Alexey Smirnov's blog

I would like to share my experiences with Nokia 5800 which I own for almost a year now. It is well known that nowadays a cellphone is not just hardware but mostly software. Lots of interesting applications have been added to Ovi Store during this year. Here I will describe the favorite ones.

This is the homescreen of Nokia 5800. As you can see, it makes it possible to make shortcuts for your favorite applications. I have added Ovi Maps, Florin – a personal finance tracker, Snaptu - a homescreen replacement which offers widgets such as dictionary and Twitter timeline, and Wikipedia Reader widget.

I have been using a personal finance tracker that I wrote myself previously for two years. It makes it possible to set financial goals and achieve them. My software was implemented in Qt port to Symbian – basically it was just one form where I could enter the data and then the data was stored in a file. I also created a web page which provided a query form to generate various reports. Actually, I liked my application except that there were too few expense categories (for example Travel category did not specify which means of transportation was used) as well as my application was lacking the automatic synchronization with web backend.

Then I found Florin and I was impressed with its nice and clean UI. Another impressive feature is its two-tier expense category hierarchy. It is even possible to add custom expense categories. It is possible to generate reports for any given date range. The report gives you the total amount of money spent in each category. But there are a few problems in this application which make it nice but not perfect. For example, it is not possible to delete an expense item once you have entered it even though there is a button for doing so. Deleting an item messes up the statistics. Another problem is that the application has no web backend or even Export feature. What should I do once I decide to upgrade my Nokia 5800 to Nokia 97? How can I take the data with me?

Snaptu is a replacement for your homescreen. It takes into account the social nature of today’s interactions. Its most important widget located in the top-left corner is Twitter. I like to read my timeline when I have a short break but before I did not have a Twitter client installed on my Nokia 5800. However, Snaptu is not just a twitter client. It has games as well, for example Sudoku. There is another valuable widget – a dictionary which I use whenever I read Economist magazine or art books. Quite often I find unfamiliar words which I have to look up in a dictionary. Snaptu offers lots and lots of widgets. I wonder if it is possible to write your own widgets.

Wikipedia is what you use when you need more than just the definition of a word. It is such a valuable source of information. This widget is doing a great job on adapting the intertwined content of Wikipedia website to the size of a mobile device screen. Easy to use application.

Last but not least – e-book reader! These days every company thinks it needs to sell an e-book reader. I never thought that it is possible to fit any reasonable amount of text in a reasonable font size on the screen of a cellphone unless it is a bigger Maemo series device or an IPad. But this book reading application does the trick. Actually, this software comes from an electronic book supply company. This mobile application is only one form of e-book distribution. EReader website says that it is the largest e-book store. Once you register on the web site you can start buying the books using your credit card.

I have attended Mobile Dev Camp. It was an event that included presentations from all major mobile vendors as well as workshops. To me it looks like it was targeted to younger developers as the level of the presentations was introductory. The funny thing was that organizers announced a development contest 48 hours before the conference. The topic of this application contest was outdoors. I did not participate because I thought I could not create a usable application within such short time. But in one category the winner has created an application while he was sitting in the conference. This means that there was almost no competition but the prizes were quite good. In each vendor category a new phone was offered as the prize. For example in the Apple category an iPad was awarded.

The conference started with a Nokia presentation in which Qt framework was described. This is a cross-platform development framework. A number of new features was described including Smart installer for Symbian that allows to add dependencies from your applications similar to debian packaging. Also changes were promised to Ovi Store which is now open for contribution only if you are a company. Obviously, it will become possible for individual developers to upload their apps to Ovi Store soon. It was recommended that developers take a close look at WebKit because it makes porting applications easy. However, later during the day the participants of a panel described the difficulties involved in porting WebKit applications because of lack of standards. But WebKit makes it possible to use native APIs from your web pages. For example if you want to find a pizza restaurant near YOU then you need to ask your device what is your current location and then use Ovi Maps API with those coordinates to display a map in the browser.

