TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

When I began testing the N71’s LED flash, I was very disappointed with its range. However, further testing has made me think about using it as a torch - a feature that some Samsung phones have had years ago. Since Nokia omitted that feature from the N71, I was full of hope that NiceLight helps…but can it?

NiceLight’s menu is very simple. You click the desired choice, and get a screen announcing what the phone does:

Keeping the screen backlight up was a no-brainer - but the program’s developers apparently had a different perception of the meaning of camera LED. For them, camera LED means the useless red thingy that lights up whenever the N71 is filming:

As an added bonus, the product also contains a ‘night clock’ mode. It keeps the backlight on(at a configurable level) and displays a clock. While this can be useful for some, I recommend everyone with insomnia or other sleep problems to refrain from using it:

This review looked at version 1.0 of NiceLight on a Nokia N71. The program needs whooping 506 KB of memory and can luckily be run from an external memory card.

In the end, I am a very disappointed with. The white flash LED of my N71 can emit significantly brighter and stronger light bursts than the small red video LED used by NiceLight. The program basically is a night clock combined with a program that keeps the backlight on permanently(which is decently useful on my N71, but can probably also be achieved by pressing a key repeatedly). Get the free trial to find out if the app is worth its asking price of 9$…

Dear Readers,
a longer Tam-Hanna-Away usually means that I am either sick or working on something - this time, the latter has been true.

Let’s all give a warm welcome to TamsWMS - the Windows Mobile Smartphone blog. This web site brings all the content you know and love at TamsPalm, TamsPPC and TamsS60 to the Windows Mobile Smartphone platform.

TamsWMS launches with world-exclusive life pictures of a prototype of the Asus M930i in action - let’s hope that TamsWMS becomes the same runaway success that our other sites were!

Best regards and thank you!
Tam Hanna

While I personally remain very skeptical about the future of UIQ, the company has nevertheless managed a few noteworthy things recently:

UIQ 3.2 product datasheet released
UIQ 3.2(as included in the Motorola Z10) has not been overly documented so far - this has now changed, as UIQ has put a product datasheet online in PDF format.

This datasheet takes a quick look at changes and improvements in version 3.2; but is NOT an SDK! In case you currently develop UIQ software, taking a look could pay out!

6 new partners
UIQ has additionally managed to get six new software houses into its so-called UIQ Alliance Partner Program. The APP gives members access to information about upcoming UIQ released before they go public, and probably also includes some sort of development assistance.

The lucky six companies are listed in the press release here.

Do you think that UIQ is here to stay?

A member of the German Telefon-Treff forum(means as much as telephone user meeting place) has posted images of what seems to be a Nokia E90 with a slightly redesigned keyboard:

While many web sites have billed it as “successor” to the E90; I dare to predict that we are not looking at an entirely new model here - rather, we are dealing with a new hardware revision that’s intended to address some of the problems seen in previous incarnations of the device(including one that my N71 has, too - keyboard keys scratching the screen). This is supported by the fact that the German carrier T-Mobile handed out the device to the user in the classic E90 packaging - with just a v2.0 sticker on top.

Folks who have been following the Palm sector for some time know that the company has been known to have multiple “revisions” of hardware for sale under the same name - Nokia is probably planning to do something similar, issuing updated devices out to customers who complain about the deficiencies found in their original device.

Are you happy with your E90’s build quality?

Symbian’s latest press release was all over analyst’s web sites literally nits after being posted - in case you didn’t read it yet, here’s an abbreviated version:

TOKYO, Japan – 17 January, 2008 – Symbian Limited, developer and licensor of Symbian OS™, the market-leading operating system for smartphones, today announced that over 30 million phones based on Symbian OS have shipped in Japan up until the end of November 2007.

Symbian’s market share of the NTT DoCoMo FOMA™ market grew in one year from 50% to 65% at the end of H1 2007(Source: Techno Systems Research). To date, a total of 69 mobile phone models based on Symbian OS have launched in Japan by six Symbian customers: Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Motorola, Sharp and Sony Ericsson.

….

