Nokia Webinar: Developing Games for the N8 (2010 Dec 8)

Series 40 Platform (S40 is an operating system, see wikipedia, it is based on Symbian)

*The main advantage of using s40 would be : a "large reach" (many people in developing countries are using phones with s40 as the OS)

Series 60 Platform (s60, also a Symbian OS)

JavaME is the main Technology for development on the s40 platform and OS
-Use Nokia Java SDK
 +simulators
 +2D and 3D Graphics APIs
 +Push Registry
 +Gesture and FrameAnimator API
=> to get started: www.forum.nokia.com/Develop/Java


How to create games for Symbian
-Use Nokia Qt SDK
 +Entertainment application
 +Social Games
 +Casual, 2D games
-Use OpenGL ES plus Symbian C++
 +Hardcore, high-performance 3D games
=> forum.nokia.com -> developer section -> download Qt SDK


3rd party OpenGL ES based engines
 -Airplay
 -
 -


Games on N8:
1. Angry Birds:
        -Built completely with OpenGL ES and Symbian C++
2. Crazy Hamster
3. Need for Speed


Push Notifications (currently a Beta API)
  Service API: REST-Based server-side API available

Inn-App Purchase (currently a Beta API)


callingallinnovators.com/10M      .....contet for content for N8
Upload app before Jan.28,2011 (deadline)

*Fees for becoming a lifetime OVI Store publisher is currently waived. Also, Nokia will sign your app for free.


Nokia Phone Device Specs:  forum.nokia.com/devices
Community for asking and answering questions: forum.nokia.com/community
(if you answer a lot of questions, you could become a Nokia Qt Hero)

also available: for testing your apps: the Nokia Remote Device Access Service

Android - Fragementation - Developer Comments

Some people suspect that the advertisements running in Angry Birds might be the cause of its performance issues on some lower-end Android devices.

One app developer comments: "I'm sticking with Apple on this one. I can't afford to have my small team take the time to work in the fragemented environment of Android. I would go broke."

Another developer comments: "Although we have strongly considered developing for Android, we have decided to opt out for now due to the current fragmented situation on the Android platform. Creating different versions of the same app (and then maintaining them) is very expensive. Empirical data suggests that resources may be better spent on attracting new clients and innovating new products."

Another developer comments: "For our company the trade off was to either hire another developer to fill in the long tail blanks on the Android platform or to hire another sales rep to grow our business, and we chose to hire the sales rep."

Android - Fragmentation - Angry Birds Case Study

According to Rovio Mobile (the company that developed Angry Birds), many Android developers reported severe performance issues on older, lower-performance device models running Angry Birds.

In a statement from Rovio Mobile: "With our latest update, we worked hard to bring Angry Birds to even more Android devices. Despite our efforts, we were unsuccessful in delivering optimal performance.

Rovio lists more than a dozen Android devices that the current version of the game cannot support, which includes all devices running Android 1.6 and below as well as custom ROMs.

Rovio is making a lightweight version of the game to be able to run on lower-end devices, but has not yet announced when this lightweight version will be available.

Mobile App - Angry Birds

Made by casual games maker  Rovio Mobile.

Sold about 7 million iphone download and about 2 million Android downloads in only its first 2 days of release in mid-October this year.

Android - Fragmentation Issue

Android is an excellent platform that has been hugely successful. But it is not without its problems. Fragmentation is one of those problems.

Based on information from  developer.android.com , about 36% of Android phones are running Android 2.2, about 40% are running Android 2.1, with about 15% on Android 1.6, and 8% running Android 1.5, and around 1% running older obsolete versions.

In a statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, he expresses that there is a challenge for the Android developer community due to the fact that many Android apps only work on selected handsets, or selected Android release versions. In contrast, iPhone developers only have two versions to test againt, which are the current version and the most recent predecessor.

Android - Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Android's next OS update will be  Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that Android 2.3 will integrate Near Field Comminications technologies which enable users to make retail purchases using the Android smartphone. Future Android devices will optionally have NFC chips that allow users to "bump" their phone against participating retailer's point-of-sale technology, which will complete the purchase transaction.

This "bump" solution will also be used to allow users to "bump" Android smpartphones together to share/transmit data and information.

