Nokia Developer News

The Nokia Lumia rollout is giving developers and smartphone fans everywhere what our marketing folk call ‘the amazing everyday’.

But it’s not EVERY day you get over 800 developers converging for a 24 hour Nokia Lumia code-fest in the Record Museum of Indonesia. The largest developer collaboration ever staged in Indonesia (according to the Record Museum), the day resulted in 173 locally relevant apps for Nokia Lumia being created and submitted for publishing.

The developers of eight of the apps were awarded new Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones by the judging panel.

The event included the launch of some landmark local applications such as Kompas TV, an on-demand mobile streaming app delivered by Indonesia’s  biggest media network.

The Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 are now available for pre-order in Indonesia, and both phones will ship pre-loaded with locally sourced and focussed apps such as Movreak, PlaneTix and Daily Social. The creators of these apps were at the event, and shared stories about their success building applications for Nokia Lumia.

On top of this, Nokia Developer Champions including Firstman Marpaung, Erick Kurniawan, and Andri Yadi took to the stage to show detail on the code behind their own Windows Phone apps.

The event was an amazing start to the Nokia Lumia journey in Indonesia, and the feedback at the show and in social media showed that it captured the imagination of the local developer community.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated in this record breaking event.

The final version of the Nokia SDK 1.1 for Java is now available. This SDK allows you to incorporate In-App Purchasing into apps for phones running Java Runtime 1.1.0 for Series 40, such as the Nokia Asha 303. The SDK features a new emulator based on this phone.

To support development with the In-App Purchase APIs, the emulator has a new version of the in-app purchase simulation tool. This tool lets you define purchase items for use in testing. The testing can then be performed against a production simulation server or locally. 

The simulated purchase items include features to define product and purchase details, including success and failure scenarios for both. In addition, you can define and test purchase items that you will allow a user to restore to their phone. Handling for DRM protected content is also included. These updated features now enable you to run a full set of in-app purchase test cases in the emulator and ensure an optimal in-app purchase experience.

Apps you build today using the Nokia SDK 1.1 for Java and In-App Purchase APIs can be submitted to Nokia Store, but be aware that the In-App Purchasing infrastructure is still in beta.

For more information on In-App Purchasing, and the other new business models you can use in apps for Series 40 phones, jump over to the dedicated revenue models page.

While In-App purchasing is a key feature of this release, it not the only new feature offered in the SDK. A significant number of new switches and settings have been added to the emulator, which will help you test more comprehensively on your PC. You will now, for example, be able to simulate the battery level, set operator details, and preview landscape video.

Of course, the SDK also includes all those great features introduced with Java Runtime 1.0, such as those for enhancing the UX on touch screen phones with the Frame Animator and Gesture APIs. Don’t forget you have great features to add location awareness to your apps too.

These and other new features are highlighted in a video hosted by Mike Arvela of Futurice, which you can watch here

The SDK is available in both online and offline versions, which you can download here.

Nokia is on tour with Mobile Monday Americas, and we want to meet you. We are bringing our developer program, apps, smartphones and experts to your U.S. city. Get exclusive, hands-on time with Nokia’s latest Windows Phones – the Nokia Lumia range. You will hear about plans for the U.S. market, and learn about Nokia’s continuing commitment to mobile apps and developers, including seeding thousands of new phones to developers, along with access to the best tools, support and training.

“We want developers to unleash their creative forces and build an experience – not just an app – to bring smartphones to life for brands and consumers,” said Chanse Arrington, Nokia’s Head of Developer Marketing, North America.

As the winner of the Best Smartphone of CES with the forthcoming Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T, Nokia is back in the smartphone business and investing heavily in the U.S. market. With our new phones, carrier partners, and the WP7 platform, Nokia has opened vast new opportunities for developers.

Come see us in your city and bring your questions, suggestions, and app ideas. Here’s where you will find the Nokia Developer Mobile Monday Americas over next few months:

- Chicago: March 19
- New York City: March 26
- Silicon Valley: April 16
- Boston: April 23
- Austin: April 30

We look forward to seeing you at one of these exciting Mobile Monday events, and we will update this calendar as more events are scheduled.