Manufactured by
Fujitsu: NTT DoCoMo FOMA F801i; FOMA F905i; FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE IV; FOMA F704i; FOMA F904i; FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE Basic; FOMA F903iBSC; FOMA F903iX HIGH-SPEED; FOMA F703i; FOMA F903i; FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE III; FOMA F902iS; FOMA F702iD; FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE II; FOMA Raku-Raku PHONE; FOMA F902i; FOMA F700iS; FOMA F901iS; FOMA F700i; FOMA F901iC; FOMA F900iC; FOMA F900iT; FOMA F900i; FOMA F2102V; FOMA F2051
Mitsubishi Electric: NTT DoCoMo FOMA D905i; FOMA D704i; FOMA D904i; FOMA D903iTV; FOMA D800iDS; FOMA D703i; FOMA D903i; FOMA D702iF; FOMA D702iBCL; FOMA D902iS; MUSIC PORTER X™; FOMA D702i; Music Porter ™ II; Raku-Raku PHONE Simple; FOMA D902i; FOMA D701i; FOMA D901iS; FOMA D901i
Motorola: NTT DoCoMo FOMA M1000
Sharp: NTT DoCoMo FOMA SH905i; FOMA SH704i; FOMA SH904i; FOMA SH903iTV; FOMA SH703i; FOMA SH903i; FOMA SH702iS; FOMA SH902iSL; FOMA SH902iS; FOMA SH702iD; FOMA SH902i
Sony Ericsson: NTT DoCoMo FOMA SO905i; FOMA SO704i; FOMA SO903iTV; FOMA SO703i; FOMA SO903i; FOMA SO902iWP+; FOMA SO702i; FOMA SO902i
Nokia: NTT DoCoMo FOMA NM850iG; SOFTBANK MOBILE SoftBank X01NK/Nokia E61; SoftBank 705NK/Nokia N73; Vodafone 804NK/Nokia N71; Vodafone 702NKII (Nokia 6680); Vodafone 702NK (Nokia 6630)

via http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2008/pr20089714.html

30 million is indeed a nice load of devices - but it’s completely irrelevant for S60 developers…

Please keep in mind that Symbian essentially is little more than a kernel - sort of like Linux is. Phone manufacturers put their own UI on top of Symbian in order to create a phone(e.g. S60 or UIQ). In Japan, most Symbian handsets run a custom UI called FOMA - which is incompatible with both S60 and UIQ applications.

So, congratulations to Symbian - but we couldn’t care less…

Back in the age of the Siemens SX1, file managers for S60 devices were dime a dozen. When S60v3 came along, many manufacturers stopped to maintain their applications due to Symbian refusing to certify file managers for the ‘allfiles’ capability giving access to system folders. Lonely Cat Games’s X-plore is one of the few file managers still around - can it beat Nokia’s included one?

After starting up X-plore for the first time, the product displays its tree view interface. Unlike Nokia’s included file manager, X-plore always shows the full directory tree….a big plus:

Most ‘advanced’ operations are launched from the main menu accessible with the left soft key:

X-plore truly excels at handling zip archives. Zip archives are treated as ‘folders’ - and can be created easily on the go:

The program can also search for files(it always searches the contents of the currently selected folder):

An unique concept called ‘Favorite folders’ allows you to define folders that you frequently use. You can then visit them via the menu - without having to traverse the entire file system:

Incoming files can be analyzed by using the ‘messaging’ option:

Hidden/System files can be masked or shown:

Last but not least, the program features Lonely Cat’s classic scalable user interface - changing the size of the font affects the whole application:

This review looked at version 1.20 of X-plore on a Nokia N71. The program needs 416KB of memory and can be installed to an external memory card.

In the end, X-plore is an excellent file manager and can be considered a must-have for power users. The zip support alone is worth the small price of 10€; the additional features and excellent UI make managing files pleasant. Get this app now - you will not regret it!

Mike Trujillo, the product manager for Carbide.c++, has just declared an ETA for the release candidate of version 1.3 of Nokia’s Eclipse-based Symbian development environment(passionately hated by Resco’s Michal Sartoris):

1. Release Candidate 1 is Jan 28. This is our proposed final
product! This also means that users need to report their bugs. Get
your bugs reported early!

