OnSymbian

S60 Development In Your Pocket

S60 Essentials: Developers' Guide from Symbian Press is now available for download. Launched at the Smartphone Show, along with two new books, this booklet describes the development options for S60 devices.

The booklet provides developers with a concise introduction to the various development options for S60. Symbian C++, Open C, Java, Python, Flash Lite, SVGT, Browser, and Web Run-time are all covered. This is very much "everything you wanted to ask about S60 development options, but were too afraid to ask" in a compact booklet.

Mind you I would say that. Compiling this booklet provided an interesting insight into the what can best be described as the uniform diversity of S60. Multiple development option, each with its own champions, people passionate about bringing the best development tools to developers, every one of them equally passionate about S60. While it is unlikely that there will ever be the same range of development options for smartphones in general or S60 in particular, there can now be very few developers who do not have a skill that can be used to create something for S60, be it a C++ application or Nokia Web Widget.

But don't just take my word for it - check out "S60 Essentials: Developers' Guide" for yourself - or look out for the printed version at the next trade show, Symbian, or Nokia event. At the same time why not take a look at some of the other free booklets from Symbian Press.

The big news from Symbian Press at the Smartphone Show was, however, two new "full sized" publication: Mobile Python, written by Jürgen Scheible and Developing Software for Symbian OS, Second Edition, written by Steve Babin.

Mobile Python – Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform is a practical hands-on book that introduces the popular open source programming language Python to the mobile space. It effectively teaches how to program your own powerful – and fun – applications easily based on the Symbian OS and S60 platforms.

Developing Software for Symbian OS, Second Edition – helps software developers new to Symbian OS to create smartphone applications. The original book has been updated for Symbian OS v9 and now includes a new chapter on application signing and platform security with updates throughout for Symbian OS v9 and changes to the development environment.

The Smartphone Show: Day One

The first day of the Symbian Smartphone Show brought a raft of announcements. Here is my day one roundup and commentary on the new.

It seems there was hardly time to digest one announcement before another came flying out of the Symbian Smartphone Show.

There were three announcements providing the strongest indicators of future developments in the Symbian ecosystem, the change in ownership at UIQ, the release of new phones from Samsung, and the new technology in Symbian OS v9.5.

I suspect you are wondering why I've not included the announcement of the touch UI on S60. Two reasons, firstly this news has been leaking out since at least the S60 Summit back in May, so in many ways its not real news, even if the details are. Secondly, S60 has always been touchscreen capable; the devices have just not used this type of screen.

OK, so the purchase of a stake in UIQ by Motorola. The big piece of this story is that it is Motorola Inc. that has made the purchase. When Motorola was a shareholder in Symbian it was actually the European part of the company which owned the shares, not the US parent. This time it looks like a full corporate buy-in, not just a regional interest. Given that Motorola has made much of its Linux strategy this move gives huge weight to Nigel Clifford's comments that Symbian is seen less and less of Linux in the space Symbian operates - the mid to high end.

One thing is clear, expect to see much more activity from UIQ as it starts to implement a strategy to claw back its market share and go after the top spot occupied by S60.

With Samsung it is a similar story. After flirting with Symbian and S60 for a number of years the company seems to have jumped in with both feet. While five devices is still small compared to Nokia's lineup, Samsung has almost doubled the number of S60 devices with built in GPS capability. There are S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 devices on the way from Samsung too. A serious commitment to S60 from two of the top phone manufacturers is only likely to see other follow.

The new technologies announced for Symbian OS v9.5, ScreenPlay and FreeWay give a strong insight into how Symbian OS devices will be evolving over the remainder of this decade: Larger screens, faster networks, and generally more PC like performance and capabilities. One of the potential issues raised about Symbian OS is that, unlike some of its competitors (read Windows Mobile and Linux here) there is no desktop version of the software. I think it is safe to say that Symbian OS will be addressing this issue by blurring the lines between the PC and smartphone over the next few years.

ScreenPlay also has a good developer message; the addition of the OpenVG APIs and update of OpenGL ES. However, the updated version of Symbian Signed is also welcome news (although it will not be news to most developers, as the changes have been well previewed and discussed on the Symbian Developer Network forums for a month two now.) The ability to gain Symbian Signed on a whole raft of application almost instantly will be a huge benefit to developers, who have been suffering from the inevitable delays, costs, and frustrations of having to send their applications away for signing. In other developer news SYSOPENDIGIA announce that their unit testing tools would be available for Carbide.c++ later this year and Coverity has expanded support for Symbian C++.

