Symbian OS & Series 90

gletham writes "Today at NMIC, Nokia officially announced a new mobile device development environment - Series 90. So why series 90? This article explains it in detail - Nokia has launched this solution to enable developers to leverage their apps across a range of devices that are tightly focused on specific needs - in this case, playing music, messaging, or playing games. Series 90 is based on the Symbian OS 7.0, incorporating standard technology for application development, browsing, and messaging. Additionally, details of the first mobile device -- the Nokia 7700, based on series 90 -- was also released."

Comments

infoSync's coverage

[holygoat]

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4237.html

Pictures, and running a damn sight faster than Nokia's site for me!

It's been said...

[satanami69]

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4237.html [infosyncworld.com]

Pictures, and running a damn sight faster than Nokia's site for me!

First thing I checked was ofcourse the screen's resolution and it turns out it sports 640x320 [nokia.com]. That's very good! Especially since close competitors (like the P900) only have 320x208 [sonyericsson.com]. Even some of the big-screen PDA's currently out like the Palm Tungsten T3 and the clamshell Sony Clie's only have 480x320. Even Sony's latest UX50 has that resolution [clieplaza.com] and if I'm not mistaken so does the latest Zaurus.

640x320 is finally something you can seriously browse the web on!

Stop complaining. These ugly & expensive & too big devices with too many funktions are the ones witch are making technology to walk forward. You don't have to buy it, some tech freaks will, and thx to them next generation devices are actually better.

the opera guys might be making real money now and i've got to say i'm happy for them. this and the other nokia series 60/90 phones all use opera for their web browser. that and a design win with adobe, and the fact that it runs natively on windows, linux, freeBSD, AND solaris. well, i think it's worth applauding the fact that small innovative comapnise CAN actually succeed on merit! well done guys... :-)

I keep waiting for a device that has the functionality of my T-Mobile Sidekick (IM, email, web browsing, phone, scheduler, notes, etc.) that is as thoughtfully made (screen flips up to reveal a solid thumb-board and every bit of data I enter is automatically backed up on T-Mobile's servers) that is anywhere close to the price point ($300).

I bet this Nokia device is plenty expensive and I could send out an email 10 times faster with my Sidekick thumb-board than you could peck one out with the stylus on this device (if you could find your stylus ;-) ).

http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?ph on eid=195184

Re:Boycott any operating systems...

[CompVisGuy]

I've developed for EPOC/Symbian. The OS is targeted (of course) at embedded devices. When I was developing software for the platform, a modified GCC was used as the cross-compiler. It's one of the most standards-compliant C/C++ going!

Having an on-device debugger would be nice, but is often not possible with embedded devices due to memory restrictions etc. Most development is done using a PC-based emulator, which works very well.

It is slightly ridiculous to demand ANSI C and POSIX libraries: EPOC/Symbian has its own very well defined programming model. This model was designed to deliver (among other things) outstanding OS stability and OS-wide object-orientation. So, you should not use C paradigms (or C code), but the OO paradigms defined by their programming model (and C++ code). Just because they have made design decisions that you don't like doesn't mean the platform is bad. It means you dont understand it.

We don't have to debate the merits of global variables. We (should) all know that they are a bad idea except in a few restricted situations. For these situations, EPOC/Symbian provides thread-local storage (TLS) which can be used to create a singleton object; this can provide an OO interface to any global variables needed.

The UI changes are a nuisance for the developer, but if you are coding something serious (like a new cell phone, which is the sort of thing EPOC/Symbian is for), then you will have some sort of UI specification, and you will probably want to develop your own UI; the libraries are there to help.

The Palm and Win CE platforms are nowhere near as good for developing robust devices as EPOC/Symbian. This is largely due to the way in which their memory management works (or, rather, doesn't).

EPOC/Symbian allows multitasking. Provided that applications are written in strict compliance with the programming model (which isn't too difficult) then the device will be able to run for *very* long periods of time without crashing. At the time, I was using a WinNT workstation, and my EPOC-based device had a much better uptime.

Compare this to the Palm model, where (at least when I was developing for EPOC), multitasking was impossible. Memory was "managed" by the user exiting one app and starting another.

MS have improved Win CE since I was developing for EPOC, but at that stage, MS had no programming model to ensure good memory management, and the robustness of the platform was a joke. Maybe they've solved this problem now?

Memory management is a very important consideration when developing for cell phones: imagine the result of your phone crashing during a call to the emergency services.

Yes, there is a price to pay for using EPOC/Symbian. But what you get for paying that price is a very robust and efficient OS that allows developers to use elegant OO design and C++ (albeit with some reasonable design decision imposed on the developer).