 

If you have a great idea for an app that plays with images in fun and useful ways, there's a hackathon coming up that is built for you. Our good friends at Aviary are hosting the Photo Hack Day 2 in New York City 25-26 February, and we’re excited to be the headline sponsor. Aviary is the company behind the incredibly powerful but simple photo editor which can be embedded in any web or mobile app for a beautiful, seamless editing experience wherever you are. If you can join us in New York, you'll be among the first developers to use a pre-release version of the new Aviary SDK for Windows Phone 7.

Almost all the ingredients for some great hacks await you in New York.

• Our award-winning Nokia Windows Phone 7 smartphones, like the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 900 which won 13 awards at the International Consumer Electronics Show last month, feature Carl Zeiss optics to produce some of the best photo and video images.
• The Aviary APIs allow you to build world-class image editing right into the experience of your mobile app.
• The Aviary SDK for Windows Phone 7 makes its preview at the hack day, bringing the power of the Aviary APIs to the productivity of Visual Studio.

The combination of this SDK, the great user experience that Windows Phone 7 OS provides and the best in class hardware from Nokia should result in some amazing apps. All that's missing is you, your skills, and your creativity. We’re looking to you to hack together some kick-ass apps that make your friends and family go “wow”!  We’ll provide Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones as prizes to the top two teams who create Windows Phone 7 apps using the Aviary SDK for Windows Phone 7.

The hacking is happening at General Assembly, a great location for hosting events in New York City.  Bill Perry from Nokia and an expert team from Microsoft will be there to answer questions about Nokia’s latest smartphones, imaging, and designing apps using the Metro UI.

Need inspiration? How about these starter ideas:

• Integrate device sensors with the APIs to manipulate photos and create unique images.
• Create a game where players manipulate a shared image.
• Give a pic special meaning by adding signposts, weather effects, or something else derived from the time and place where the user snapped it.

If you need more inspiration, take a look at the other great APIs with expert support at the event. We look forward to seeing what you hack together during this 24 hour event.

• It’s free to participate, so make sure you register on the Photo Hack Day 2 site.

 

How would you like a fast, easy, and free way to create online advertising banners for your app that you can use on the Windows Phone Marketplace and Nokia Store? Nokia’s updated Online Marketing Tool can do just that.

To create your own professional-looking online advertising banners, all you do is provide your app’s URL in either the Nokia Store or Windows Phone Marketplace, and then the online tool will take you through the remaining steps, including auto-filling in details like the app name, category and price.

You will have the opportunity to select from several options to customize the look of your banners, including banner size, application icon, compatible phones (including the new Nokia Asha and Nokia Lumia series), copy text and screenshots. Then the Online Marketing Tool does the rest. It first displays a preview of your banner. Then, once you’re ready, the tool quickly creates your banners for easy downloading and can produce banners in standard formats and sizes for placement on the web or mobile.

Also, because the Online Marketing Tool supports applications from around the globe, it also supports multiple language variations.

It is also worth noting that you can use the Online Marketing Tool to update your older Ovi-branded banners. As you are probably aware, Nokia no longer supports the old Ovi Store brand; instead, the company now supports the Nokia Store brand. So if your advertising banners still read ‘Ovi Store’, now is the time to use the Online Marketing Tool to update your banners.

Start creating -- and updating -- your own online advertising banners to promote your apps now.

Your creative use of Qt Quick components could win a nice new smartphone, get your app promoted, and have your skills noticed by the community. We are looking for the best examples of Qt Quick components for Symbian Belle with our new Qt Quick components competition.

Qt Quick components fast-forward your UI creation by providing ready-made elements like buttons, sliders, lists and toolbars. The components have native UI style for Symbian Belle (or other targets like MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan), and allow you to spend more time working on the UI elements that matter most.

If your Belle app shows nice use of Qt Quick components you could win.

To enter, you need an application that uses Symbian Qt Quick Components. It should demonstrate UI design flair and style while remaining faithful to the core Symbian platform style (as captured by the design and iconography guidelines). You are free to mix standard and custom components, and winning entries will demonstrate innovative approaches to branding and other design elements.

