Smartphone Show 07
Today, I went to the Smartphone Show in London. It seemed slightly busier than last year. However, much of what was being shown wasn’t that different to last year.
Here’s what I found of particular relevance to developers…
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Carbide.c++. A new beta version 1.3 will be out November time. The main change will be improved dependency tracking leading to improved build times. The long awaited UIQ 3.x UI Designer will become part of the beta around January. Similarly, UIQ performance investigator will also become part of version 1.3.
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Web Runtime. I asked around about the possibility of supporting pre S60 3rd SDK FP2 via a separate install. I was told that while it’s technically possible, whether this will be done hasn’t been decided.
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Symbian Signed. The previously proposed evolution for Symbian Signed is now being adopted. There’s more information in the downloadable A Guide To Symbian Signed. However, beware that this document (and the show’s press release) read as though the changes are already available and ready for use. The new Open Signed and Express Signed processes will become available some time in Q4.
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Red Five Labs Net60. Last year, I was interested in this Microsoft’s Compact Framework 1.0 for S60 but it was emulation only. This year, they have a target implementation. The demo I was shown looked impressive. The only downside I could see was that the implementation uses it’s own UI controls so you lose the S60 look and feel. I asked about licensing and it will be per device (I was told 5 Euro) which might limit its usage (as it did for the now-extinct AppForge). I suspect the runtime fee is negotiable based on quantity.
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Mobile Sourcery MoSync. This is a similar concept to Red Five Labs in that you write in one language (C/C++) against the MoSync API and this is compiled to an intermediate language that’s interpreted by a runtime on the device (Symbian, Java or Windows Mobile). I asked about signing/Symbian capabilities and was told that apps are self signed and MoSync can’t be used for more complex apps that need capability restricted APIs. Again, it’s planned to sell this on a per-runtime basis.
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New Essential S60 Developer’s Guide. Available from developer.symbian.com.
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New Python Book. There’s a new book out now on S60 Python.
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Updated Symbian Book. The beginners guide, Developing Software for Symbian OS, 2nd Edition by Steve Babin is now available.
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New UIQ Book. There’s a new book (for which I am a contributing author), UIQ 3: The Complete Guide that will become available in the near future. There’s more information, an excerpt and example code on the UIQ Developer Community web site.