Nokia Developer Newsletter

Nokia recently announced two slide phones for design-conscious consumers who want to use their devices to socialise and share content with others. The new phones, the Nokia 6700 slide and Nokia 7230 device make a style statement with various fresh colours, imaging features, and quick access to popular social-networking communities.

The Nokia 6700 slide, based on Symbian OS, S60 3.2, is available in six colours (pink, red, petrol blue, aluminium, lime, and purple) and features a thin profile and aluminium finish. It sports a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, accelerometer, connections to Ovi Store and Ovi Share, stereo FM radio, up to 16 gigabytes (GB) of memory card storage, and a 2.2-inch QVGA display. The Nokia 7230 device, based on Series 40 6th Edition, features a compact slide, colourful design, 3.2-megapixel camera, FM radio, Flash Lite 3.0, Ovi Store and Ovi Share connections, and up to 16 GB of memory card storage. Both devices will ship in the first quarter of 2010. The Nokia 6700 slide will retail for 160 euros; the Nokia 7230 device will retail for 100 euros.

View the Nokia 6700 slide device details.

Check out the Nokia 7230 device details.

View photos of the Nokia 6700 slide.

View photos of the Nokia 7230 device.

Nokia recently introduced the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition, a device based on the Series 40 6th Edition that features advanced navigation to help mobile consumers explore the world. A one-touch Maps key brings users to Nokia Maps to find the quickest route to their destinations. They can also view their exact position along the way with the integrated global positioning system (GPS).

The Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition packs an assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) and Nokia Maps, an accelerometer, magnetometer, 2-megapixel camera, Flash Lite 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and MIDP Java™ 2.1 with additional Java APIs. Memory cards deliver up to 16 gigabytes (GB) of more storage. Ovi Store, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Share, and Ovi Sync are all supported, too.

Check out the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition's technical specifications.

Develop content and apps for the Noka 2710 Navigation Edition.

View photos of the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition.

The Forum Nokia developer community will be coming to San Francisco on 9 – 10 June, 2010, for the Nokia Developer Summit 2010. Will you be there?

Last April the first-ever Nokia Developer Summit opened to a sold-out crowd representing 38 countries, including 30 Forum Nokia Champions. That was before Ovi Store had opened. Now, with Ovi Store fully operational, the 2010 event should be even more exciting. More details are coming soon but for now save the date. We hope to see you in San Francisco on 9 – 10 June, 2010.

Winners were recently announced for Nokia's Calling All Innovators contests in Arabic-speaking countries, Africa, and France.

The grand prize for Nokia's Calling All Innovators "Bil3arabi" 2009 contest, a competition for Arabic-language mobile applications, went to "Here I am" from Enpronomics in Egypt. It is a geo-presence application with personal safety features that enables users to call for help in emergencies, share their locations with family and close friends, and know the location of their loved ones.

The winner of the Calling All Innovators Africa contest is 20FourLabs, developers of Afridoctor, a personal mobile health clinic that is available on Ovi Store. Users can submit photos of their ailments to receive advice from a panel of medical professionals or use the mapping feature to find doctors.

The grand prize winner of Calling All Innovators France is Paris 3D by Newscape Technology. The app, a photorealistic, GPS-enabled guide to France's capital city, also won the social location category.

View all winners of Calling All Innovators Bil3arabi.

View all winners of Calling All Innovators Africa.

View all winners of Calling All Innovators France.

Ovi Store Nokia's online source for mobile content, is hitting its stride. Consumers in more than 180 countries now come to Ovi Store for nearly 1 million downloads a day. Volume is growing quickly: Last month more than twice as many content items were downloaded as were in October. Since Ovi Store's launch earlier this year each registered user has downloaded at least nine items on average.

Local language support on Ovi Store, originally just seven languages, has now increased to 16: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German, English, Finnish, French, Canadian French, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. The top 10 Ovi Store national markets, ranked by performance, are: Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., and Vietnam.

More than 50 operators worldwide now support Ovi Store. Local content, local language support, and mobile billing are available in 17 countries, thanks to the recent additions of Austria, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.

On the hardware front, the Nokia X6 mobile device is the seventh device to ship with Ovi Store embedded. Using these devices, consumers can download content from Ovi Store almost as soon as they take the new device out of the box.

Developers from more than 65 countries now distribute their content on Ovi Store. How about you?

Get the resources you need to publish your content to Ovi Store.

The first update of the Maemo™ 5 SDK was recently released. This Forum Nokia update reflects the software delivered in the retail version of the Nokia N900 mobile computer. In addition, a GUI installer has been added to simplify the SDK and scratchbox installation, making it easier to create a development environment. The SDK contains the headers, libraries, and tools required to write Maemo 5 applications.