To make sure we understand the true elegance of your work, write a wiki article that points out the key elements of your application design. The article should also point to a binary version of your app so we can install it and be amazed.

• For more details and to enter, see Symbian Qt Quick Components Competition 2012Q1

 

Nokia Developer Champion Chintan Dave is taking advantage of Nokia's cross-platform opportunities. The Gujarat, India-based software engineer with Quickstart Global has created applications for all of Nokia’s  platforms: Series 40, Symbian, MeeGo, Mobile Web, and now Windows Phone.
 
Under his screen name, chintandave_er, Chintan is also a frequent contributor to the Nokia Developer community, which he has been a member of since 2008. One of his recent articles in the  Nokia Developer Wiki, ‘World’s Greatest Speeches Application for Windows Phone – How To’,  used his own app as a model for building data-bound apps for the Windows Phone platform.
 
Another of Chintan’s apps, Celebrity TweetTalk (available in both Windows Phone and MeeGo versions), collects Twitter posts from a range of celebrities; Chintan describes his development experience in another of his Nokia Developer Wiki articles, ‘Nokia TweetTalk Applications for Windows Phone’.  He continues to turn inspiration into apps, with five published offerings in Windows Phone Marketplace as of early February.
 

Meet Champion of the Month Chintan Dave.

 
Read more about Chintan and learn about Nokia Developer Champions.

Updated Qt SDK, version 1.2,  now available for download here.

Continuing the Qt promise of cross-platform development, the latest Qt SDK contains all the tools required for you to immediately get started creating Qt apps for Symbian and Nokia N9 and to benefit from the increasing numbers of Qt app downloads on the Nokia store.

Using the powerful Qt 4.7.4 APIs and the Qt Quick framework, you can develop an app and deploy it on Symbian devices (including Anna and Belle) and the Nokia N9. Investments you make developing with Qt today can also be carried forward into the future, with Qt being a core part of the Nokia strategy to connect the next billion phone users to the Internet.

The Qt SDK 1.2 adds a new version of Qt Creator (2.4) with improvements for C++ and Qt Quick development and updates to Symbian and MeeGo tools. Desktop developers also get the first release of Qt 4.8. The new version of Qt Creator offers improvements in the C++ and QML editors, such as syntax highlighting in QML, and improved static QML code-checking features.

Additionally, the Qt Mobility API 1.2 is included with APIs to harness the possibilities of Bluetooth and NFC. There are more than 20 new Qt Mobility examples, which are available from the Qt Creator welcome page.

In the SDK installer and the SDK maintenance tool you can now access advanced settings in which to specify your network’s proxy settings or add new SDK content repositories. This allows adding dynamic content to the SDK. Available today, the In-App Purchase API is the first new SDK content repository.


The Qt SDK 1.2 is available as a free download, and it can be used on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and Ubuntu Linux powered PCs.

Download the latest Qt SDK.

For more information, please see the Qt SDK 1.2 tool details page.

Note: If you have older Qt code for earlier phones, the Qt SDK 1.1.2 is still available for download

View all of the Qt-powered devices you can target when developing with the Qt SDK in our Device Specifications section

Please note that some older Symbian phones make use of Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian to install the Qt libraries on the phone. View the list of phones that can be targeted using the Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian.

Need some sources of inspiration for your work? Have a look at this showcase of Qt apps

Find out how easy it is to port your apps to Qt.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Not this time.

Last week Las Vegas played host to both the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012, and Nokia’s return to the show. Early in the week, we introduced the Nokia Lumia 900, our first LTE smartphone based on Windows Phone. But before the week was over, Nokia and our newest smartphone had won a raft of awards and honors, most notably the prestigious ‘Best of CES’ award in the smartphone category from technology site CNET.

