First of all, let me say Congratulations! to Series 60 for the big improvement to the new generation, Series 60 5th Edition. Today I will bring you through this great thing. (All images in this blog entry were captured from Series 60 5th Edition SDK Emulator)

First Opening

  When you launch device for first time, same as earlier version, you have to select region and set date/time.

  Welcome to Active Idle screen!

  This theme is too bright. I don't like it, so let me change the theme...

  OK! Much better! It's nice looking now. ^_^

  User Interface

  Generally, user interface doesn't change much. It still has Status Pane at the top of screen and Softkey Pane at the bottom of screen but there is one additional pane above the Softkey Pane. It contains some amount of menu icons for the application.

  Let see what is the icon in that Menu Pane mean. (I'm not sure that in official it's called Menu Pane or another)

  Swirly Button

     Familiar? Yeah, now swirly key has been moved to active idle screen already.

  Dial Keypad Button

     Bring up the Dial Keypad.

   Profiles Button

     Open Profiles application.

 Basic Applications

  Press Swirly Button, the familiar menu screen will appear.

  Familiar but much more fantastic, right? ;) Now, Let touch some icon to launch application. The first one I'm going to show you is...Contacts.

  Now, let create new contact by press the right most button on Menu Pane or Options -> New Task. (In my opinion, it's quite user friendly. It's very similar to S60 3rd Edition. I don't need to learn anything.)

  Type in the name in First Name box by touch at First Name field.

  Huh?!? What's that. Oh, it's the new input method called Alphanumeric Keyboard. Actually there are 4 input methods in Series 60 5th Edition. I will write about them in the next part.

  Umm, it supports so many languages. Very interesting...

   Fill inthe First name and Mobile phone number and then press Done.

   Result

   Now I try to add my thumbnail to my contact information.

   Nice UI! I like it.

   Next application I'm going to show you is... Calendar.

   There is additional area at the lower of screen. This area is used for showing the calendar entries.

   Next app is Gallery.

   You can notice that there are so many major changes of Gallery from the S60 3rd Edition. Every entries have been showed in Grid.

   The thing that I like most of Gallery application is you can Edit Image.

   You can add effects as you want. Cool! I like this feature much.

   One more thing that is very interesting is wmv file is fully supported.

   Next is Camera. Camera UI come in the landscape view like in S60 3rd Edition.

   So many effects still be there.

   Music Player

    The buttons are so big. It's very user friendly for touch based UI.The interesting thing in Music Player application is you can seek through the file using the timeline at the center of screen.

    Last one, Web Browser.

    (Sorry that I opened my native language website so the text inside may be unreadable)

    I must admit that I'm very impressive on this generation of Web Browser. It can render nearly perfect (or may be perfect already!)

    You can zoom in/out easily using your finger.

    This new generation of Web Browser come with many interesting options and user friendly UI.

    Let see what you get when you change screen mode to Full Screen and Landscape mode. Very great!

    This is the most important factor for me to buy Nokia 5800. Big Screen, Perfect Rendering. Wow!

Input Methods

    This will be the last part I will write about Series 60 5th Edition.The Input Methods. As I said above, there are 4 input methods in Series 60 5th Edition. Let's see one by one.

Alphanumeric Keypad

  It's on screen keypad. You are still able to use T9 in this mode.

Mini QWERTY Keyboard

   It's a small QWERTY on screen keyboard. This is the only mode that you can see the application while typing. While you press any key in keyboard, there will be some popup called Character Preview show above that key. This will help you to type more accurate.

   One more thing about this mode is you can move on screen keyboard anywhere you want using the top right button on on screen keyboard.

Full screen QWERTY Keyboard

   When you select this input method, the screen will change to landscape mode automatically.

   In my opinion, it's the most suitable input mode for touch based UI like Series 60 5th Edition.

   By the way, there is Character Preview in this mode too.

Handwriting

   Touch Screen and Handwriting are always come along. ;)

Wow, this is quite long article (and quite hard for me to write it with my bad English skill. ^^")

Hope these information is useful. :)

Good luck, Series 60!

- Sittiphol Phanvilai

Dear All,

It's quite been a long time that MobiTubia, FLV Player and YouTube Client for Series 60 phone, have been launched. Today, I decided to open source some part of MobiTubia. It's called "MobiFLV", an open source version of FLV Player for Symbian, which is build for developer especially. You can download source code from "Source Code" section of mobitubia.com right now!

I deeply hope that the publication of MobiFLV will drive the mobile market more or less. :)

By the way, Talk to the Guru section in the topic "Expand S60 ability" still open for discussion. If you have anything to ask me, please feel free to discuss in that section.

Best Regards,
Sittiphol Phanvilai
Forum Nokia Champion and MobiTubia Developer

Be honor to be invited from Forum Nokia to host a Talk to the Guru session this month.

I am happy to discuss with all of you in the topic "Discuss Innovative Ways to Expand S60 on Symbian Phone Ability".

Let's discuss about innovative ways to make your Symbian device more than mobile phone! I am happy to talk about my old projects, MobiTubia, MosKillTo, NeuTouch, NeuScreen, Neu360, NeuPen, etc., and also my near future projects, NeuKeyboard and ... FLV Player Open Source! Sure I never revealed it anywhere. Here is the first place. ;)

And here is video demonstration of one of my projects.

Let's share the idea and make the world move forward together.

