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The WDN Symbian DevZone... Symbian Developer Expo Roundup
by Richard Bloor, April 29, 2002
This week we round up the news from the Symbian Developer Expo held in
London on 23 and 24 April and find that the Symbian way is clearly one of co-
operation.
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The slew of announcements from the Symbian Developer Expo was by most
standards impressive. They clearly show that the term Symbian Community is
more than simply a buzzword but an expression of the way in which those
companies involved with all aspects of the Symbian OS are choosing to work.
The big news was that Siemens have bought into Symbian taking a 5% share and
a seat on the board. While they were less than forthcoming about the effect this
would have on the Siemens product line up, which heavily favors Microsoft
technology, it illustrates that being involved in controlling and defining the OS is
considered an imperative by a large majority of the wireless handset vendors.
While Symbian clearly believe this is due to the strength of their OS it may
equally be driven by a desire to maintain control in the face of the, albeit
struggling, Microsoft juggernaut. Either way it is further evidence that anyone
who underestimates the Symbian OS does so at some risk.
Following on from this was the news that Symbian are making their source code
available to partners under the “Symbian Platinum Program”. 17 companies
including Intel, TI and Motorola Semiconductors either have joined or are
committed to do so. The program gives them access to 95% of the Symbian OS’s
source code. Symbian are breaking new ground with this approach treading an
interesting line between a closed product and open source. The benefit for both
Symbian and its partners will be an increased quality both within the OS and
products and services based around it.
This collaborative approach was further illustrated in the revamped System
Developer Zone. While it will continue to be a reference source for commercial
and technical information it is to also be a portal for access to developer support
programs from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Borland, AppForge and Metrowerks along
with semiconductor manufactures TI, Intel and ARM. These associated sites will
be the source for Software Development Kits, development tools, technical
support and training services. Symbian claims that together the Developer
Network and its partner organizations now represent over 6 million developers
worldwide.
SonyEricsson and Metrowerks also announced that a version of the CodeWarrior
IDE for the SonyEricsson P800 would be available from the Ericsson Mobility
World (one of the Developer Network partners). In doing so SonyEricsson are
taking a very different approach to Nokia. While Nokia have been making the
9210 and 7650 SDKs available for free SonyEricsson appear only to be making
the P800 SDK available with CodeWarrior Professional, which requires both an
upfront purchase of the IDE and an annual support services payment. There was
no sign of a basic version with a modest price tag and no need to take out
support (as there is with the Nokia 9210 version of CodeWarrior Wireless Studio).
However as the current arrangement is for the Beta SDK it is possible that a
“budget” version will be available later.
Symbian also announced a developer competition, again with involvement from
their partners in both the judging and provision of prizes. Judged in 4 categories
the winners will received a cash prize and the opportunity to market the product
in association with Symbian partners.
While not quite as high profile the announcement by TestQuest, which was
actually made before the Expo, that it would be supporting the Symbian platform
is a significant step in bringing industrial quality testing automation to Symbian
hardware. TestQuest Pro integrates directly with the phones hardware and
simulates user interaction with the keyboard, touch screen or other input
devices. While targeted at both the hardware and software developer having
taken a quick look at the product it seems far better suited to hardware testing.
However I hope to be taking a more in-depth look at TestQuest Pro next month.
Of no less importance was the swath of announcements around component
technology. Several silicon manufactures made announcements of specific
support for the OS in their offerings, including ports by Intel to their XScale
Processor and Motorola to its DragonBall MX1 processor. Epson also took the
opportunity to announce their new S1C38000 System-On-Chip which promises
improved performance by combining an ARM processor with a color LCD graphics
controller that has its own dedicated memory as a single package.
Judging any particular announcement as the most significant is probably
foolhardy but the implementation of the V7.0 hardware accelerator APIs in the TI
OMAP1510 chip family is a good candidate for that accolade in the hardware
category. This implementation will allow developers to balance processing
between the RISC processor and the DSP in the OMAP1510. By doing so they can
find the optimal balance to maximize the performance of their software.
Away from CPUs M-Systems announced the availability of Symbian drivers for
their Disk on Chip technology. This allows for up to 256 Mb of storage to be
integrated into a device. The technology includes sophisticated error detection to
ensure that the memory is available for the life of the product.
Amongst the other software and services announcements were:
* Confirmation of the publication date for the Symbian Communications
programming book and that a book on development for the Series 60 will
follow
* The porting of Aplix Jblend Java environment to Symbian
* Adobe announced an extension of their GoLive authoring tools to include the
creation of MMS and support for the Symbian OS
* Samsung announced that they have licensed Picsel file viewer
* ART introduced smARTspeak XG a speech recognition product which allows
name dialing without training
* An upgrade to Opera browser.
One release that did appear to come unannounced was the availability of the OPL
development environment for the Nokia 9210. For those of you who are
unfamiliar with OPL it is a basic like language that had been available, until
recently, on the all the incarnations of the Symbian OS and is particularly
popular with small software houses and solo developers. Symbian had originally
made the full development environment available only to subscribing member of
the Symbian Developer Network. In some ways I would not have been surprised
if the OPL project had been abandoned particularly with AppForge’s
announcement. One of the things that has kept it going is the fact that a number
of Symbian staff have been involved with OPLs development from the early Psion
days. Symbian also appear to see it as an important stepping stone in helping
developers with a portfolio of OPL applications through a transition period while
they consider moving to Java, C++ or now Visual Basic. The release is however
unsupported, but I understand Symbian are considering a number of options to
ensure OPLs future, which includes the possibility of making it open source.
Finally amongst the independent announcements was one from Anthropics
regarding their port to the Symbian OS. Now I had not seen Anthropics before
this and believe me if they are a new name to you the technology is worth
checking out. Simply put their technology will allow you to send a SMS and
when it is delivered it will be read by an animated face. This face can be based on
any digital image. The demonstrations are very impressive and this could be a
real must have technology for a wide range of smartphone users.
Overall the announcements serve to reinforce the picture of an industry very
much united behind the Symbian OS. The commitment from a range of
organizations to support and facilitate adoption of the OS is clear. Moreover
Symbian are also pioneering a new way of working within the IT industry with an
openness which is very different from the way in which their competitors operate.
In the face of gloomy results from the telecommunications sector Symbian
appears vibrant and enthusiastic.
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About the "WDN Symbian Guy" Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor has 16 years experience in the IT industry. His earlier
work was largely in design and development of commercial and
manufacturing systems but more recently has focused on
development and test management of government systems.
Richard Bloor is the Mobile Applications champion at System
Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at rbloor@wirelessdevnet.com.
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