S60 Open to new features

Recently Forum Nokia published Extensions plug-in for S60 3rd Edition C++ SDK. Behind the not-so-informative name are actually Symbian Multimedia Framework (MMF) APIs that were removed from the S60 SDK in 3rd Edition.

Here is a worthy competitor to Nokia's Podcasting application from Melodeo: Mobilcast. It's a Java application and should run on any newish S60 terminal, though they mention only some of them as officially supported. I ignored the warnings, installed on Nokia N91 and it went without a hitch.

I did a search for 'S60' and was almost instantly listening Voice of S60. This is how things should work always! :)

(via: Scobleizer)

-Jukka

Wow, it seems S60 devices are finally being recognised also as capable portable video players. TiVo has started to offer a $24.95 upgrade to its free TiVo Desktop PC software. Users of Desktop Plus can transfer stored content from a TiVo receiver to portable media players like iPod, Treos and now also multimedia-centric S60 devices.

I trust this is the start of a trend. Software vendors need to start providing tools that enable effortless conversion of video content into S60 devices as well as iPods, PSPs and the like. The problem with S60 products is that there are many different configurations with different performance figures. Those need to be figured out, and suitable profiles created. This sounds more complicated than it is, for example most Nokia Nseries devices share the exact same video capabilities regardless of S60 edition. It would also help if manufacturers like Nokia would start publishing the performance details in their technical specifications (like this).

Living in Finland, I don't obviously have a TiVo so I can't try this out. In current version what puzzles me most is why there is only Nokia N80 included? If codec being used is AVC/H.264 there is many more products that could have been included as well. If it's plain MPEG-4 there would be over 10 additional models to add!

If you have an S60 device and Desktop Plus, it would be most interesting to hear any comments.

-Jukka

Did you notice the guys making the new Eclipse-based IDE for S60 have a blog also? It's not yet been correctly linked from our other blogs, that's a shame..

Check out the latest post on Platform Security:

Anyway, things we're going to be looking at are...
- Scanning used APIs during buildtime, and creating a report of which capabilities are being accessed (API-to-Capability-to-API mapping)
- Ability to change the certificate used for the build, so quick testing of capabilities is possible
- Integrating the Symbian signing and pre-certification testing tools into the process

Sounds good, right? Head over there and give your comments!

-Jukka

Nokia's Podcasting application (limited to podcatching at the moment) is out in beta, for Nokia N91 & all the other S60 3rd Edition devices. WLAN or flat-rate data plan is highly recommended.

Although it's marketed primarily to listen audio podcasts nothing prevents subscribing to vodcasts as well. The problem with video feeds is that not all of them are formatted to be playable on mobile phones (or multimedia computers). Nokia Podcasting does a good job of trying to check the video before downloading, hence saving the trouble from the user. Even if there would be a problem viewing the video on the device, there is still the choice to download (and "sideload" to PC for watching). There is also a handy option to preview the video while it's still being downloaded.

In my experience surprisingly many of the vodcasts out there work, but there is really no way of telling before trying. For producers of videocasts, I have a few "lowest common denominators" to enable most of the 3rd Edition devices:
- MPEG-4 SP video
- AAC-LC audio
- 3GP or MP4 file format
- CIF resolution (352x288)
- max 512kbps bitrate
- max 15fps framerate
(NB. This leaves out Nokia 3250, 5500 and E50 since they don't support MPEG-4)

It's beta stuff, so any comments are highly welcome!

--

Updated 19.6.2006:
Re-wrote most of the post, after checking with the final version. Sorry about that.

-Jukka

In case you didn't notice this whitepaper at S60.com, here is a short summary of what's new for Java multimedia developers in next version of 3rd Edition:

- new API: Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API (JSR-226)
- new API: Advanced Multimedia Supplements API (JSR-234)
- new API version: Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR-184) version 1.1
- new features in API: Mobile Media API (JSR-135) including new controls and support for HTTP streaming (Shoutcast, anyone?)

Java Platform for S60 3rd Edition whitepaper

-Jukka

(aka. there is a difference between signed and Symbian Signed)

Today's subject is not really multimedia, but general Symbian 9.x stuff. Nor is it sexy or cool, but rather controversial.

S60 3rd Edition requires all Symbian applications to be signed, that's one of the bigger changes that came with Symbian 9.1 operating system. This has led to some confusion among developers, who think they need to apply for a certificate (which costs money and takes time) even to be able to show a 'Hello world' on the screen. This was very confusing for me too for some time, but now I got it. Hope this helps somebody out there.

Another essential piece of software, C2Doom makes its way to the 3rd Edition. Still in beta, and I couldn't get it running on Nokia 3250. Anyone more lucky?

(Error message was 'Error: W_InitFiles: no files found'. Something to do with it not finding the WAD file? I put it on E:\wads as instructed.)

-Jukka

Just a quick note, I didn't try it out myself (where did I put that 3250..). The original release had some problems with Nokia 3250, due to different hardware configuration (my guess). I expect these fixes to have a positive effect on Nokia 5500 and E50 as well, although they both have a different display resolution (208x208 and QVGA, respectively). If someone is trying out with those two mentioned, let us know!

SmartMovie

(spotted via My-Symbian)

-Jukka