This award – and other honors (list below) – capped our commitment to the North American market. During CES, we noted that the Nokia Lumia 900 will be sold exclusively in the U.S. through AT&T in the coming months. We also revealed that the Nokia Lumia 710, an earlier-announced smartphone based on Windows Phone, is now on sale at all T-Mobile stores, as well as at Costco, Wal-Mart, and Target stores in the U.S. Our colleagues in Nokia Canada announced the availability of the first two smartphones in the Nokia Lumia family: the Nokia Lumia 710, available exclusively at Rogers Communications; and the Nokia Lumia 800, available only at TELUS. Additionally, Microsoft announced the availability of the Nokia Lumia 800 through Microsoft Stores and online channels.

Separately, last week we announced that mobile applications from CNN, Univision, ESPN, and Sesame Workshop will be available first and exclusively on Nokia Lumia smartphones. Our partnerships with these leading brands mean new and exciting apps will also be available to users of other devices running Windows Phone, following the Nokia Lumia exclusivity periods, which varies by content provider.

Momentum behind the Windows Phone ecosystem continues to grow rapidly. Windows Phone Marketplace now has 50,000 apps, and more than 80,000 developers have registered with the Microsoft App Hub, where they have downloaded more than 3 million developer tools. Currently, 300 new titles are being submitted each day to Marketplace -- about three times higher than before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership was announced last year.

The CES buzz and excitement around Nokia’s announcements resulted in a packed, standing-room-only press conference (see video). Elsewhere at CES, Nokia officials conducted enthusiastic customer meetings and hosted a non-stop flow of visitors to the Nokia booth.

In addition to winning the CNET award, the Nokia Lumia 900 was awarded several other honors at CES, including:

• Popular Mechanics: Editor’s Choice Award
• Popular Science: Product of the Future Award
• Popular Science: Best of CES 2012
• LAPTOP magazine: Best Smartphone of CES 2012 Winner
• TechnoBuffalo Readers' Choice Award
• PC Mag: Best of CES Smartphone Award
• ZDNet: Best Smartphone at CES 2012 Award
• Wired Gadget Lab: 12 Best, Quirkiest CES Gadgets" Award
• Gotta Be Mobile: Best of Show Award
• Huffington Post: Best of CES 2012  

“The Lumia 900 won because it’s a great device,” writes CNET editor Kent German. “But there's more to it than that. It’s also exciting because it marks the first clear and strong collaboration between a manufacturer, carrier, and Microsoft. And that's something that the OS has missed for a long time.”

It’s hard to think of a better way to start the year. Now it’s up to us to translate all this excitement and recognition into action. See how easy it is for you to get started developing the Amazing Everyday for Nokia Lumia smartphones. 

Upgrades to Nokia Belle software (also known as Symbian Belle) will start to roll out worldwide soon. Now you can optimize your current S^3 and Symbian Anna apps to make the most of the UI changes that Belle brings to a wide range of Nokia’s Symbian smartphones.

While many existing apps will be largely compatible with Belle from the start, we recommend that you first test your older apps with Nokia Belle and then address any compatibility issues you may find. Don’t have a Nokia Belle phone? No problem, you can use Nokia’s free Remote Device Access service to test your apps. Depending on the results, you may decide to make certain changes; then you can republish or update your app in Nokia Store to make the most of the new Belle software.

Also, if you develop new apps that use Belle-specific APIs, these apps will not work with phones that run S^3 or Symbian Anna. So you may also decide to limit the distribution of these applications to Belle-only phones.

Documentation about Nokia Belle compatibility is now available in the Nokia Developer Wiki. [Note: This Wiki article is a work in progress, and more details will be added soon.]

To learn more, watch this video showing a hands-on demo of the Symbian Belle UI:

Learn more about the features found in Nokia Belle.
 

Themes remain one of the most popular content items users add to their phones, and several theme developers have achieved over 1 million downloads. With Nokia Store continuing to grow, there is no better time to show your creative and artistic skills through an innovative and appealing theme. And the news gets even better: Carbide.ui Theme edition has just received a major update.

Among the changes is a redesigned theme creation wizard. In addition to creating themes from a template or copy of an existing theme, you can choose a phone model; then, Carbide.ui will automatically select the right template. This feature also keeps you up to date through an RSS feed from the device section of Nokia Developer, so you can start creating themes for the latest phones as soon as they are announced.

