2/2009, the majority of smart-phones run Symbian OS, and applications are developed using either a specialized version of C++ or a variety of other languages including Python, Java ME, Flash Lite, Ruby, .NET, Web Runtime (WRT) Widgets and Standard C/C++.
iPhone runs iPhone OS, and apps are generally developed in Objective C.
Blackberry runs BlackBerry OS, and apps are developed using Java.
Palm Pre runs webOS, and applications are written in JavaScript.
Many newer smart-phone devices run Android, and apps are developed using Java.
Many other smart-phones run Windows Mobile, and applications would typically be developed using either C++ or languages on the .NET Compact Framework, which include C# and VB.NET.
For a long list, see this Wikipedia entry.
Short list of a few currently-popular options:
RIM devices run BlackBerry OS, apps can be written in Java
The iPhone/iPad run iPhone OS (OSX derivative), apps can be written in Objective C
A variety of devices run Windows Mobile, apps can be written in a variety of languages
A variety of devices run Android, apps are typically written in Java
Newer Palm devices run WebOS, apps can be written in web languages (HTML 5, CSS, JavaScript)
A variety of devices run Symbian, apps are typically written in C++ (although other options like Java and Python exist)
I am willing to develop a mobile application. I wish to have something working for android, windows mobile, symbian and blackberry.
Which is the best way to do that?
I had read here:
You could aim to wrap the sections of
the platform specific APIs (iPhone SDK
etc.) that you use with your own
interfaces. In doing so you are
effectively hiding the platform
specific libraries and making your
design and code easier to manage when
dealing with differences in the
platforms.
I was hoping there exists a framework that does this for me, but it doesn't exist or I didn't find any.
I feel that sort of things will make my code harder to maintain and perhaps it's better to have one version for each platform.
Anyone with experience in the field?
Another links of interest:
most-promising-mobile-platforms
long-term-potential-of-iphone-windows-mobile-development-platforms
Does Java not count (in various guises)
Java on Symbian
Java for Windows Mobile
Java on Blackberry
Android Java Virtual Machine
It should be simpler to manage API differences in a consistent language/runtime platform where capabilities can be assessed in-code ... and configurations of code made at build-time.
As much as I dislike Java, it is fairly ubiquitous. As for the iPhone ... apart from it being much hyped and locked down ... you can get Java to run on jail-broken phones ...
What happened to Apple's open and friendly appearance? The cynic-inside knows the answer ;)
You might want to look into PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/). From their own description page:
PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.
If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.
In addition to using JavaScript, it supports JavaScript acccess to native controls and features of the phones (GPS, accelerometers etc...).
There really isn't any magic bullet that I'm aware of. Even within just the Blackberry platform, there are tons of different devices with different capabilities, screen resolutions, etc. And that's just from one, single manufacturer; Symbian and Windows Mobile are likely even worse.
The answer is likely that you should focus on relatively new and consistent platforms (accordingly with very few and all pretty much similar devices), like Android and iPhone OS, if you really want to reduce your code forking and maximize your audience.
My advice will almost certainly change within a few years when there are nine different iPhone OS devices and two dozen Android platforms.
The first question to ask yourself is if you need a native application, if you do not then designing a mobile web site solution should give you the most cross compatibility, failing that I would make a iPhone and J2ME solution (the J2ME can then be ported for Android relatively easily) for the greatest coverage of users
Or investigate Movilizer. Supports iOS, Android, WinPhone, WinMobile, Desktop PCs, embedded devices, ... and many more. It uses a design once run anywhere approach.
http://www.movilizer.com
try out different cross platform dev tools,
Developing cross platform mobile application
I need to develop some programs for mobile devices but haven't decided the platform to build upon. I'm looking for Palm or Pocket PC devices that have Touch screen and Wi-Fi connection and are cheep because I'll need to buy several of them.
I don't really need camera, mp3 players, video players, pdf readers or anything else since the apps are going to be simple data collection to feed via wireless to a server database.
I'm proficient with C and C#. I could learn Java if I had to.
What devices do you recommend? Linux devices maybe?
PS: Changed the title because I don't want a flamewar between platforms. Please, don't answer with Windows Mobile sucks/rules. I'm looking for devices instead.
Thanks
Windows Mobile
It supports C#, and Visual Studio comes with the mobile SDK. So if you know C# you probably already have the tools you need. And in spite of the iPhone/iPodTouch buzz, the Windows Mobile deployment is still 10X greater.
In order of preference
Neo Freerunner
Maemo & the N800 (cheap)
Beagleboard
If you are comfortable with Visual Studio then programming for windows mobile is extremely easy. The SDK for mobile comes with emulators for all the latest and popular versions of windows mobile- and you can even debug on teh device itself using a USB cable.