My Nokia N8 Smartphone (with pictures)

Charlieloo98 - Mobile/Cloud/ChineseTeach/Thesis/eLearning Blog: Nokia N8 Smart Phone

Blackberry - Lab2 - Task1 - adjustment

An adjustment object can be used to encapsulate the data structure in use by many different UI components.

Adjustment components are useful for any components that need to share access to a model containing a range of values.

Blackberry - Lab2 - UI Toolkit Lab

This lab demonstrates some advanced UI components.

The app includes 3 screens, one to demonstrate "Adjustment", "Titlebar", and "Trackpad Gestures" APIs, respectively.

This lab contains 4 java files.


***For additional information on the various API classes used in this lab, refer to the Blackberry JDE API Specification (Javadocs)

Windows Phone 7

New Mobile Operating System - Windows Phone 7

Microsoft's new Smartphone OS

Microsoft's old mobile operating system used to be called "Windows Mobile"

Instead of bringing a desktop experience to mobile devices, Microsoft decided to totally revamp everything and build their new OS from the ground up.

They call their new interface Metro UI, and it is extraordinarily simple and intuitive to use

Big colorful "live tiles" are where you access your apps, and they also allow you to easily see notifications for new emails or text messages

Windows Phone 7 currently lacks copy and paste, and multitasking, but MS promises that these will be available in future updates

Currently version 1.0

Currently not many apps available for it

Windows Phone 7 is a complete redesign from MS's previous mobile OS Windows Mobile

image from: digi.tech.qq.com
reference: Daily 2.0 column by Husain Sumra "Microsoft's new smart phone OS proves worthy of consumer interest"

AT&T Developer Program

At&T Developer Program
developer.att.com

What platforms do you develop for?

Choices:

1. Apple
2. iOS
3. Android
4. BrewMP
5. BlackBerry
6. Java
7. Symbian
8. WAP
9. WebOS
10. Windows Desktop
11. Windows Mobile
12. Other

Apps Monetization Session at Parisoma in SF

Contact info of the speakers:

Greg Kennedy, InMobi - gregory.kennedy@inmobi.com
Paul Chen, PapayaMobile - paulchen@papayamobile.com
Chris Smutny, Adknowledge's Super Rewards - csmutny@adknowledge.com

Greg Kennedy
Director, Global Marketing, InMobi

Download a Global View of Mobile Advertising
www.inmobi.com/research

Accelerate Android Mobile Application Development

......using the IBM Rational platform for software and systems development.

Notes and thoughts from webcast by industry expert Martin Bakal.

Symbian is currently the global smartphone OS leader with 51% of market share.

Stats from AdMob: In May 2010, 66% of Android users were in US, 13% were in China.

What is Android?
1. Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel.
2. Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes:
     (1) Operating System
     (2) Middleware
     (3) Developer Tools (mostly eclipse based)
     (4) Key Applications

Nokia - Qt - Install QMobility API Libraries into N8 Phone

install QMobility Library into n8 phone
install .sis file

goto: [Nokia Qt SDK installation dir] \ Symbian\sis\qtmobility_1.0.2_for_n8.sis
(for example, in my system, the path was: "C:\NokiaQtSDK\Symbian\sis\qtmobility_1.0.2_for_n8.sis)

double click on the above file and the .sis file will be installed on your phone (you just need to hit "ok" in pop up windows on both your laptop and the n8 phone)

*However, for some reason, the double click on .sis file on laptop did not seen to work on my system (the instructor suspected it might be due to some incompatibilty with my system), so I had to find a workaround:
workaround steps:
1. connect nokia n8 phone to latptop via usb, and access it as a mass storage device
2. on your laptop, go to the following path: Nokia N8-00 \ Mass Memory \ Installs
3. copy the .sis file into the above "Installs" folder (on the phone)
4. then, from your phone, go to  Menu -> Settings -> Application Manager -> Installation Files -> click on the .sis file you want to install

Android - NDK (2)

10 Android NDK Tips ( excerpted from : http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/10-android-ndk-tips/ )

With new devices and new capabilities being exposed by the Android NDK (Native Development Kit) it is now possible to really get the best out of these ARM based devices. Here are a few quick tips to help that along.