On the applications front there is clearly an interesting battle emerging between Quickoffice and DataViz, both announcing the "first" support for Office 2007 documents, although on different platforms, S60 and UIQ respectively. Both are excellent document editing applications, but it is interesting to see the possibility of divergence in the office solutions used in S60 and UIQ. This would make some sense, particularly in light of the new more aggressive ambitions shown by UIQ. However, both DataViz and Quickoffice are likely to remain supporters of both platforms for the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see if Quickoffice's broader approach, as shown by its announcement with SoonR, gives the company an edge by making its overall offering much more integrated with the PC "office" world.

Another resample of "convergent innovation" saw two new Calendar style application announced by companies who are literally poles apart; Dreamlife from Australian developer Dreamspring and Handy Calendar from Epocware. Overall, and no disrespect to Epocware's excellent applications, Dreamlife looks the more interesting of the two because it is part of a broader strategy being implemented by Dreamspring to bring "life management" to the smartphone.

Email also remains a hot topic with hot Cordato and emoze expanding their offerings.

In other announcements, a number of companies showed an increasing commitment to Symbian OS with native C++ implementation of products that have either been around as Java implementations or simply not available on Symbian OS, these include Google Maps, Social.FM, Handmark, CoPilot, and StyleTap. StyleTap is an interesting technology that more than doubles the number of applications available on Symbian OS phones by allowing these devices to run applications written for Palm. Given Palm's woes it may be a somewhat late entry for this product, but there is no denying that there is a wealth of good Palm application out there that do not yet have a Symbian OS equivalent.

There are still several interesting announcements to come from the second day of the Smartphone Show, so remember to check out SymbianOne's dedicated news section and look out for a final roundup tomorrow.

Quickoffice: Much More Than Just Editing

Quickoffice Inc. has extended its offering with two announcements at the Smartphone Show. These announcements start taking the company beyond supplying just a tool to edit Microsoft documents on a Symbian smartphone. Richard Bloor spoke to Paul Moreton to find out more.

is rapidly transforming itself from a company focused solely on enabling Microsoft Office suite document editing on S60 devices and UIQ phones into a total document solutions provider. It is doing this through cooperation with a company which is new to the Symbian ecosystem, SoonR.

However, the core of its offering is still Quickoffice and at the Smartphone Show Quickoffice Inc. is demonstrating the next version of Quickoffice.

Quickoffice Premier v5 will bring editing for Word and Excel files in the new Microsoft Office 2007 document format to S60 devices by the end of this year. "This is a major milestone for Quickoffice and the first solution to support Office 2007 document editing on S60 devices," says Paul Moreton, vice president of product management at Quickoffice Inc. "It has been a major undertaking; incorporating Microsoft's new XML file formats." Paul says that support for the new document format gives Quickoffice users with the same viewing and editing features provided for the older Office document formats, plus support for some of the new Office 2007 formatting features. "We are also providing our same no data loss technology for Office 2007 documents, so any features we don't support in Quickoffice are preserved when a document is saved," says Paul, who also notes that PowerPoint 2007 document support will be provided in a future release.

Paul is also quick to point out that the current release of Quickoffice Premier v4.5 already outperforms Mobile Office on Windows Mobile 6 Standard. "We support more features and offer significantly better data maintenance than Microsoft's product," says Paul. Paul gives examples such as the ability to create new documents, more advanced editing features, the preservation of data items such as document revision marks and Word drawings, and the fact that Quickoffice Premier v4.5 is much more efficient at opening large files.

In the second announcement Quickoffice Inc. is teaming with SoonR to build client technology, branded as Quickaccess, to facilitate the sharing of documents and other files between a PC and Symbian devices. SoonR already provides its users with the ability to access content on their PC from mobile devices, while the user's PC is on, using a mobile browser. In cooperation with Quickoffice Inc. this capability will be significantly enhanced, with access provided to files on SoonR's server and the ability to view file remotely.