Another interesting presentation was that of Jürgen Scheible, the author of Mobile Python book. He described a number of tools such as Pluthon – python using Eclipse. It turns out that Python is available on touch devices nowadays. Jurgen mentioned that during his 3-5 day workshops people learn to program games involving touch gestures and animation. That’s a great achievement as teaching people to program is a challenging task.

There was a presentation dedicated to Microsoft Phone 7 system. As always, Microsoft has impressed the attendees of the conference with a game console available in its workshop room. I remember that when I attended another conference dedicated to Microsoft Mobile OS there was a whole Formula-1 simulator in that building! The new mobile OS looks quite impressive. They are saying that their goal is to add a 3rd dimension to the 2D screen of a mobile phone. That 3rd dimension comes from animations and effects, and therefore the new Microsoft Phone OS has lots of those.

In the Ericsson presentation the importance of a web browser was stressed. In particular, this company is developing web background service which allows the browser to perform tasks while in the background. They have also implemented a notification system as part of the browser. I guess they are moving in the direction of implementing a whole browser-based OS.

To summarize, the attendees of Mobile Dev Camp had an opportunity to meet with representatives of all major mobile vendors and listen to their ideas on the future of mobile technology. It is surprising that each company has its own view on this subject, thus we can expect lots of competition and interesting ideas implemented in the next generation of mobile devices.

I have started using Nokia Sports Tracker that works on my new 5800 device. Here is an example of a workout that I did yesterday.

The application has two parts: a web-based analysis tool and a mobile part that runs on your phone. The former uses GPS to track your current location and measure speed, distance, etc. After you are done with your workout you can upload the data to the web to share it with others or analyze it.

Very useful application indeed except that when running longer distances such as half-marathon I get wet and the moisture can damage the phone as it happened to me earlier.

I have got Nokia 5800 – a touchscreen phone with a lot of nice features:

• 8GB of memory
• 3.2MP camera
• GPS

Doom has been ported to S60. An episode consisting of multiple levels is available for free.

This is a graphics editor. Thus, the gadget becomes a touch pad. I was surprised to discover how easy it is to draw using a stylus compared to using a mouse.

Development for S60 has become more convenient as well. I have implemented the expense tracker, the program that I am using on a daily basis. Previously, it was web-based. I used Qt for S60. Qt is a portable GUI framework. Previously it was available on Linux, Windows, MacOS. But now it is available on mobile as well. The development is surprisingly easy. You only need to take the project profile for the desktop version and use Carbide IDE export feature. The project is converted to mobile application automatically.

Web browser is nearly as good as the desktop version. It is possible to play Flash video such as YouTube. It is obvious now that mobile HTML will cease to exist as full-fledged HTML support has been implemented on mobile devices.

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I am opening up a project that I was working on in my spare time during last month. It is called Weather forecast on the homescreen of a Nokia mobile device.

The homescreen of a mobile phone is designed to list upcoming meetings and to-do notes. However, there is extra space that is often empty. It is often necessary to get certain information such as weather forecast. Placing it on the homescreen allows to access it immediately.

The idea behind the implementation is to add an RSS feed with weather forecast to user’s Google calendar. After that, the user will use a synchronization software that inserts the entries to the mobile’s device calendar. They appear as to-do notes which are displayed on the homescreen automatically.

As of now, the project generates weather forecasts only. But it is possible to display any type of information such as train schedule, stocks, top stories, etc. using this approach.

http://weather.alexeysmirnov.name

I have installed lots of applications on my Nokia phone. Nowdays I cannot think my life without a few of them such as Qik and Mobile TV.

Developing for a mobile platform was always different from desktop programming. There has been a number of efforts to facilitate transition from desktop to mobile programming, for example scripting languages. Python has been ported long time ago to Symbian. Now Ruby is available as well.

The download includes binaries – the Ruby engine, the frontend, and examples. There is an example that captures a video and an image – very similar to what Qik does. I am now quite convinced that with knowledge of a scripting language mobile programming is not that difficult. It is only a matter of choice whether to use Python or Ruby.