1 - Stay on Target

The newest devices are generally ARMv7, meaning that it can pay to use v7 builds and features. The latest version of the NDK adds support ARMv7 and NEON code allowing key loops and media operations to be optimized far beyond what would otherwise be possible. The NDK provides a small static library that will allow you to identify what options you have at runtime. For examples of how to use these features, look at the hello-neon example project in the samples directory of the NDK

The older devices are v6, but the NDK does not specifically support it, leaving you with the choice of building safely for v5TE or taking the risk that there may be v5TE devices out there. If you need every iota of speed, and know what hardware you are targeting, then it may be worth building for v6. The newest devices, supporting Android 2.0 and up, seem generally to be ARMv7 based, although you cannot rule out enthusiasts porting the newer OS releases onto the older hardware. When given a choice, it is better to concentrate on an ARMv7 with NEON implementation.

2 - Do not optimize immediately

Unless you plan on porting an existing C++ application, do not rush into native. Get the app right first and profile carefully. Often things you think will be bottlenecks are less of a factor than other features. Recent handheld devices incorporate two levels of cache and sometimes clock-scaling designed to conserve power. Combine that with ongoing efforts by Google to improve the performance of the OS and there is ample scope for surprises.

3 - Optimize like a ninja

Aim to leave no trace. It can be tempting to rip apart your design in favour of a few extra cycles, but other than in exceptional cases this is something to avoid. When you do optimize, sneak in, turn the key bits of your application into super-fast native or assembly code and get out cleanly. That way you should not compromise your maintainability and ease of debugging. Of course if you are sure a redesign is likely to buy you enough speed to be worth the pain then get out the hacksaw.

4 - Re-factor around your optimisations

Once you have a design in place, do not be afraid to re-arrange code to make more of it suitable for optimising, but avoid tinkering too much with native code once it is working. The Java code is more easily rearranged and debugged. Often it will make sense to optimize at the Java level first with a view to consolidating chunks of logic ready for turning native. Changes in algorithm or data structures at the Java level should generally carry over as an advantage when porting to native and are much easier to work with.

5 - Maintain a Java fall-back

Executing unsupported native code is a bad idea; at best it will cause your application to exit unexpectedly. It is possible to determine with some confidence whether or not your native code will be compatible with the device the program is running on, so as long as you have a Java implementation available you can always fall back to that. This is where the optimized Java version from tip 4 pays off extra.

6 - Allocate with care

Whenever possible allocate in Java anything that is needed in Java rather than relying on later, easily forgotten, calls to C to free. This minimises the chances of leaks and makes the Java code simpler. Where you have a significantly long-running operation it will make sense to allocate locally for scratch space, but watch your pointers - the old C habits around pointer discipline can fade a bit too quickly if you are writing a lot of Java code.

7 - Multi-thread with great care

We already have several development platforms with multiple ARM cores, so they may well be in your customers hands soon than you think. With that in mind it is tempting to split everything up into threads. It is a good idea in general, but remember maxing out the load on your system may speed up the result at the expense of the second-to-second user experience. Even so, used sensibly threads can be very effective. The Android system already produces several threads itself just to run one app, while they are generally just waiting on events if you create too many actively executing threads of your own you may hamper their ability to run and inadvertently degrade the overall user experience.

8 - Thread at the Java Level

When you do break your logic into threads, it is better to do it via Java than pthreads wherever possible. There are fewer hazards and more language-level tools for managing access with the Java VM. If the set-up cost worries you, it is not going to be hard to use a small ready-constructed pool of workers. Remember to post updates on long-running tasks back to the main UI thread to keep the user informed. You also want to remember one of the most important Android NDK rules: NEVER run your native code on the UI thread. In fact, try to run almost no Java code on the UI thread; Android has appropriate APIs (check the Handler class) to allow cheaply pushing tasks onto threads that are not the UI Thread.

9 - Know when to use Assembler

C or C++ will give you an instant speed-up without making the code that much more difficult to maintain than Java. Further incremental improvement may be possible from converting key bits of code to assembler, but weigh the time and effort concerned against the benefit you expect. It is better to ship working code now and release a faster update later than spend forever tuning. Having said that, sometimes if you know exactly what you want to do you can get significant additional performance.

Always check the code GCC is putting out first, it may be doing a lot better -- or a lot worse -- than you expect. Here objdump is a valuable tool, a version is already provided in build/prebuilt/linux-x86/arm-eabi-4.4.0/arm-eabi/bin directory of the NDK download from Google.