"With Quickaccess smartphone users will be able set certain files or folders on their PC to synchronize with the storage solution hosted by SoonR," says Paul. "This will then allow users to download or view these files on their smartphone. In addition, our technology will synchronize any files modified on the smartphone back to the SoonR service and, when the user turns their PC on, the modified files will be returned to their PC."

The viewing technology will be powered by Quickoffice Inc.'s SVG viewer technology (which is BitFlash technology Quickoffice Inc. licensed exclusively in 2006). The advantage of viewing documents via SVG Tiny (SVGT) on a mobile device is the data transfer requirements. "PowerPoint presentation can be many megabytes in size," says Paul. "By converting the content to SVGT we can highly compress the data, so using this technology we can render a page using just a couple of hundred kilobytes of data; for a document page this can be as little as 3 kilobytes." Another big advantage of SVGT, particularly for PowerPoint slides, is that Quickoffice Inc. can support slide animations and transitions using the animation capabilities of SVGT. This SVG technology will also be used to provide a unified device, SoonR repository, and PC file browser.

Most Symbian devices already have an SVGT viewer (indeed BitFlash is the standard viewer in UIQ) but Paul explained that "using our own viewer means we don't have to worry about the capabilities of the on-device viewer. This will be a cross platform technology so it makes sense to incorporate our viewer so we can deliver a consistent and high quality experience."

The SoonR technology will be released in the first quarter of 2008.

I covered the cooperative approach Quickoffice Inc. is taking to expanding it offering in a recent article discussing the Adobe Reader LE v2.5. The agreement with SoonR extends the cooperation Quickoffice Inc. is undertaking by moving beyond simply implementing a piece of smartphone software. By mobilizing PC data in this way the technology should eliminate the frustration of synchronizing a device with vital files, usually a job rushed while leaving the office. While this will offer significant advantages to individual users and smaller businesses it will be interesting to see if Quickoffice Inc. can leverage Quickaccess into the enterprise space, where there are already a number of synchronization and remote access specialists.

Symbian Accelerates Graphics and Data

Symbian Ltd. has made two significant technology announcements at the Smartphone Show. These promise a quantum leap in user interface graphics and wireless data speeds. Symbian's Jorgen Behrens, executive vice-president, marketing, explains the technology.

Symbian is introducing new architectures within Symbian OS to improve features and performance in the areas of graphics and networking. According to Jorgen these new technologies will allow Symbian OS licensees to offer movie like user interfaces and very high speed IP data communications.

The graphics technology is called ScreenPlay. "With ScreenPlay we have almost completely re-architected the Symbian OS graphic system." says Jorgen. "The goal is to allow our licensees to create visually attractive, user attractive user interfaces on a par with the best you see today on high end desktop operating systems." To achieve this Symbian Ltd. has built a new graphics sub-system that will leverage the capabilities of graphics accelerators for all UI components, not just games. Currently graphics accelerators are usable only through OpenGL ES, where the developer takes over the entire screen in a game, for example. Symbian Ltd. has now moved the graphics accelerator underneath the graphics stack, which allows any UI content to be created using a device's graphics accelerator. Jorgen explains that Symbian is doing this "because we anticipate a large number of future devices will be using graphics acceleration hardware and at the same time the demand for very visually rich interfaces will grow."

In addition to replacing the existing graphics sub-system a new component is being introduced: the Composition Engine. This engine is able to take multiple graphics 'surfaces' and overlay and blend them in a compositor. "This will allow developers to write video stream to one surface and a UI dialog to another," says Jorgen. "The Composition Engine can then overlay these surfaces and display them using effects such as semi-transparency. This is the type of experience seen on high-end desktops, with animations, transitions, and similar effects." In addition Jorgen claims ScreenPlay has been implemented "in a very battery friendly way" and, although the technology can take advantage of a hardware graphics accelerator, it will "perform well when relying on software rendering only".

"The platform and UI companies are excited by this technology," says Jorgen. "As they will be able to create much more visually attractive UIs, and of course third-party developers will be able to use the technology in their applications too."

Another advantage of this technology is that it allows much larger screens to be used effectively, particularly when the device has a graphics accelerator. Jorgen suggests that devices with WVGA (800 x 480-pixels) or larger screen sizes are likely in the next couple of years.

