Nokia S60 Widgets and Web Runtime
Nokia have just announced a new Web runtime and Widgets for the forthcoming phones based on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.
This is great as it implements one of the few features the iPhone had over the S60. Incidentally, widgets will be the only way for users to create apps for the iPhone.
However, I think the whole web access/standards based thing might be a bit over-sold by Nokia (sorry to nit-pick)…
"In 2005, S60 became the first platform to bring full HTML desktop-like browsing to millions of smartphones"
… not quite true… what about Windows Mobile which has been well ahead for a long time
"As it is built with standards-based Web technologies, Web Run-Time allows Web developers to build new widgets for mobile and even migrate existing widgets from other platforms"
There’s difference between ‘built with’ and ‘provides’. Due to the very presence of a ‘Web runtime’ on the phone, I very much doubt widgets will be portable across anything but Nokia Series 60 devices - not even with the iPhone that has common safari browser parent code.
Widgets will be able to access phone features such as GPS, Phonebook and Calendar. It will be interesting to see how Nokia have tied this into Symbian platform security without marring the user experience with security prompts. After all, you might not want just any web application accessing your private phonebook and calendar.