Also, Qt developers can enter the Forum Nokia Qt Mobility Contest by creating and submitting a working code example that utilizes Qt and the that are being developed in the Mobility Project. To get more information about these new Qt APIs that are being developed in the Mobility Project, download a Technology Preview package. The code can be either a traditional end-user function application or something that is useful for developers, such as a new framework or implementation using one of the new Qt APIs. The grand prize is a trip to Nokia 2010 Developer Summit in San Francisco, and there are other prizes, too. All entries must be submitted by 30 December.

Enter the Qt Mobility Contest before 30 December.

Download the Maemo 5 SDK updated version.

Review the Maemo 5 SDK release notes.

Nokia recently released Qt 4.6, the latest version of the cross-platform application and UI framework. Qt 4.6 adds support for several platforms, powerful graphical capabilities, and support for multi-touch and gestures. Developers can use Qt 4.6 to create visually appealing and web-connected applications for desktops and devices easily, thanks to Qt 4.6's support for the Symbian platform, Windows 7, Apple Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and Maemo. Also available is community support for real-time operating systems QNX and VxWorks.

Qt support for Symbian and Maemo creates the first opportunity for developers to target both of these platforms from the same codebase. Being able to share code across platforms means that the applications they create will reach the market faster and reach a broader audience of device users.

Nokia also released a technology preview of new Qt APIs from the Qt Mobility project. These cross-platform APIs provide developers with functionality such as location for navigation-type devices, as well as messaging, contacts, and bearer management. Nokia also introduced an updated release of Qt Creator, a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) for Qt development. Together, the updated Qt Creator 1.3 and Qt 4.6 form the Qt SDK, which contains everything developers need to create cross-platform applications.

Download Qt 4.6 and Qt Creator 1.3.

Explore Nokia's Qt development frameworks.

Watch the Qt Developer Days 2009 video.

Browse Qt Developer Days 2009 keynote presentations.

Two new versions of Carbide.ui were recently announced by Forum Nokia and the Symbian Foundation to provide Symbian and Series 40 theme developers with dedicated tools.

The first, Carbide.ui Theme Edition 2.0, makes Carbide.ui an open source tool and prepares it for community participation in creating tools for theme development on future Symbian platforms. Carbide.ui Theme Edition 2.0 supports the creation of themes for Symbian OS, S60 5.0. To add support for earlier versions of Symbian S60 and specific Nokia devices, developers can download the Carbide.ui Theme Edition 2.0 plug-ins.

The second new version, Carbide.ui Series 40 Theme Edition 3.5, gives Series 40 theme creators a dedicated tool that includes templates to simplify the creation of Series 40 6.x themes. It also adds new features for Series 40 themes, including the ability to use the component store for Series 40 themes and support for the use of an external Flash Lite editor.

Explore the new Carbide.ui Theme Edition tools.

Download Carbide.ui Theme Edition 2.0.

Download Carbide.ui Series 40 Theme Edition 3.5.

Learn how to provide a great user experience with Forum Nokia's new User Experience (UX) Programme. Because direct referrals are the top driver of software sales, smart developers make UX an essential part in every cycle of their development efforts. The UX Programme helps in two ways: application evaluation reports, and guidance and self-help tools. Evaluations are made by qualified user-experience professionals and are conducted in partnership with an external test house. And the online tools, found in the Design and User Experience Library, include checklists, style guides, and design examples.

Check out the Forum Nokia User Experience Programme.

Review the User Experience Evaluation Model document.

Browse tools in the Design and User Experience Library.

Porting apps from the Apple iPhone platform to Web Runtime (WRT) on Nokia devices got even easier, thanks to two new entries on the Forum Nokia Wiki, an article and a porting example. Together, they give developers everything needed except the devices! The article provides a list of compatible technologies, replacement technologies, tips and hints, and much more. The example shows how to port a horoscope web application to a Symbian device such as the Nokia N97 multimedia device.

Read 'Porting iPhone Web Apps to WRT on Nokia Devices'.

View the iPhone-to-Nokia porting example.

Developers creating Web Runtime widgets have a new resource on the Forum Nokia Wiki: JavaScript™ Performance Best Practices. This new article provides extensive information on optimising the performance of the JavaScript programming language, including core pitfalls, tips for better loading performance, DOM obscurities, and object-oriented script.

For less experienced developers, two other new articles on the Wiki show how to work with WRT widgets. One article, 'Create Your First WRT Widget', describes the main phases of WRT widget development and explains how to create and deploy a basic widget. The other, 'Create Your First Mobile Web Page', shows how to create a mobile web page called HelloMobileWeb.

View JavaScript Performance Best Practices.

Create Your First WRT Widget.

Develop Your First Mobile Web Page.

Interested in creating homescreen widgets for Symbian? To start, all you will need is a computer workstation, text editor, and Zip utility software, according to a new article on the Forum Nokia Wiki. The article also shows how to enable a Web Runtime widget for the homescreen, and how to run the widget on both a mobile device and emulator. Also covered are development guidelines for homescreen widgets, including activating the homescreen view, updating homescreen content, and performance and battery-consumption considerations. Several screenshots and code snippets help make it all perfectly clear.