In addition, Symbian OS will also be providing support for the OpenVG and Khronos EGL APIs in addition to the current OpenGL ES support, which will be upgraded to OpenGL ES 2.0. Both of these APIs will be available for writing graphics to anywhere within the UI, not just full screens. Symbian Ltd. is also contributing its APIs for surface manipulation to The Khronos Group, for consideration as a standard for advanced graphics programming.

To demonstrate this technology Symbian has created a couple of applications. One shows a cover-flow album selector, which was written in under two weeks using OpenVG. Over the cover-flow a scrolling ticker is displayed as well as a semi-transparent incoming call notification, all while the cover-flow view is still flipping over. A second demonstration shows a semi-transparent video playing over a web site, which can still be navigated while the video runs. Not exactly practical but as Jorgen points out it does showcase the technologies capabilities.

Jorgen notes that this technology is part of Symbian OS v9.5 and has already been delivered to Symbian's customers for use in v9.5 powered phones. Jorgen points out that ScreenPlay is a continuing roadmap of graphics enhancements for Symbian OS.

Like ScreenPlay, FreeWay is a complete re-architecting of the Symbian OS IP networking subsystem and a road map for support of future high speed wireless data services. "WiMAX currently offers wireless data speeds of up to 50Mbps, although practically it runs at about 10Mbps," says Jorgen. "When we get to Super 3G/LTE we could see speeds of over 100Mbps. When you consider that home broadband offers between 2 and 5Mbps, you can see that our technology has to be fast, and it is. Already we have achieved 100Mbps in our labs."

In addition to the raw data speeds, this technology provides significant improvements in latency and jitter, which is vital for real-time IP applications such as VoIP. In addition, the new sub-system has been written to take advantage of ARM's Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) architecture, support for which Symbian Ltd. announced recently.

As with ScreenPlay, FreeWay is a Symbian OS v 9.5 feature and Symbian's customers have had access to prototypes for "some time" according to Jorgen. The first delivery is, however, limited to the new architecture with its improved performance. Further specific network support will be added as the new high speed networks become available. Jorgen emphasizes that the technology announced is not an end in itself, but a roadmap for future wireless network support over the next few years.

The impetus behind this technology, which Symbian Ltd. has been working on for about 18 months, is "the convergence between desktops, mobiles, and Internet," says Jorgen. "For example, we are seeing today's smartphones offering their user the ability to view complicated Web pages with JavaScript and Flash. These demands are only going to grow and Symbian OS will be leading this demand by enabling devices that operate over networks with very high bandwidths, use multiple cores, and display complex graphics on very large screens. This may sound as though Symbian OS devices are becoming PCs, and at the high end of the market this is in many respects what Symbian OS devices will become."

One obvious problem with these new technologies is the power they could consume. "Battery technology is offering increases in power density of 4 to 8% per year," says Jorgen. "Generally our customers want to use these advances to offer smaller batteries. At the same time, technology advances are increasing power demands." A future Symbian OS device could be downloading a movie, saving it to an SD card, and then time shifting it for display on a high definition screen. This type of processing exercises almost every aspect of Symbian OS. It is therefore very important that such devices do not run out of power in just a few hours. "We have been very carefully to make sure these new technologies offer very good power performance," says Jorgen. "We have done this in the past and have the lead on our competition, and we plan to maintain that lead."

While new technology often takes much longer than anticipated to filter down to products on the high street, these developments suggest some interesting directions for Symbian OS devices. While many will offer similar features to those seen today, but on faster networks and with higher resolution screens, the type of performance Symbian is enabling -movie like graphics, high screen resolutions, high data transfer speeds, and SMP - suggests that high end Symbian devices will be approaching the performance of today's desktops towards the end of the decade. Concerns that one of Symbian OS's weaknesses is a lack of a desktop presence could therefore disappear, without Symbian devices ever becoming fixed.

---

Both FreeWay and ScreenPlay are being demonstrated at the Smartphone Show.

Motorola Buys Into UIQ

The purchase of fifty percent on UIQ by Motorola could be one of the most surprising apparent about-face in the history of Symbian. I found out more in conversation with Ulf Wretling (Sony Ericsson) and UIQ's CEO Johan Sandberg.

