Symbian DevZone - Exposium03 - Show Report - Part 1

by Richard Bloor, May 05, 2003

The Symbian Exposium is the premier showcase for the Symbian ecosystem. This years event was a interesting mix of optimism building on the success of the smartphones released to date tempered with realism that there was still much work to be done to build a vibrant economy around Symbian OS smartphones. This week we look at the key presentations and highlights from the show that will be of interest to developers

It was this diversity which David Levin, CEO, of Symbian made one of the core themes of his opening keynote address. “Phone Vision” was the phase he used to encompass both the evolution of the phone from voice to video, or as he put it from “ear to eye” as well as encapsulate the opportunity the Symbian OS offered to licensees to create diverse and visionary smartphones. It was a theme echoed by a number of presenters; the advantages of a common platform to allow manufacturers to concentrate on differentiation.

With perhaps a certain element of British reserve there was an acknowledge that the success to date was still only a starting point and that much work was ahead in creating a truly vibrant and successful economy around the Symbian OS. If Exposium03 is a good yardstick then the prospects for that economy are looking good.

The exhibition floor provided attendees with a good overview of the companies involved in creating the Symbian economy. In many respects because of the range of exhibitors Exposium was really several exhibitions taking place concurrently. At one end you have the likes of Texas Instruments, Intel, Samsung and Motorola exhibiting hardware reference platform and other phone components through to software developers like PsiNT, Bitween and MobiMate with a range of system integrators, tools, hardware and software component vendors in between.

From a developer perspective the biggest news from Exposium was the launch of Symbian OS v7.0s (http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2003/pr030429.html). Positioned as the basis for the next generation of Series 60 v7.0s makes a number of improvements particularly to the telecommunications and multimedia architectures. The changes in the telecommunications architecture will allows “multihoming”, or the ability to maintain multiple network connections at one time. If you have a Nokia 7650 or Nokia 3650 you may have noticed that if you are browsing WAP pages and then go to download you email that you are told that the network connection is already in use and you can not get your mail without first disconnecting from your WAP server. This is because v6.1, on which Series 60 is currently built, can only maintain one active Internet connection. With v7.0s you will be able to maintain as many connections as the phones resources and network bandwidth allow you, so in theory you could listen to streaming audio, while downloading you email, receiving an MMS and browsing WAP pages. While this may not be common usage this multihoming ability is required for more advanced services like video conferencing. There are also several other changes which using the networking capabilities of Symbian OS far easier for the developer.

The second major change is in multimedia, where there are new servers with the ability to multi thread. This is a quite significant improvement for developers, particularly in the games arena where, for example, the ability to play multiple sound tracks at once, encompassing, for example, a background soundtrack and games effects, is essential to providing a rich games experience. While there are several other changes in v7.0s the last change I will mention is that it is also brings support for Java MIDP 2.0.

At this stage while the intended use of v7.0s is clear Nokia have not given any solid indication of when the new OS will be used in Series 60. Metrowerks as a Gold Sponsor had a significant presence. Jim Welch, President and CEO, of Metrowerks made a keynote address on the Wednesday and gave some interesting pointers as to the future direction of the CodeWarrior and Wireless Studio with reference to simulation, automated code generation and collaboration. Metrowerks also announced that they will be providing a “first access” Developer Kit based around the Siemens SX1 (http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/news/default.asp?PR=453). Due for release in Q3 this year Metrowerks have indicated that they will be accepting advanced orders in the first week of August. If the sales of the Sony Ericsson P800 kit are anything to go by the demand is likely to be significant.

Metrowerks also had a presence in the Developer Village, along with Borland, AppForge and on the AllAboutSymbian stand Ewan Spence flying the OPL flag. Borland and Nokia formally announced (http://www.borland.com/news/press_releases/2003/04_29_03_nokia_and_borland_announce_mobi le_edition.html) the availability of the Borland C++ tools for Series 60 development. While AppForge made no new announcements the success of AppForge Booster on the Sony Ericsson P800 was news enough to maintain a steady interest in their booth. Also as promised the open source project for OPL was launched (http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2003/pr030428b.html) along with the first alpha version for Series 60. As a long time supporter of OPL it was probably not surprising that Ewan Spence also launched his OPL based Vexed game (http://www.symbiandiaries.com/vexed) which also illustrated how stable this initial release is.

Also at the Developer Village where Sendo (http://www.sendo.com/dev/index.asp) and Sony Ericsson (http://www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld) promoting their developer programs, although both had booths elsewhere on the floor where the focus of their activities took place.

There was a significant presence of application developers both on the Applications Pavilion and Games arcade with many names that will be familiar to readers of this column including Anthropics, Bitween, Intuwave and MobiMate. While not represent on any of the main pavilions testing tools were strongly in evidence at Exposium03 with the release of two new products. TRY from Mobile Innovation (http://www.mobileinnovation.co.uk/reports/001.htm) is a script based system for applications testing while Digia launched Digia QualityKit (www.digia.com/digia/bulletin.nsf/PressHeadlines/08F835D163A07088C2256D1D002F20C1 ) a set of three tools to address functional and unit testing as well as build management. LDRA (http://www.ldra.com) were also showing their unit testing and code quality assessment tools and TestQuest (www.testquest.com) where promoting the software version of their testing tool. Next week we will take a look at some of the other exhibitors and announcements made at Exposium before returning to our usual in-depth coverage of key Symbian stories.

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About the WDN Symbian Editor, Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor is a freelance writer and editor with 18 years experience in the IT industry as a developer, analyst and latterly Project Manager with a particularly focus on software testing. Richard has been involved with the Symbian OS since 1995 and has been writing about it for the last 3 years.

Richard is also an associate with System Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.

Richard can be reached at symbian@wirelessdevnet.com.

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