Packaging has also been simplified, with the packaging parameters automatically set in the updated packaging wizard. This means that in most cases packaging is just two clicks. In addition, when you use the phone model feature of the new theme wizard, the packaging wizard provides you with a list of the other phone models your theme will work on.

Also, significant improvements will now ensure that you are always up to date. For one, this new version of Carbide.ui automatically checks for software updates, which you install with a single click. For another, it advises you of new or updated theme template plug-ins as well. The new plug-in manager then enables you to install any new or updated plug-ins you want, without leaving Carbide.ui.

Other improvements include: support for defining 16-bit colour elements; the ability to export of a theme’s preview screens to a PDF file; and NFL (Flash Lite) content previews.

So if you want to exercise your creative side -- or if art and design are your bread-and-butter -- then you should be downloading Carbide.ui Series 40 Theme Edition today.

Learn more about Carbide.ui Theme Edition.

Download the new version of Carbide.ui Theme Edition.

Join us in Florence, Italy, on 27-28 January for Qt Day 2012, two days packed with exciting technical and business sessions. Highlights will include:

- A keynote by Manuel Reverte-Castro, Nokia’s head of Ecosystem Developer Experience for South Europe; he will discuss Qt as a strategic short- and long-term development platform that enables developers to monetise applications.

- Case studies on the use of Qt in commercial projects.

- Technical sessions, including what’s new in Qt, Qt 5, and Qt Project.

- Digia presentations on the capabilities of the Qt Commercial team and the Qt Commercial roadmap.

Attendance to Qt Day 2012 in Florence is free. But please note, most sessions will be conducted in Italian.

 

Learn more about Qt Day 2012 in Florence.

The free QtInfo app is perfect if you are a developer who needs to know what version of the Qt framework is running in a Nokia phone, or if you’re a geek who likes to know that level of detail. Launch the app to reveal the Qt version and build currently installed, with details tailored for developers. For example, the report below shows that Qt 4.7.4 is installed along with the list of installed modules. If you scroll down the screen you’ll see more details of the installation, including the versions of Qt Quick, OpenGL, and WebKit. The report includes information about audio, video, and image formats supported by the current installation. You’ll even see optional Qt Components installed from packages com.nokia.symbian, qt.labs.components, and qt.labs.components.native.

QtInfo also reveals information about the execution environment as seen by the Qt framework. You will see information about the country and language currently selected, available network interfaces and addresses, and information about local hardware including sensors, WiFi, Bluetooth, screen parameters, etc.

QtInfo adapts to the available environment, allowing it to work across a wide range of devices and installation configurations. For example, the screen shot above was coded in QML to take advantage of Qt Quick available in the Qt 4.7.4 installation. The following screen shot was built with QtWidgets for execution in older versions (Qt 4.6.4). If you run QtInfo on a Symbian device with no Qt framework installed, it will use Avkon components to report the lack of a Qt installation.

Once QtInfo acquires all the information, you can capture the report to Clipboard, Pastebin,  Email, or write it to a file on local mass-storage.

QtInfo is an open source application developed by Attila Csipa, Lauri Jaaskela and Lucian Tomuta.

• Download the Symbian version from Nokia Store.
• For MeeGo version, source code and project contribution please visit the Project site at http://projects.developer.nokia.com/qtinfo

 

In three new videos, executives at Univision, Netflix, and Evernote discuss their latest mobile app development success stories, in partnership with Nokia and Windows Phone. These success-story videos are available now for your viewing pleasure:

Univision Interactive Media: Jose Hernandez, VP of Mobile Content, and Alfredo Rojas, Mobile Product Manager, explains how their app makes use of the Metro UI panoramas, to offer consumers a unique experience.  

Netflix: Anthony Park, Director of Engineering, talk about how Netflix now enables consumers to easily move from watching a video on their TV or computer to continue where they left off on a Nokia Lumia smartphone.

Evernote: Andrew Sinkov, VP of Marketing, and Damian Mehers, Senior Software Engineer, recount how Nokia and Microsoft helped from the very beginning in creating Evernote for Windows Phone, including providing feedback on the app before it was released.