In case you don’t feel like joining the beta test team, rest assured that we will keep you posted!

Our long-term friend Biskero has posted a little note to his blog about how Nokia’s N82 is the first S60 phone that does not “loose” RAM data while receiving a firmware update(my Nokia N71’s RAM was flushed while updating). For me, this move comes way to late, especially if one looks at the archaic way Nokia uses for delivering firmware updates - while most other companies do OTA for quite some time(hey, even Palm can do OTA on Palm OS), Nokia still sticks to its PC-based updater software.

Why, in God’s name, can’t the program copy all RAM data to the PC before applying the update? Most S60 phones have less than half a gigabyte of RAM - saving that to a PC would take less than 10 minutes.

Why does Nokia force customers to completely reconfigure their phone after installing a firmware update? Has nobody ever thought of this possibility before?

P.s. I ventilated the idea that they earn money from it - but it doesn’t seem so…

The folks over at Symbian-Freak.com apparently have an excellent connection to Nokia - they just man aged to pick up an advisory about faked Nokia phones being sold locally - Nokia became aware of the counterfeit products as they began popping up at their service centers.

Anyways, head over to the folks to get the full advisory and look at a few of the (well-done) fakes:
http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/008/01/nokia_warns_users_about_fake_phones.htm

Resco is commonly known for its excellent Palm OS and PocketPC applications. Less people know that Jan Slodicka has ported a few of his award winning Palm OS applications to S60. We recently managed to get a hold of Michal Sartoris(aka the brain behind Resco News and Resco Photo Viewer) at a party…here’s what he has to say:

Please tell us a bit more about who you are and how you came to Resco

I studied software engineering in Bratislava. After I finished my third year, I put my CV online….and Resco asked me in for an interview. I gladly came and got employed immediately.

Why did Resco start to work on Symbian applications?
Well…Jan won a Nokia 3650 at an American developer event. Since I was free at the time, I was assigned to that device.

Newcomers often say that the S60 platform is very hard to grasp. Did you have problems getting started?
As Symbian is C++-based; getting started was not too hard because I had been working on Pocket PC applications before. So far for theory…Nokia used completely different API’s; so figuring out how to do things was a bit difficult at first.

Now that you have worked with S60 for some time, what do you think about it(compared to other platforms)
I personally think that S60 has the richest API. Developing applications is easiest for the Palm OS…but I dislike it because of its simple user interface. PocketPC’s have a nicer interface…and Symbian’s is truly impressive.

Symbian is ’subdivided’ into UIQ and S60. Which of the two platforms do you consider simpler to develop for?
The same IDE can be used for both platforms…I generally see very little differences. Some things are done better in UIQ, some are better in S60…but it balances out in the end.

As for S60 touch; what do you think about it?
When I originally heard about S60 touch(TamsS60 had the announcement video); I was worried because of the costs associated with application signing. Now that this has been fixed, I feel more comfortable about it.

Nokia’s demos of the Touch API looked well…and my UIQ ports have taught me that adding touchscreen support to an existing application is not too hard.

Carbide has recently gotten a nice bit of attention from developers. What do you think about it?
I tried version 1.1 once..and didn’t really like it. I have worked with CodeWarrior before; and prefer it as it is faster than Eclipse-based IDE’s.

If the Carbide team adds a few features like precompiled headers and generally increases speed, the program could eventually become useful…but CodeWarrior has served me so well that I felt no need to update so far.

Which phone do you use yourself?
I use a Nokia E61 provided by Handango in return to a port of PhotoViewer to S60v3. When I first saw the device, I disliked its design.

However, now that I use it for quite some time, I start to really like it. The keyboard makes entering long text really easy - but the lack of a camera and the stupid joystick should definitely be addressed in the next revision of the box.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Yes - I would love to see Nokia do more in order to grow its market share in the USA. My experience with other platforms has shown that most money is made in the states…if Nokia grew there, we would be able to sell much more software….