Looking forward to discussing with all of you. :)
Sittiphol

Hi,

It's time to reveal the secret behind my 4th "Neu" project, an N95 Touch Screen project. It's hardware development project like my Neu360. Please see the video below.

YouTube:

DailyMotion:

- Sittiphol Phanvilai

Hi,

It's impossible to use Touch Screen on Nokia N95? If you think so, please see the video below with my 4th "Neu" project.

YouTube:

DailyMotion:

- Sittiphol Phanvilai

Hi,

It's time to give you the secret behind Neu360.

This is an hardware development project. However as I said, it's not a big project so please don't hope too much ^^".

Please see the video below.

YouTube:

DailyMotion:

See you again tomorrow with another "Neu" project.

 - Sittiphol Phanvilai

Hi,

Today I come to give you some information about my new "Neu" project. Let's see the video below.

I can't tell you now what it is but don't too serious on it. It's not a big project. ^^

Hi all,

It's me again, Sittiphol Phanvilai. Thank you very much for very great feedback with my NeuTouch. I can't explain how happy I am. :)

Today I come to show you my new research project I just finished developing yesterday. It's called NeuScreen, a multitouch screen engine using Nokia N95. No more any other computer need. Sound similar to NeuTouch? Yes, but this project requires no box. Moreover, you can interact directly with tv screen.

Million words can't describe one picture, so please see the video demonstration below by your own eyes. Hope you like it.

If you have any comment or suggestion please feel free to leave comment here.

Best Regards,
Sittiphol Phanvilai
Bangkok, Thailand

PS. Sorry for bad English accent in video. If you don't understand any words don't hesitate to ask me.

Video in YouTube: 

Video in DailyMotion:

I just finish developing my new research project named "NeuTouch". It's MultiTouch engine using real time image processing on N95. Everything operate on N95. No other computer device need.

This is video demonstration I made. Let see.

Hi again all,

My name is Sittiphol Phanvilai, Developer of MobiTubia, the YouTube client for Series 60 phone.

I just released MosKillTo, the new innovative game fully controlled by Accelerometer in Nokia N95, N82 and N93i. It had been selected as finalist of Mobile Rules'08 competition but unfortunately that it couldn't win any prize because I couldn't go to present my game at awards ceremony.

About the game, MosKillTo is the 3D game fully powered by Nokia N95 accelerometer. With NeuEye© engine capability together with flawless game coding will give players a control experience they have never had before. You can look around 3D world without any key pressing. In game, you will be equipped with laser guns and their mission is to wipe out all annoying mosquitos.

You can download demo version with 2 stages at http://www.neuvex.com/products/moskillto/

I wanna explain more details about it but so sorry that I can't because my English is so bad. However, if you wanna read review you can go to Symbian-Freak and SymbianWebBlog.

Hope you like it.

Sittiphol Phanvilai

Hello fellow Forum Nokia Champions. I am so proud to say that! My success with the MobiTubia application in the Open C Challenge got me accepted as a Forum Nokia Champion, and I want to share some of my experience with you.

I am a student studying for my Masters Degree in the Department of Computer Engineering at Chulalongkorn University, http://www.chula.ac.th/chula/en/visitor/brief_en.html Thailand's first institution of higher learning. I am also a Symbian Application Developer and have developed more than 10 Symbian applications. The one I am most proud of is “ZThai”, a full Thai language localization system for Symbian 6.1 and Symbian 7.0s. It is bundled with Nokia 7610 and Nokia 3230 in Thailand.

This was not first time I tried to develop an application like MobiTubia for Symbian. I had tried to do it before but I failed since it was really hard to port a Linux application to Symbian C++. That time, I used a full month but there was no sign of completeness. I thought that it might take more than 6 months to complete it.

Then came Open C, and in 10 weeks my MobiTubia project was finished and was sent to join the competition an hour before deadline. It was a really tiring period for me, then I waited for judging. I did not expect much but I checked email every day. At last I got an email from the Open C Challenge team “Congratulations, you are the finalist of Open C Challenge”.

I was silent for a big while. I can’t explain how happy I was but I can say that it was the happiest time of my life. Contents in that email also said that I was invited to join “Nokia World 2007” at Amsterdam. http://www.nokia.com/A4423681 Being invited to join Nokia World in Amsterdam was really an honor for me. It was my first time going abroad alone and also my first time in using English in real life.

From that day, I worked on the necessary things for judging such as a PowerPoint Presentation and Video Presentation. I just knew that programming was much easier than these things.( LOL)

The awards evening was the most excited time ever for me. When announcing time came, Lee Epting, Vice President of Forum Nokia, called each finalist on stage one by one. At last, she announced my name and that I was the winner of this competition. I couldn’t stop shaking. It was the happiest moment of my life. I knew at that time why Miss Universe always cries on stage! (LOL) I couldn’t believe that a student like me can win a global competition like the Open C Challenge. I really overwhelmed.

After I won this competition, my life has changed quite much. I was contacted by many guys including operators and journalists. But more than anything else, the great experiences and many good friends I got from Forum Nokia Open C Challenge will keep those great times in my mind forever. Now I need to get back to my studies, but this experience opens some great opportunities for me when I finish my degree.

MobiTubia is distributed as freeware right now in http://www.mobitubia.com.

Really thanks to Kevin Sharp for helping me edit the grammar in this post. :)

I believe that so many guys around here join the "Mobile Rules! Competition". I would like to inform all of you that the finalists of all tracks were announced 2 days ago. Please check at http://www.mobilerules.org