Nokia Developer News

In an increasingly competitive app landscape, it’s truly exciting to see developers surface and achieve real, global success. And this week, we saw just that happen. UTV Indiagames – India’s premier gaming company - has made history, and become the first developer to break through the 100 million downloads milestone in Nokia Store. More impressive, according to their founder and CEO Vishal Gondal, is that over 50 million new downloads have been driven in the past three months alone.

UTV Indiagames is a great example of a company which has worked to achieve success with Series 40 consumers through game genres such as Cricket, Bollywood, Casual and Action - not only in their home market, but also overseas. Their top performing countries are India, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia – truly, a global hit.

As head of Developer activities here at Nokia, I’m delighted not only to see this milestone reached, but to witness the power of localization in action. Their success underlines that the local approach is more important than ever. The combination of great locally relevant games, localized languages, and Nokia’s ability to merchandize or ‘surface’ apps through locally managed Nokia Store catalogues, has seen their popularity continually rise.

With a huge base of loyal consumers, UTV Indiagames have also leveraged Nokia’s key local monetization features.  The company offers 100 paid titles, and over 300 free ad-supported titles, thus ensuring consumers can enjoy games no matter what their payment means and abilities. The team is now looking to further expand payment options and consumer choice, with micro payments tailored to specific markets.

So what’s next? The UTV Indiagames team have their sights set on 1 billion downloads, and will focus on great games for Series 40 and Nokia Asha consumers, while also developing new games on the Windows Phone platform for Nokia Lumia consumers, which will be available in Marketplace soon.

The team at IndiaGames have brilliantly authored their success, and deserve their place in the history books. Today, with more than 100 million downloads being enjoyed by customers in all corners of the world, they set a new industry benchmark driving global success, locally.

Putting the user at the heart of your app designs is the key to creating winning apps. Our upcoming webinar walks you through a design example focusing on helping a user determine where they are, to facilitate the use of a location based application for Series 40 Touch and Type phones.

After giving an overview of the available methods for determining the user’s location, the webinar will discuss some of the fundamental drivers behind mobile app design, such as user mind set, use context, and small screen limitations.

The webinar will explore practical design implementations to enable the user to estimate their location, with a focus on the ways in which you can translate technology into an easy-to-use application.

The presentation concludes with an overview of the Series 40 UI design tools and services offered by Nokia to help you deliver winning app design.

Overall, this session guides you on how to make complex technology accessible to Series 40 users.

• Sign up for the first session (2 May, 7 am UTC) 
• Sign up for the second session 3 May, 3 pm UTC) 

A new browser for Series 40, Nokia Browser 2.0, is bringing a faster, better way to experience the web to Series 40.

The cloud-based servers powering Nokia Browser 2.0 reduce data consumption by up to 90%, all without compromising the user experience. Sites also load up to three times faster. It’s accomplished by using cloud-based caching and compression.

As well as a faster browsing experience, Nokia Browser 2.0 helps users save money on operator data costs. Users can control how they consume data, by monitoring the overall data usage for a browsing session, or altering the quality of the images being downloaded.

One-touch access to search, popular sites and web apps is also present in the new browser, as is one-click sharing on social networks, achieved by the browser remembering Facebook and/or Twitter logins.

The new browser supports all forms of Series 40 – Touch, QWERTY and non-touch. It is available for the newest Nokia Asha devices and other popular devices such as the Nokia C3-00, Nokia X3-02 and Nokia C2-03. It will be pre-loaded on all future Nokia Series 40 devices.

Nokia Browser 2.0 is a free, optional over-the-air download – http://store.nokia.com/content/51924

It is available in 87 languages in over 200 countries and territories.

The new browser is great news for developers creating web apps for Series 40. Nokia Browser 2.0 makes it easier for users to find, install and use your standards-based web apps for Series 40. Since its launch in 2011, Nokia Browser has supported web apps and it now boasts a catalogue of over 10,000 of the latest apps.

