The Nokia PUSH N900 program [LWN.net]

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 5:54 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
Parent article: The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Nokia really needs to work on this issue! It seems that when innovative mobile apps are reported, it is always iPhone or Android these days, never Nokia. Example: Just after seeing this on LWN, BBC reported: "Mobile app sees science go global"("...The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles - on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species - in a web-based database..."). It reportedly works on Android, with IPhone coming later.

One reason probably is that Symbian/Series60 development has been seen as too cumbersome for non-professional mobile developers. Maemo hopefully fixes this.

to post comments

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 11:04 UTC (Thu) by batsys (guest, #54289) [Link] (2 responses)

I worked on Symbian/Series 60/80/90 for a number of years and it's definitely not for the faint hearted. While I don't want to cast aspertions on anyones abilities I would say that it is a major stumbling block for many developers. Getting Symbian approval was not easy either. As you say hopefully Maemo will help in this respect; it does seem easier to get started. Nokia need to ensure that getting approval for apps is a lot easier than in the past.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 17, 2009 16:08 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

Python on the S60 is pretty nice - full Python plus S60 libraries, though I only wrote a simple app to download and rename a file, with a confirmation message.

Getting apps approved and signed is a pain, but if you get a developer key you can sign your own apps - I got such a key but it was quite difficult to sort out.

The Nokia PUSH N900 program

Posted Sep 18, 2009 7:48 UTC (Fri) by batsys (guest, #54289) [Link]

I toyed with Python on S60 and yes it did speed up development by a factor of *lots. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to use it in-house for development, it had to be Symbian. I was down to do some Python examples for Nokia (we did a lot of the Symbian SDK examples) but left the company before it happened. I've not touched S60 (etc.) in anger since because I hated coding in Symbian so much. I'm looking forward to trying an N900 with Qt.