Motorola was one of the founder members of Symbian Ltd.; however it exited in 2003, apparently to focus on Linux development. Today Motorola seems to have recognized the error of its ways and is now back in the Symbian ecosystem as more than just a licensee.

When Sony Ericsson purchased UIQ in February this year, Miles Flint - Sony Ericsson's CEO - invited other phone manufacturers to become involved with UIQ, as owners or licensees. Now the first company has joined the party, with Motorola purchasing a fifty percent share of UIQ Technology.

"It is very, very exciting to have another mobile phones giant jumping into UIQ," says Ulf Wretling, general manager and head of Content Planning and Management at Sony Ericsson. "The Motorola Z8 is certainly a very powerful UIQ 3 phone and clearly a very serious effort by Motorola. With this purchase Sony Ericsson and Motorola are committed to establishing UIQ as a strong, cross vendor interface for media centric phones and to drive UIQ onto mid range phones as well. The goal for both of us is to continue expanding the use UIQ within both companies. It is certainly an exciting prospect that will mean we see many more UIQ 3 phones."

"I can only agree with Ulf," says Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ, "This is very, very exciting for us. I think it will send a strong message to the mobile community and industry. I very much validates the belief we have in what we are doing. From UIQ's perspective we will continue to explore the benefits and uses of the UIQ interface; its user experience, supported device form factors, interaction methods, to make UIQ even more flexible in the types of devices it supports. We will also add more functionality to the platform.

"We will also be working harder with our partners and third-parties developers to make sure that we expand the family working around UIQ. Having Sony Ericsson and Motorola as owners will undoubtedly help us move this cooperation forward and I think it will increase interest from third-party developers wanting to work with us."

"We have been cooperating closely with UIQ and Motorola to strengthen the application base," says Ulf. "As a proof of this, at the Symbian Smartphone Show, we will be demonstrating 50 applications that use a single code base and SIS [installation] file for both Sony Ericsson and Motorola UIQ phones. These applications run on devices with different form factors and input method; with keyboard flips and without, with touchscreens and without, but they all work. There are differences in exactly how the applications behave, to take account of these different form factors and input methods, but it's all done from a single SIS file. I think this shows one of the features that makes UIQ 3 a very strong platform for developers. It also shows that there is no fragmentation, even with the device differentiation we see today. This is a fantastic benefit - for developers and phone manufacturers - which I believe no other platform can match."

"I certainly believe this is our key competitive advantage; that we offer a platform which allows differentiation and innovation, but still leaving the control with the handset manufacturer," says Johan. "We certainly don't try to control what they are doing. So manufacturers can use their own innovations to differentiate, while retaining a common platform where core innovations are available on a truly shared basis."

However it does seem strange that Sony Ericsson has allowed Motorola to take a fifty percent stake, when Sony Ericsson appears to have done more work than Motorola to get UIQ 3 up and running. "We believe in equal rights for all manufacturers when it comes access to a platform for developing phones," Ulf responds. "So UIQ has to be completely fair and non discriminatory towards all its licensees. Joining equally with Motorola was the best way to send this signal to any manufacturers who may be interested in joining with UIQ, as owners or licensees. Ultimately in an open OS world it is inappropriate to try and control competitors, so our activities with UIQ are on an equal and open basis."

So if another company wanted to take a stake in UIQ, they would become an equal partner. "Yes," says Johan. "The agreement allows for Sony Ericsson and Motorola releasing equal shares for any other companies interested it taking up ownership."

The main benefit for anyone using UIQ is to get access to a common base where investment is shared," Johan continues. "Having a strong commitment from our owners strengthens access to an innovative ecosystem. In turn this will see more phones coming to the market. The way UIQ works with its licensees means they still have control over their phones, and the look and feel of the devices, which is the way manufacturers want to work."

"Phone manufacturers can also license UIQ without becoming an owner," says Ulf. "When they do so, as licensees, they will have the same rights and access to the UIQ platform and its technologies, everyone will be treated the same."

However, given Motorola has left the Symbian fold once before, what suggests they will not do it again? "From my perspective, I'm seeing enormous interest from the team at Motorola," says Ulf. "They have received very good feedback on the Z8. So I see strong momentum from Motorola and from my point of view I'm confident they will be here in the long term, but ultimately you will need to ask Motorola that question."