Your tool for building Series 40 web apps is Nokia Web Tools 

Learn more -  

Documentation

Code examples

Videos 

Calling all student developers in the US. College students. High school students. Heck even elementary student engineering whizzes.

Nokia Developer and Microsoft want to give you a flashy new Nokia Lumia 800 in exchange for two cool apps. 

Here’s how it works. Any student developer who publishes two qualifying apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace between now and May 31 will get a free Nokia Lumia 800.

No strings, pretty simple. This is way sweeter than saving up to buy a new device, so what are you waiting for? Ready.Set () {Code}.

To see the full offer visit the Microsoft Tech Student facebook page.

You need to submit an entry via the offer form to be eligible to receive your Lumia 800. Official rules can be found here.

To qualify each app must:

·         Use Windows Phone 7.5

·         Be published to Marketplace for the first time during the Publishing Period

·         Perform as described

·         Implement Fast App Switching

·         Not be created using a prebuilt app framework (e.g., AppMakr, FollowMyFeed etc.) MSDN code samples and VS starter kits are eligible app starting points.

·         Students who have previously received a Windows Phone in one of our promotions for development of new apps in 2012 are not eligible to receive a device in this promotion -- as determined by a previous delivery address, or a previously winning App Hub ID number or publisher.

We are always looking for new, innovative apps to showcase at our events and on Nokia Developer. If your app is hot enough we may even ask you to join us at one of our programs. In the meantime make sure you come see us when we are in your city at one of our hacks, Mobile Monday events or other developer programs.

Learn more now on the Microsoft Tech Student facebook page

The Qt SDK 1.2.1 is now available for download. It  brings increased stability to the Qt SDK 1.2. The updated SDK includes Qt 4.8.1 desktop installers for Mac and Windows in addition to Qt source packages. Qt 4.8.1 is the first patch release to the 4.8 series with over 200 functional improvements, mainly for Qt’s desktop and embedded platforms. For more details please see the Qt 4.8 library release blog post on the Qt blog.

Bug fixes and added functionality for Nokia N9 developers
The added functionality in the Qt SDK 1.2.1 relates mainly to improved runtimes for testing. The Simulator now supports both landscape and portrait orientations. In addition, the Qt Quick Components in the Simulator have been upgraded to use the same version as is on the device. There are now three separate QEMU images – one each for PR1.0, PR1.1 and PR1.2.

In the last weeks there have also been some other updates, posted on the Nokia N9 developer blog, that will help you with your Nokia N9 development. The updates include the Harmattan developer library and UX documentation as well as a new example application showcasing key Harmattan APIs. The application shows how to utilize Qt Mobility interfaces (e.g. maps, multimedia and sensor data) in applications.

Download the Qt SDK 1.2.1 

With the possible exception of purely vertical applications that only work on one specific type of device, content providers need to identify devices with which users access their sites and services. This Device Detection task is typically made through a Device Description Repository (DDR), a software component which can map the HTTP request generated by a mobile device to a description of the features supported by that device.

The most obvious example of this is detecting a device screen size in order to serve pictures with the correct dimensions and avoid images that are too large, too small, cropped incorrectly or simply take too much time to download. These are all aspects of mobile development which can significantly detract from the overall usability of a mobile site or application.

But the problem goes far beyond screen size. Developers know that delivering a mobile application to multiple devices typically requires adjusting of HTML/XHTML mark-up, CSS and JavaScript. Similarly, no single combination of audio/video codecs and containers will work on all devices (not to mention frame-rates and bit-rates). For all these reasons, a DDR is required.
The introduction of HTML5 only makes the challenge of delivering web services to a heterogeneous population of mobile devices more important. According to a recent study from Appcelerator and IDC, “a resounding 79% of mobile developers report that they will integrate HTML5 in their apps in 2012.”

WURFL, the Wireless Universal Resource FiLe

WURFL, the Wireless Universal Resource FiLe, is arguably the de-facto standard DDR. WURFL has addressed the problem of device fragmentation for over 10 years. Originally created as an open-source initiative, WURFL is now offered according to a "dual-licensing" scheme. Organizations that prefer not to open-source their own source code (as per Affero GPL v3 provisions) can acquire a commercial license and use WURFL commercially.