On windows mobile you have a choice: Develop a .Net application or develop native (likely MFC based). Either one gives you a great development environment.
As far as iPhone development goes- you would need an apple computer to install and use iPhone SDK- and you can't run an iPhone app on your phone. You would have to go through the process of getting it registered with iTunes for you to install your own apps on your own phone!
When I first started playing with mobile development I had a few questions:
Can I develop using my favorite IDE- Visual Studio. Will it be as easy as developing a desktop app: yes.
Will I be able to access the internet from my application without 'unlocking' or in some other way enabling the phone that was not intended by the service provider? yes.
Will I be able to access device specific functionality such as GPS easily? Is there good support for doing so within the API? Yes.
You should probably target the Windows Mobile platform. The Palm platform is rather archaic and no longer widely used. The development environment is also rather spartan, while Microsoft has full IDEs available for Windows Mobile development. You might also consider the iPhone/iPod touch platform - I have a feeling the number of devices will multiply at an exponential rate and I've heard that developing applications is much easier due to the completeness of the system stack.
You should probably at least evaluate the Apple iPod Touch. It certainly meets your basic "touch screen + WiFi" spec, and your users presumably won't object to all the the other nice features that will come along for the ride.
I don't know what your cutoff for "cheap" is, but $299 for the base model seems pretty reasonable for a high-quality touch screen and WiFi in a pocketable device.
Windows Mobile and CE used to suck, really, really badly. These days however it's definitely passable and worth checking out, especially if you code C#.
Just remember that it is the baby brother of the full framework and has nowhere near enough toys and throws a lot of NotImplementedExceptions. :)
Blackberry publishes its SDK on its web site. Its apps run J2ME, so with some Java experience it shouldn't be too difficult to get started. They also give you an emulator. Disclaimer: I have no experience in writing Blackberry apps, but I looked into it once.
I would not recommend a PalmOS based handset. I have written code for PalmOS and it's about as painful as writing raw Win32 code in C. Since Palm has switched its high end handsets to Windows Mobile, PalmOS will just remain stagnant and only run on the slower, less capable hardware.
If I were to write a mobile app, I'd agree that Windows Mobile is worth checking out.
It all depends on the users who you are targeting at, If you are looking for a wide market then you should be fine with J2ME/Blackberry . However most of them lack the touchscreen and wifi features ( The HTC range of phones [WIFI/TouchScreen/Windows Mobile] have a JVM built with it),so it would work on most of the Windows devices also.
If you are making a more niche product, moving with the current buzz 'iphone' will be good . Windows Mobile is also worth checking out
The best option here would be the Neo Freerunner, with that device you can build a dedicated unit were every aspect is made especially for you're needs. The Freerunner is WiFi enabled, and has a touch interface. If you use the Qt SDK, a lot of the work is already done for you. It comes complete with emulator, as a Live linux cd. You can run in a WM, such as wmplayer. Everything is included.
I'm not gonna lie, it will take tweaking. But the final product would be really nice and intuitive.
Looking at Windows Mobile devices, your requirement of touchscreen pretty much sets your pricing at the higher end of the spectrum. You'll get those things you say you don't need just because of that.
Here's expansys's selection of touchscreens.
Mobdeal is a handy one too as that effectively filters all phones by features.
I've developed against the HTC TYTN 2, HTC Touch Diamond and randomly a PSION Teklogix Ikon
There's generally very little difference between these models, some manufacturers have SDKs that can help sometimes.
I think your cheapest option will probably be something like getting HTC TYTN 2s on ebay. They're pretty old now (hence cheap) but have Wifi, camera, touchscreen, qwerty keypad all the things you seem to be after.
you can target iPhone "touch" platform with Apple's iPhone SDK. the development environment requires a Mac, but you can get the entire IDE + tool chain + excellent debugging and profiling tools for free. And the free documentation is top notch.
As a registered iPhone developer, it is free (no cost) to target the simulator, which is sufficient for most learning and development you'll likely need to up front.
To target the actual hardware device (and up to and including release/selling your app on the Apple's AppStore) is only $99/yr. If you got an iPod Touch for your hardware target, most of the SDK applies and you are not tied into a service contract for an iPhone.
iPhone app development environment is in Objective-C, but it is a really productive, object-oriented environment so do not concerned that that may be a language you are unfamiliar with.
If you decide that your mobile app(s) would be better suited as webapps, the iPhone/iPod touch platform again is an industry leader in this space, and you have the additional benefit or being able to target other mobile platforms (and not necessarily be tied to one mobile SDK).