Harri Salminen's Forum Nokia Blog

S60 browser goes iPhone

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:06:45 +0200

Sometimes I envy iPhone owners. It doesn't help that my phone - unlike iPhone - has an open platform, tons of 3rd party applications, embedded GPS, good camera, 3,5G connections etc. What my phone doesn't have is the marketing buzz that pushes major web sites to make special optimized pages for iPhone users. I'm a big fan of Google's solutions and when they launched a special service for iPhone, I made a quick software hack and changed the N95 browser to introduce itself as iPhone's browser. Result was somewhat surprising. Both phones have a browser with a common core (I've been told) and AJAX support, so my guess was that pages made for iPhone would work just fine with N95. However, that was not quite the case: iPhonesque Google-pages in S60 don't every time draw completely and some items seem to be missing.

What I can see from iPhonesque pages is that pages designed for iPhone are easier to read and they are visually more pleasing. Take a look at screenshots below for comparison; original S60 page left, iPhonesque right. Perhaps the biggest visual change was on Picasa services (however, no screenshots about that - family pics kept hidden).

~~For those of you who want to try "iPhone on S60", I can send an unsigned SIS-file to you.~~

Update: I managed to upload the sis file here unsigned_S60_iPhone.sis

Note that you must sign it with your developer certificate (this is also a good place to remind about updated Symbian Signed process and new capabilities if you have publisher ID) including capabilities ReadDeviceData WriteDeviceData NetworkControl SwEvent NetworkServices LocalServices ReadUserData WriteUserData UserEnvironment. SIS-file supports S60 3rd edition feature pack 1. When you get the SIS installed, go to www.google.com/m and see how the look-and-feel changes.

Update 17.12.2007

Thanks for all the comments and questions about this prototype; there has been quite a traffic at this blog site and also on my email boxes. Here are some answers to questions I have gathered from different comments.

Why must I have a Publisher ID to be able to install this file?
This is not a requirement that I can influence. Symbian developers are (painfully) familiar with the concept of signing and capabilities, but based on comments a quick tutorial to capabilities seems like a good idea. So here it comes: when you develop anything nontrivial to Symbian devices, you must be granted for application capabilities. For the most powerful (and fun) capabilities you must verify who you are in order to install those applications to your terminal.

In fact situation is now better than before: two weeks ago I couldn't have done this without a permission from "terminal manufacturer" and special business case reasoning. Luckily new Symbian Signed process gives more capabilities to developers (more about this on my other blog entries)

Come on, why I must pay $200 to get a Publisher ID?
Sorry, this is again something that I cannot change nor avoid.

Application is broken and cannot be installed to my XYZ terminal. Installer says "Required application access not granted"
This happens because you didn't sign the application with certificate that has enough capabilities.

What capabilities are needed to install this application?
ReadDeviceData WriteDeviceData NetworkControl SwEvent NetworkServices LocalServices ReadUserData WriteUserData UserEnvironment

I cannot get enough capabilities to my certificate. NetworkControl is missing from the list!
You haven't selected your Publisher ID at certificate request tool.

I don't have a Publisher ID and I cannot install the application. What am I missing now?
Not much, this was only a prototype solution. As I wrote, Google's pages don't draw OK and I haven't systematically tried other sites. Although it is easy to see from press releases that iPhone optimized sites are becoming more and more popular.

I like my S60 terminal, why should I identify my browser as iPhone?
This is a good one. S60 terminals outsell iPhone but still iPhone gets all the attention from website owners. If they are ready to make special versions for iPhone minority, wouldn't it make sense to optimize sites also for S60?

I think the answer is yes.

Now, dear readers, it is your turn: stand up, make noise and contact your favorite website administrators. Tell them that tens of millions S60 users are waiting to get better service than dull text based pages from last millennium. iPhone users already see those pages.

//Harri

Mind the battery

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:12:17 +0300

Last weekend I had a small vacation, took cheap flight and visited a new city. While enjoying the sights of Riga I made a field test
with my N93, trying to use it in as "converged" fashion as I could. So I packed my device with

Fring to call home
Smart2Go to locate myself
Nokia Sports Tracker to later see where I have been
ShoZu to share and geotag pictures

and of course I used N93's browser, messaging, camera and WLAN connectivity with the applications listed above.

The experiment started fine and one by one I got every application to work. When I let the applications run simultaneously the problems started: sudden terminal reboots, memory low messages, lost pictures. Well, I had been expecting problems with memory consumption, after all there were lots of stuff to keep in RAM. Also I was prepared to see shortened battery life because of Bluetooth and WLAN usage, but the result was much worse than I had expected: the device battery ran empty 4 hours after it had been disconnected from the charger. With my typical use with lots of talking and messaging the terminal keeps going for days without a battery recharge. In this small test "convergence" became "denial of service" when empty battery made device useless for the rest of the day.

Here is my humble request to all of you, fellow developers: please keep in mind battery usage when designing the next killer application. If your application dries the battery within an hours, your application is really a killer, but only a terminal killer.

E or N-Series; what's the diffrence?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:37:42 +0200

Some days ago Gabor Torok wrote in his blog about his intentions to buy an E-series terminal but buying an N-series device instead. After reading about his experiences I began to wonder what are the "hidden" differences between E and N series devices. So I took E60 and N93 and started to compare those with intention to find out the differences that are not mentioned at the Forum Nokia device specs.

The result was that although there are some differences "Enterprise terminal" and "Multimedia computer" are not very far from each other - which is of course not a big surprise because both are running the same platform.

Here are the differences I found:

E60 has reply-to setting for IMAP accounts
E60 can display email headers on active idle screen
Message item listing for E60 can be displayed either 1 or 2 rows high
E60 has IP-passthrough option for USB-connection
N93 has image printing and media player options for USB-connection
N93 can synchronize bookmarks with SyncML
Application installer for E60 will reject unsigned applications by default
E60 has VPN, Internet telephony and instant messaging applications
E60 has Navigation and Landmark applications
E60 has Voice aid application
E60 has Screen export application to send screen contents to data projector whereas N93 has TV-out
E60 has printing application with support for network printers
Terminals have different applications installable from Catalogs application. For example: E60 has complimentary subscription to WorldMate

Finally a note about SyncML client in both devices: it will not accept an encrypted connection to server if server's root certificate is not installed to terminal. Instead of seeing the familiar "This site has sent an untrusted certificate..." the application just displays "Server not responding" and cancels the synchronization. Thanks to common platform this "undocumented feature" appears in both devices.

Have you noticed some other (non-obvious) differences between these devices?

Synchronizing data between S60 devices

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:17:41 +0200

Today when I was browsing the Internet for the latest news on mobile ecosystem, I clicked some link and was thrown to s60.com. It had been quite a while since I last time visited that site and I must admit that there has been a major facelift for the site. My previous experience was that s60.com had just some generic S60 presentations copied from various Nokia websites, but after today's visit I'm sure I'll check that site more often to see how S60 is marketed to public.

One of the most interesting parts of the site were the blogs. There was an exciting entry about phone-to-phone synchronization, which I had thought is only for PIM data. However, users can synchronize any data between the terminals and - this is the best part - it easy for developers. Just write your files to C:DataNokia or E:Nokia to get them synchronized. Read the original entry for more details.

If this feature really works, I can see many possible cases where phone-to-phone synchronization can support and extend the phone-to-server sync. And nice thing is that it doesn't require complex server infrastructure to start experimenting.