Wendong’s Smart Phone Weblog

Symbian is celebrating its 10 years anniversary. On Symbian site there is an interactive timeline you can quickly browse through the Symbian history. It is fun and brings back a lot of memories. I am surprised that Nokia 3650 is not there. That is the first Symbian phone I ever used in 2003. It is the first MMS phone in US (?) and the first Java handset with MMAPI support. After that I remember Sony Ericsson P800, P900, Nokia 6600, Nokia 9500 and a few newer E Series and N Series.

The reason that I pick Symbian (Nokia S60 in particular) device as my personal cell phone is that it is the best developer handset you can ever get. With Nokia’s upcoming N96 for example, you can develop software for it with:

• Java (CLDC/MIDP,eSWT)
• Symbian C++ and Open C
• Python
• Flash Lite 3.0
• SilverLight Mobile
• Nokia WRT Widget

That is just the official supported list. With 3rd party solution, you can add Visual Basic .NET and other options to the list.

If you are a developer who are interested in mobile development, there is no other device can even come close to Symbian’s openness and wide language options. As a normal user, more development options for developer means more cool, open and free applications available.

Symbian is experiencing some growing pain now. Palm OS, a mobile platform with almost the same age as Symbian, is dying and rebirthing. I am glad to see Symbian OS is still very strong and innovative. I wish it the best.

Samsung Instinct is believed to be an iPhone Killer. I have seen all kind of commercials on the Web, on TV and movie theater. Sprint will sponsor a developer contest for this upcoming device:

The Instinct Java Developer Contest will be open for registrations soon after public launch of the Samsung Instinct device. You will have the chance to enter and win a Grand Prize of $20,000 cash plus a free membership to the Sprint Professional Developer Program (PDP). The total approximate retail value (ARV) of the Grand Prize is $25,000.

The Java capability of this handset is very impressive:

MIDP 2.0 / CLDC 1.1
MVM (Multi-tasking Virtual Machine)
JSR-75 (File Connection)
JSR-75 (PIM)
JSR-82 (Bluetooth)
JSR-120 (Text Message)
JSR-135 (MultiMedia)
JSR-177 (Security-Crypto)
JSR-179 (location API)
JSR-184 (3D-graphics)
JSR-185 (JTWI)
JSR-226 (Scalable vector graphics)
JSR-234 (Advanced Mobile Media API)
JSR-248 (MSA SubSet) (except JSR 205)
Qualcomm Location API
Sprint PCS Java Class Extensions v2.1
Sprint Device Status API
Sprint Device External LCD API
Sprint Media v1.0 Extension
Sprint Muglet v1.0 Extension
Sprint System v2.1 Extension
Sprint Location Extension API

Image from widgetslab.com

A while ago, Microsoft announced that Nokia and Microsoft will work together to put Silverlight on Nokia devices. This includes Nokia S60, Series 40 and Internet Tablet (Maemo) devices. That news alone positions Silverlight as the biggest competitor for Adobe Flash Lite. Java FX Mobile from Sun seems will take longer time to become reality, although Sun had demoed it on Java ME and Android devices.

Weatherbug has a Silverlight Mobile version at http://sl.weatherbug.com. It works on desktop browser too. You will need install Silverlight if you do not have that.

Via the iPhone Blog

Short story:
Last weekend I moved the content of my old Java ME open source software site to a new Open Source Softwares for Mobile Phone blog. Initially it will be focused on Java (Java ME, Android), but will be extended to other major platforms like Symbian, Windows Mobile, even iPhone.

Long story:
I have been maintaining a collection of Java ME open source projects since 2004. That site contains simple HTML pages, which are cumbersome to update. I was thinking about overhauling it for quite a while. My first thought is to use a Digg like software, so everybody can register and submit project. I tried both Pligg and PHPDug. Pligg is feature-rich and powerful. But theme selection is still small. Customizing it by myself could be time-consuming (I am not a web design guy). PHPDug is small and simple. Theme customization should be doable. After I tried it, I found that its pages are heavily based on tables. It is still a little buggy and does not contain all the features I would like to have.

So now I am back to WordPress. Comparing to Pligg and PHPDug, the advantage is obvious. It has a large amount of free themes/plugins available. It has a large user community. It supports tag, category and search, which I need the most. And I used it for this blog since 2004. Thus I could focus on the content not the software configuration.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about open source Java ME projects before. Without your help, I could not build this list myself. At this moment it has 156 (Java ME) projects and will keep growing!