Which we hope to do sometime soon.

The Embedded Software Challenge

A recent survey by Accenture found that most of the challenges facing smartphone manufacturers, and all companies creating devices using embedded software, go far beyond the core software.

According to A. J. Gupta, Accenture's managing director for Product Innovation and Product Lifecycle Management within the company's Embedded Software Solutions practice, an increasing number of products are migrating their features to software. "We are seeing it in everything from phones to cars," says A. J. "Software is becoming the product differentiator."

An electrical engineer by training, A. J. is based in Washington, U.S. His background was in control systems for jet engines and he contrasts that starkly with today's embedded software industry. "When I talk to my colleagues in the aerospace industry, they are astonished when I tell them that a typical embedded software project has ten times the code they are used to dealing with, but has to be delivered in a tenth of the product lifecycle," says A. J. "As such we cannot underestimate the challenges facing those creating embedded software platforms or devices based on them."

In the recent report "The Embedded Software Industry: Challenges and Successes," Accenture reviewed some of the issues faced by the companies relying on embedded software for their products. In candid responses, Accenture found that 88% believed their testing was poor, 81% work poorly with their suppliers, and over half admitted they shipped products late.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to A. J., manufacturers building devices on Symbian OS face the same challenges as any company in the embedded software space. "When I talk to our teams working with Symbian OS, the issues discussed tend to be the same as those pre-occupying other Accenture teams and our clients across the entire embedded software sector."

These issues are diverse, from the architecture of software components through to how to manage the diversity of component suppliers involved in creating software components for a device.

If there is one core element to these issues, A. J. believes it is industrialization. "There is still too much software created in an environment where the work is seen as craftsmanship or artistic in nature," says A. J. "The increasing complexity of embedded software means it needs to be industrialized to make the process predictable and reduce rework."

Industrialization also becomes more important in light of two trends within the embedded software industry; the increasing number of suppliers contributing software to projects and the use of development shops in low cost countries.

A. J. believes that Accenture's track record in systems integration can benefit its customers when it comes to the technical challenges created by multi-vendor projects. At the same time, Accenture's management consulting experience helps with the business challenges. A. J. also sees the fact that Accenture counts many of the major telcos among it clients as a big advantage, allowing the company to offering insight into the requirements demanded by the phone manufacturers' customers.

Industrialization is also key to realizing the benefits of moving software development to low cost countries. "We see many companies looking to low cost countries to reduce their software costs. When they do they often find that the contact cost is only part of the picture," says A. J. "It's not uncommon to find multi- billion dollar companies using small, off-shore shops to reduce costs, only to find that low cost also means their supplier does not have the project management and quality assurance skills necessary to realize the cost savings. More often than not, these companies spend the saving on ferrying their staff to and fro to keep deliveries to time and quality."

Using low cost development not only requires robust management practices to realize the benefits; it also needs the right approach to software design. A. J. points to a recent project where Accenture was asked to help a company that is building software on Symbian OS.

"We were originally approached to help this company find the best approach to moving software development off-shore," says A. J. "At first it appeared to be a classic management consulting gig, but eventually it became more about software architecture as our work highlighted the fact that this company's software needed architectural upgrading. There was no modularity, an essential feature to enable our client to efficiently move parts of its development to a low cost center."

A. J. also highlights a fascinating conundrum for the embedded software industry. "Most manufacturers are taking a platform approach to embedded software," says A. J. "However a platform approach also builds in certain costs. This creates a challenge for manufacturers: how to make this approach work when addressing the global market. On the one hand they have high volume, price sensitive markets in emerging markets, such as India and China; on the other hand they have to address feature sensitive markets in the US and Europe."

A. J. believes the skills offered by Accenture can help companies working with Symbian OS address many of these challenges. "Symbian OS is a critical component in enabling phone manufacturers to deliver quality products in a timely fashion," says A. J. "It provides the essential standard platform on which to build products. However, effectively using Symbian OS requires a range of skills: product engineering, project and supplier management, integration, and user interface design, to name a few. At Accenture we have these skills and expect to be applying them to an increasing number of Symbian OS based projects in the future."

Accenture will be taking this message to the wider Symbian community at next week's Smartphone Show. For more information see www.accenture.com and www.symbiansmartphoneshow.com.