Published by Rafe Blandford at 14:55 BST, May 2nd 2007
In the first part of our tour and commentary on the demos at the S60 Summit, Rafe reports back on the hardware and platform demos.
The S60 Summit Expo was a chance to get some hands on demo time from across the S60 ecosystem. With around 80 demo pods it wasn't possible to cover everything in a single day, but in a two part feature article we'll try and give you a flavour of what was on display.
In the first part of our article we focus on the hardware and the software platform demos.
LG KS10 JoYLG were on hand to demonstrate their first S60 phone, the KS10 (previously known as the LG JoY). The phone will start shipping very shortly in European market. Compared to the earlier prototypes the KS10 now feels much more solid and is a solid if not spectacular S60 phone. The control buttons have also been re-ordered resulting in a more logical layout and this, together with improved tactile feedback and changed materials answers most of our criticism in our earlier preview. Running on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 with a 2 megapixel camera, HSDPA and a 2.4 inch screen, it is no slouch in the specifications department either. LG say the phone will be shipping with a number of Google applications on board, including Blogger, Google Maps and Gmail.
Samsung were on hand to reaffirm their commitment to S60 and to demo their SGH-i400 and SGH-i520 phones. The SGH-i400, a mid tier phone with EDGE connectivity and 2 megapixel camera running S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1, had its debut at the S60 Summit. Much of Samsung's recent success has been driven by innovative design in its slider phones. The i400 certainly benefits from this as it is one of the thinnest slider smartphones I've seen. We covered Samsung at the S60 Summit more fully in this earlier feature article.
The S60 Device showcase offered a chance to get hands on time with all the recently announced S60 phones. The 6120, announced a week earlier, is a small mid tier phone from Nokia's Mobile Phone group. When it becomes available in a few months time it is likely to have one of the lowest ever launch prices for an S60 phone. This price point is achieved because the 6120 is a single chip phone, thanks to the Freescale chipset platform on which it runs.
The 5700 is a music focused phone. It inherits the twist form factor from the earlier 3250, but adds considerably to the on board features and specifications. Running the latest version of S60 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1) and with a specialised digital audio chip for enhanced music quality, I expect this to be a strong seller for Nokia in both developed and emerging markets.
Also on display and attracting considerable attention from the gathered crowds were the quintet of Nokia devices announced at 3GSM: the Nokia N77, Nokia E65, Nokia E61i, Nokia E90 and Nokia 6110.
One part of the hall was devoted to the chipset manufacturers, with representatives from Samsung (S3C6400 Multimedia Solutions on S60), STMicroelectronics (Nomadik S60 Multimedia Connected Platform), Freescale (Video Telephony on Freescale and S60 Reference Design) and Texas Instruments (S60 on OMAP 3 Platform). All of the demos showed off multimedia to some extent or another. The S3C6400, for example, was shown powering the display of four videos on the same screen simultaneously, all of which were using different codecs. The S3C6400 is a chipset for the next generation of devices - it is designed to be used with Symbian OS 9.3 and S60 3.2. Freescale were showing off their single chip solution and how video telephony and various multimedia features had now been integrated, to allow manufacturers to develop S60 phones faster and at lower cost.
Texas Instruments was showing the next generation of the OMAP platform (the current version powers a number of high end Nseries devices). New features included support for higher bitrates and resolution videos, and more advanced audio mixing. The new chipset uses a small die-size which means more transistors (and therefore processing power) can be fitted into a small space; this, together with software changes, also means less power consumption. One of the more tangible aspects of the demo showed how the OMAP 3 chipset could boot a reference design running S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS in around 5 seconds - something that promises much improved start up times for future phones.
NTSL, one of the Symbian Signed Test Houses, was on hand to explain some upcoming developments for companies using Symbian Signed. The first of these was that TC TrustCenter will become a Certificate Authority for Symbian Signed. TC TrustCenter will therefore be able to supply the ACS Publisher ID to ISVs. TC TrustCenter will be charging $200 for the service, a saving of $150 over the charges currently levied by Verisign, the only other Certificate Authority. The change does not impact the process of the Symbian Signed process in any way and, although relatively speaking it is a small cost saving, it is likely to be welcomed by small developers looking to keep costs as low as possible.
The second development is the advent of Express Certification from NSTL. It is an additional signing and certification process that sits somewhere between sending to test houses and publisher signing and is intended for companies in the medium to large size range (those who certify more than 25 applications a year). It introduces 'batch testing' as a testing measure for trusted developer organizations. After an audit, for an annual payment of $4000 companies will be able to officially sign their own applications via an on-line portal. Companies must still carry out the Symbian Signed test themselves and must provide an audit trail. The benefit of the program is that the testing can be taken in house and it is hoped that this will reduced cost and enable faster times to market. Each quarter, 1 in 5 of the first 25 applications (and 1 in 25 after the first 25) signed will be randomly selected to be tested by NTSL to ensure compliance.
The Nokia Tools team was showing off the new version (1.2) of Carbide.c++, which was formally launched at the S60 Summit. New features include improved code completion, enhanced project build functionality, improvements to the performance investigator tool and better debugger support. While the tool is still maturing, version 1.2 also brings a number of stability and improvements, which means it is likely to become the tool of choice for most C++ developers.
Web Run-Time and WidgetsThe S60 Browser team were on hand to demonstrate the recently announced Widget platform for S60. Widgets being demoed included the WeatherBug widget (popular on Mac OS X), a translation widget (which used a simple web service as its back end) and an Amazon widget (price lookups). Opening up mobile development to web developers was touted as a keystone for the reason behind Widgets, together with the fact that, for simple applications, they can greatly reduce development timescales when compared to their Java or C++ equivalents.
Open C builds on top of the early announced Symbian PIPS project to provide a number of standard C libraries to help developers more easily port or maintain cross platform code. Nokia touts Open C as bringing the benefits of Linux development to the S60 platform and widening the number of developers who can work on S60 with their existing skills, because it reduces reliance on Symbian C++ expertise. Other demos were showing off the results of Open C. SysOpenDigia described how they had created an FTP client that retained common business logic (core code) across multiple platforms, which reduced maintenance cost and allow faster porting to new platforms. TIM (an Italian Operator) has used it to port a SIP user agent in half the expected time while Oracle was able to port their Berkley database in a matter of weeks rather than months. We will be covering Open C in more detail in a future article.
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 is the next version of the S60 software platform. The first devices using it should be announced towards the end of this year. Feature Pack 2 brings a number of enhancements, both on the surface and under the hood. Feature Pack 2 will be the first version to support Widgets and to fully support Open C, there will also be a number of new APIs, especially around the mapping area, where it will be possible for developers to use and display Nokia Maps within their own applications. For consumers, there is a focus on increasing the ease of use, as S60 gathers momentum in the mid tier. A central softkey label will be used to display the action for pressing the navikey, an 'Active applications' item will be added to the Options menu to make the multitasking option provided by a long press on the S60 key more obvious, and the creation of messages in the Messaging application will be streamlined, with no distinction between SMS and MMS (until MMS-only items are added). A number of graphical UI enhancements and layout options will also be added, including support for transitions between screens and further customisation of the Idle screen. We'll be covering Feature Pack 2 in more detail in a future article.
Rafe Blandford, 2 May 2007
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Categories: Comment, Software, Develop
Platforms: Series 60, General, S60 3rd Edition