 

At the 2012 International CES, in Las Vegas, Nokia announced new mobile applications from CNN, Univision, ESPN, and Sesame Workshop that will be available first and exclusively on Nokia Lumia smartphones. The partnerships with these companies will bring new apps from some of the world’s biggest brands exclusively to Nokia consumers before the apps are made available to other Microsoft Windows Phone consumers through Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace.  

Here are just a few details about the apps from the four content partners:

• ESPN Sports Hub will be preloaded on Nokia Lumia smartphones and will serve as a one-stop app for sports news, videos, and scores.  
• The CNN app will provide the latest news and video from CNN’s reporting around the globe plus direct access to iReport, CNN’s participatory news community. The app, which will launch globally for free in the next month, will be exclusive to Nokia users for 90 days.
• The Univision App will be exclusive to Nokia Lumia users in the U.S. and Puerto Rico for 18 months, delivering unique and exclusive Spanish-language content experiences, including Univision entertainment; soccer and other sports coverage; and news, cooking, and local content for various U.S. markets. 
• The exclusive Sesame Workshop app, 100th Day of School, builds on a three-year collaboration between Nokia, Sesame Workshop, and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. There are also three additional titles: Big Block Party, Color Carnival and Abby in Wonderland. Each title has familiar Sesame Street characters including Elmo and Grover, and these titles will be exclusive to Nokia consumers globally for a minimum of six months.

Additionally, a partnership with Electronic Arts (EA) to bring more than 25 of the world’s most popular mobile games to Windows Phone Marketplace will come first to Nokia Lumia phones.

‘With exclusive apps from some of the world’s leading global and most locally relevant brands, we are focused on making Nokia Lumia an outstanding smartphone experience for consumers’, says Marco Argenti, senior vice president of Developer Experience and Marketplace at Nokia. ‘We are collaborating with our partners to build and deliver first and exclusively on Nokia app experiences across key categories including news, sports, games, multicultural, and kids and family, all of which are unique, fresh and fun.’

Univision’s latest mobile-app-development success story, in partnership with Nokia and Microsoft Windows Phone

As the Nokia Lumia market-share footprint increases globally, Nokia is proud to deliver unique and exclusive app experiences via applications developed by Nokia and as a result of agreements with some of the world’s biggest names in consumer content. In addition to the Nokia Lumia phones’ iconic hardware design, this exclusive content and other Nokia-only content — such as Nokia Drive — provide users with an enhanced smartphone experience.

The Nokia-exclusivity periods will vary by content provider.

Windows Phone ecosystem growing rapidly

In addition to the forthcoming exclusive content for Nokia Lumia smartphones, the momentum behind the Windows Phone ecosystem continues to grow rapidly. Windows Phone Marketplace now has 50,000 apps and more than 80,000 developers have now registered with the Microsoft App Hub. More than 3 million developer tools have now been downloaded.

The number of apps submitted each day to Marketplace (currently 300 new titles a day) is about three times greater than it was before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership announcement last year.

In other Nokia Lumia news, Nokia confirmed today that the Nokia Lumia 710 smartphone, announced for T-Mobile’s network in December 2011, will become available tomorrow for order on the T-Mobile website; at the U.S. T-Mobile retail stores and authorised retail stores; and at U.S. Costco, Target, and Walmart locations.

As for the Nokia Lumia 800 phone, it will be made available online, including Microsoft Stores, in three striking colours (cyan, magenta, and matte black) as a bundle with the Nokia Play 360° speaker and a Nokia Purity by Monster headset. This unique bundle will become available online in early February.

Learn more about developing for Nokia Lumia smartphones.

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(Update: 10 January 2012): If you are attending CES this week, make time to drop by the Nokia booth (#31409, South Hall) and have a look at app demos from the following partners:

• CNN
• ESPN
• Groupon
• Weather Channel
• Univision 
• LYNC
• Evernote
• Spotify
• Facebook
• Slacker
• Netflix
• Plants vs. Zombies (PopCap)