It so happened that I have not developed in either of these languages. When I am developing for the web I am using PHP and JavaScript. Obviously, PHP is the most popular language, lots of web software is written in it, each hosting provider allows to use PHP on their web site. It looks like Ruby is increasing its share in the scripting languages market at a very fast pace. Therefore, I should learn Ruby to develop for desktop, web, and mobile altogether. However, there is lots of interesting applications in which Python is necessary. For example, Google Apps uses Python.

It is funny how essential these scripting languages are nowdays. They are modern equivalent of UNIX command line tools such as sed and awk. Being able to program in those languages is an essential attribute of a geek.

I have found out that Mobile TV is available at Sonera, the mobile operator that I am using. Previously, I was doubtful that watching TV on a cellphone is an enjoyable experience. Now I think that this is a very cool feature.

In part this is because of lack of TV in my house. After relocating to the new apartment I was busy buying furniture so I did not have an opportunity to subscribe to TV service. After trying out mobile TV it looks like I will not need common TV anymore. Having it mobile has a number of advantages, most importantly that it is always with you. I am waking up in the morning to watch BBC news in my bed. Then I am having breakfast in the kitchen and I listen to music channel meanwhile. The cellphone is near me on the dining table. Of course, it is also possible to watch mobile TV on a bus stop. Basically, it is like a music/video player but it is constantly updated with latest news.

Sonera subscription is 9.90 Euros/month. After you download the application and agree to pay the subscription cost, a selection of channels dialog box appears:

Once you select a channel, buffering takes place. This is the only disadvantage compared to traditional TV. Channel switching takes a lot of time because of buffering. As you can see, service is available in a number of bitrates.

Finally, the show begins. Of course, horizontal layout is better than vertical so lets go to menu to change it:

Here is what a full-screen view looks like. The image quality of this particular frame is not very good but the refresh rate is like that on a standard TV. Thus, when the pictures are seen in motion the image quality is quite acceptable, even though it is not as good as on a standard TV.

A very interesting application. I could not imaging that S60 application programming allows to go to that systems level. That is, S60 is not restricted to the application logic only.

I have taken a few screenshots. Here is what my desktop looks like:

Here is project web page.

I have been playing around with Nokia E65 and I totally agree that mobile applications is a new platform. For this particular phone, there are a number of possibilities to develop applications. Beyond traditional Java, there is Symbian C++, OpenC, Abode Flash, and Python. I have downloaded and installed a few applications. Below I will describe those that I found useful.

• Yahoo Go – an environment that allows to work with Yahoo services from your cellphone. In addition to e-mail, it has maps, news, and most importantly Flickr. That latter allows to upload pictures from a cellphone camera directly to your online photo gallery. Among the drawbacks is the lack of local search in the maps.
• Google Maps – an innovative feature of Google Maps Mobile is a GPS without the device. Basically, it is using signal strength information from the towers to find out your current location with a certain degree of accuracy, around 1km. I believe that this type of accuracy is enough in a road environment, for example if you are looking for an exit on a highway. However, I also found it useful in a city because in practice the coordinates are computed with the accuracy of a few blocks. From that point you can easily search around for a specific location.
• Reuters News – this software displays news in a very convenient fashion. Could you expect that news on a cellphone would look more attractive than they do on a computer screen? There are a number of contributing factors to the usefulness of this application. First, it has a very neat interface where everything is moving around smoothly. Secondly, it displays a news article one paragraph at a time. To go to the next paragraph you have to press right arrow key. I have not seen this per-block information representation previously. The benefit of this approach is getting rid of notorious scrolling feature when you scroll down one line at a time. In this sense it is similar to a PgDn key on a computer keyboard which is certainly missing on a cellphone.

I am continuing to hack my E65. I have installed Python but so far I am unable to upload compiled scripts to it. Also, I have not used Python previously, thus I am not taking full advantage of this technology yet. Flash is another interesting possibility. I have played around with a weather application. It has a very neat interface. But again, I have not created Flash applications previously. Finally, I will find out what OpenC gives to a developer.