Read the full 'Homescreen Widget Guidelines' article.

Nokia has formed two strategic collaborations to support entrepreneurs and developers creating mobile services and applications in Malaysia. The first, a collaboration with local fund provider Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd, will offer up to 150,000 Malaysian ringgit ($44,157 USD) to local businesses with technology projects that have good potential for commercialisation. As part of the collaboration, Forum Nokia will provide one-year Forum Nokia PRO memberships, prototype loaner devices and discounted purchases, and early access to SDKs and other tools.

In the second collaboration, Nokia and MSC Malaysia will support mobile application developers and encourage digital content development in the country. This project ties in to MSC Malaysia's Integrated Content Development (ICON) programme which, in addition to providing training and support to Malaysians who are developing online applications, provides conditional grants of up to 100,000 ringgit ($29,438 USD) for innovative ideas with good commercialisation potential.

Forum Nokia will provide accelerated development and go-to-market support to help successful applicants complete and deploy their mobile content and applications through Ovi Store.

Apply for the MSC Malaysia ICON funding.

Forum Nokia Champion of the Month Kamlesh Sangani is an expert on Symbian C++ development, including custom GUI application development, client-server architecture, messaging, and location-based services (LBS) for the Symbian platform. He is now expanding his expertise with recent work using Qt for Symbian.

Kamlesh is as generous with his time as he is expert in his skills. His high-quality Wiki contributions earned him Contributor of the Month honours in June 2009, and he has posted over 2,000 contributions to the Forum Nokia Discussion Boards. The Forum Nokia Community congratulates and offers our appreciation to Kamlesh, who most of us know online as savaj.

Meet Champion of the Month Kamlesh Sangani.

Forum Nokia will host a two-day webinar on mobile internet battery life in mid-December. Nokia experts will present practical examples, tools, and guidelines. Attending the webinar is free for all Forum Nokia members, but advance registration is required.

Day 1

Session 1: 16 December, 9 a.m. Helsinki/12:30 p.m. Bangalore/3 p.m. Beijing

Session 2: 16 December, 11 a.m. San Francisco/2 p.m. New York

Day 2

Session 1: 17 December, 9 a.m. Helsinki/12:30 p.m. Bangalore/3 p.m. Beijing

Session 2: 17 December, 11 a.m. San Francisco/2 p.m. New York

In this Forum Nokia webinar for Portuguese speakers, Daniel Rocha from Forum Nokia will explain how to publish content on Ovi Store. Daniel will detail the key elements for making content easy to find, compatibility, and content requirements for publishing. Whether planning to participate in the Calling All Innovators contest, or simply wanting to publish content on Ovi Store, this webinar should be useful. The webinar will take place on 15 December at 11 a.m. New York/2 p.m. São Paulo/3 p.m. Azores.

Register to attend Ovi Store webinar.

Developers can enter the just-announced Forum Nokia Qt Mobility Competition. The contest invites developers to create innovative, useful solutions that utilises Qt and the new Qt APIs. All entries will be judged by Nokia technical and business development experts. The first-place winner will be named a new Forum Nokia Champion and win a trip to the Nokia Forum Developer Summit 2010 in the United States. Other winners will receive a Nokia N900 multimedia device or Nokia N97 mini. Developers can enter more than one app, and all entries are due by 31 January 2010.

Enter the Forum Nokia Qt Mobility Competition for developers.

Larry Chen, CEO and Co-Founder of Active Chinese, is the guest speaker on the latest Forum Nokia podcast, episode 24. Speaking with Bill Volpe of Forum Nokia, Larry discusses his mobile language-learning app and describes his focus on connecting people in 80 countries. Larry also offers advice for new mobile software developers.

Listen to Larry Chen's podcast.

Browse past Forum Nokia podcasts.

Qt 4.6 brings new and exciting opportunities for Symbian development. Qt's intuitive C++ libraries and IDE greatly improve developer productivity. Qt API's allow apps to run across desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems without rewriting code. Finally, Qt offers a UI framework to create exciting user experiences.

Register »

Session 2:

Qt 4.6 brings new and exciting opportunities for Symbian development. Qt's intuitive C++ libraries and IDE greatly improve developer productivity. Qt API's allow apps to run across desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems without rewriting code. Finally, Qt offers a UI framework to create exciting user experiences.

Register »

In this session, Daniel Rocha from Forum Nokia will explain how to publish content in the Ovi Store, detailing the key elements for making the content easy to find by the end user. Rocha will also cover topics such as compatibility and content requirements for publishing. If you’d like to participate in the Calling All Innovators contest or simply want to publish your content in the Ovi Store, you’ll certainly find this webinar useful.

Register »