To better understand how developers can efficiently serve a diverse mobile device population, we interviewed Luca Passani, the original creator of WURFL and now Chief Technology Offer at ScientiaMobile, Inc, the company that offers WURFL commercially. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect Nokia’s view.

Nokia Developer: You recently announced a new API for WURFL that has specific benefits for developers targeting Nokia Lumia Windows Phones and Nokia Series 40 phones running the Nokia Browser. Tell us more about the change.

Luca: WURFL strives to reach maximum coverage of devices in the market. In spite of this, there are always devices that WURFL cannot recognize either because they are very new or simply not very popular. One cool feature of WURFL is that it never gives up without a fight. A device may not be recognized with its make and model, but WURFL will adopt extra logic to at least detect the family, such as the OS and the browser. This means that the user of the device will still get the experience its device deserves, because features like touchscreen, large display, or an HTML5-capable browser can still be assumed.
Specifically to version 1.4 of the WURFL API, to be released by the time you read this, new logic has been added to detect Nokia phones with Windows Phone 7.X and Series 40 Nokia Browsers, even in those cases where the device itself is not recognized. Of course, this comes on top of our regular activity of categorizing Nokia devices and making sure that they are well represented in WURFL.

Nokia Developer: With WURFL, developers customize what they serve to a mobile user based on the device the user has in hand. Some developers prefer to avoid server-side techniques, and rely instead on full-featured mobile browsers. When and why do you think server-side optimization is worth the effort?

Luca: In my opinion, client-side detection is overrated because, at the end of the day, client-side detection still means one size fits all HTML, CSS and scripts. When that one-size does not work for a new device that matters to your company, developers are left with no space to intervene and make things right. If you add the hundreds of millions of devices with little or no JavaScript and HTML5 support into the equation, you have what I call “an equation without solution”. Nokia alone has 675 million Series 40 phones that fall in this category. One size can’t fit them all.

As a mobile developer, I was constantly asking myself “How do I create mobile content that works on all devices?” Well, guess what. This is the same question that WURFL users were asking themselves and to which WURFL was the answer. Server-side detection makes mobile look like a platform because it gives developers control. Client-side detection means losing control on what you can deliver on different devices.

Nokia Developer: How do developers use WURFL to optimize their content?

Luca: If I had to characterize WURFL with a single word, it would be “agnostic”. WURFL makes as few assumptions as possible about the ways people need device detection solutions. Some companies will create a single version of their mobile site and add a few WURFL-powered micro-optimizations here and there. Others will segment the device market and offer different user experiences to different families of devices. It’s all WURFL. Support for Java, PHP, .NET and other platforms is simply another dimension to such agnosticism.

Nokia Developer: Many large web sites use WURFL data, and also supplement it with their own database. What are the reasons they are doing this? Is WURFL planning anything to make this practice obsolete?

Luca: Every mobile project is one off. There is no way anyone can come up with an all-encompassing set of device capabilities. WURFL was designed from the ground up to embrace variation, rather than fight it. Personally, I hate it when someone tells me that my problem is a different problem simply because they don’t have the right solution to sell. In short, a DDR must allow developers to create and maintain their own capabilities if they so wish.

Nokia Developer: That brings up the topic of proxy browsers like Nokia deploys on its Series 40 phones. Are there any special considerations developers should take when they know they're dealing with a proxy?

Luca: You should consider security when you know you’re serving through a proxy. An incoming request to your servers over HTTPS does not necessarily mean there is HTTPS encryption throughout the transaction. Nokia browsers provide HTTPS connections between the device and the proxy and also between the proxy and your servers, but not all proxy browsers provide this security. If your service involves financial transactions or otherwise requires secure communication, WURFL has a capability “is_transcoder” that developers can use to adapt to the situation.

Nokia Developer: There appears to be further mainstream adoption of proxy-based browser technology (e.g. Nokia Browser, Silk). What do you think about this trend? What are some key things you’d like to see in proxy-based browser technology in the future?
Luca: The security aspect of proxy-based browsers is a concern. Of course, for sites where security is not a concern, a proxy can improve the user experience: resources can be compressed, cached and resized on the proxy, which will improve the speed with which a page is loaded.

Nokia Developer: What are the business options for companies working with WURFL?

Luca: Our main value proposition is that we deliver WURFL with the full source code and open repository. Openness means ease of integration and maintenance. Our code is very reasonably priced.

Recently, we launched the WURFL Cloud. The Cloud allows companies that do not care all that much about open source to access WURFL and pay based on the actual number of device detections. We even launched the Cloud with a free offering. Hobbyists, micro-companies or simply developers who want to give our cloud a spin can do it without a credit card or anything like that.

Of course, we are perfectly aware of the fact that companies are very different and their DDR needs are very different. Our team is available to hear your requirements and come up with an offer that is good for all needs.

Nokia Developer: Can you give us an example of a developer or two who use WURFL today?

Luca: Of course. There are thousands of companies using WURFL around the planet. Small and large. I’ll mention one: Facebook. It was small in 2004. Has it grown any bigger?

Nokia Developer: You already mentioned your cloud-based offering. How does that differ from your traditional service?

Luca: By choosing the cloud, one gives up the control that comes with installing all the software on your server. On the other hand, there are also upsides. With the cloud there is no need to invest in software and hardware to set up your DDR. Just install a script or lightweight library and you’re good to go. Automatic updates to the repositories are also a big plus: you don’t need to have someone in charge of updating your system periodically.

Nokia Developer: Where can developers go for more information and to get started?

Luca: The WURFL website is where you find the documentation for the different WURFL APIs.

Information about Device Detection in the Cloud is available on the ScientiaMobile website: http://www.scientiamobile.com/cloud

If you are in the US and have a cool Windows Phone app, we want to help you show it off to hundreds of people at a Mobile Monday event.

If you have a unique, cool, or downright amazing app, tell us about it for a chance to join us at the upcoming Mobile Monday event in your area. Mobile Monday is a global organization that brings together the mobile community in cities around the world.

We are sponsoring Mobile Monday events in Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin this month. Along with demos of our latest smartphones – including the award-winning Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone – we will pick several developers to show how apps become amazing experiences on Nokia devices and the Windows Phone platform.

Here is when Nokia Developer will be at a Mobile Monday near you:

Mobile Monday Silicon Valley  – April 16th
Mobile Monday Boston  – April 23rd
Mobile Monday Austin – April 30th

How to be part of the Mobile Monday showcase:

1. Have an app that works on a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone device
2. Send the following brief details via e-mail to nokiadeveloper@thelucidway.com

• Your name, company and contact information (include your e-mail and phone)
• A link to your app in Windows Phone Marketplace, or link to the private beta of your app in Windows Phone Marketplace
• A brief description and any screenshots of your app
• Why your app is amazing, cool, or unique

Selected developers will be notified seven days prior to the event. That’s it. We look forward to seeing you at Mobile Monday later this month!

Ready.Set () {Code}

Nokia Developer Champion Alessandro Pace (biskero to his friends) is a mobile architect and entrepreneur with over 5 million downloads in Nokia Store to his company’s credit. Working out of his home base of Firenze, Italy, he is a world-renowned expert on Flash Mobile development, a WURFL contributor for Flash Lite, co-founder of Mobile Monday Boston, and architect of the Kero Mobile AppStore.

His success in Nokia Store comes from offering a variety of content and business models. As Biskero LLC, he offers Nokia store consumers 78 titles in total: some free, some paid, and some supported by ad revenue. One of his top titles is Tic Tac Toe Blue, available in an ad-supported and paid version. Kero Mobile is another top download for his publishing company.

In addition to his skill as a developer and his success as a publisher, Alessandro is great fun to have a conversation with over your favorite beverage. Take the conversation technical, discuss business, or get him to tell you the legend of Biskero. It’s a conversation you won’t forget.

• Learn more about Champion of the Month Alessandro Pace.