10 - Know when to use NEON

NEON is a very powerful tool, with the potential to give up to 8x performance improvement over optimized assembler in the right circumstances, but it is not suitable for everything. To learn how to best make use of NEON, take a look at the NEON guides on this blog.

• NEON Loads and Stores
• Dealing with leftovers

Dave, Principal Engineer, ARM, For at least the last ten years he has been maintaining, optimising, examining or attempting to answer hardware engineers questions about Virtual Machines. After several years of working on Java, with time off to work on tools, he now tries to understand Android.

Shortlink to this post: http://bit.ly/abiLKd

Android - NDK

Developing Native ARM Code using the Android NDK
The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets Android application developers build performance-critical portions of their apps in ARM native code. By using the NDK developers are quickly bringing existing C/C++ applications to the Android platform and optimizing them using the latest features of the ARM Architecture. This presentation provides an introduction to the Android NDK covering usage, setup and developing code.

Rod Crawford is a Principal Software Engineer at ARM working in the area of mobile Web 2.0 technologies. During his 15+ years with the company he has spearheaded many embedded software initiatives including the creation of ARM's first commercial software toolkit, OS optimization for ARM, high performance implementation of Java on ARM, and even an ARM Web portal and Blog for developers. Prior to ARM, Rod has spent extensive time in the embedded software industry developing software tools for the 8 and 16bit microcontroller market and creating extensive ISV communities.





above description excerpted from Silicon Valley Android Developers Meetup Group:
http://www.android-android.net/boards/view/viewthread?thread=9990108

Qt - Nokia - Nokia - Qt Workshop - Install in N8 phone before you can run apps on phone

C:\Nokia Qt SDK\Symbian\SIS\Symbian^3 ********.sisx

double click on the above file to install "TDR" (?) on phone

this needs to be done before you can run your apps on phone through OVI suite

Android - List of Topics to look into

Android Top Gun Development Training Camp

Intermediate Level

Are you ready to take your Android development to the next level? Do you know the basics of environment setup and have completed “Hello World” and other sample programs?

Android Top Gun Development Training Camp is for you!

A special promo code for a $50 discount is available for Android Developer Meetup members.
Use: SVAndroid
Register at: http://android-traini...

Price: $250 (Beverage & lunch will be provided)

Early Bird Special: $200 (register by November 8 )

Special Prices & Discounts, if applicable:

Early bird discount: $50 (Register before November 8, 2010.)

BCI Prospective Employee Discount: $150 (Refundable after joining BCI within 90 days of completing training)
This intermediate level Android training is offered on Nov 13-14 and a follow up session on Nov 15, 2010

Main Session (Two Days): Nov 13-14, 2010

Over the course of two full days, you will learn intermediate topics in Android programming.

Session 1: Exploring User Interface Screen Elements

• Introducing Android Views, Widgets, and Layouts
• Displaying Text to Users with TextView
• Getting Text From Users with EditText and Spinner
• Using Buttons, Check Boxes, and Radio Groups
• Getting Dates and Times from Users
• Indicating Information to Users
• * Indicating and Adjusting Progress with SeekBar
• * Providing Users with Options and Context Menus
• Handling User Events
• Working with Styles
• Working with Themes

Session 2: Designing Android User Interfaces with Layouts

• Creating User Interfaces in Android
• Organizing Your User Interface with ViewGroup
• Using Built-In Layout Classes
• Using Built-In View Container Classes
• Using AppWidgets to Expose Application Views
• * Becoming an AppWidget Provider

Session 3: Data and Storage APIs using SQLite Database

• Working with Application Preferences
• Working with Files and Directories
• Storing Structured Data Using SQLite Databases
• * Sharing Data Between Applications with Content Providers
• * Extending Your Android Application with a Custom Content Provider
• Working with Live Folders

Session 4: Browsing the Web with WebView

• Accessing the Internet (HTTP)
• Browsing the Web with WebView

Session 5: Multimedia APIs

• Working with Still Images
• Working with Video
• Working with Audio

Session 6: Location-Based Based Services (LBS) APIs

• Using Global Positioning Services (GPS)
• Geocoding Locations
• Mapping Locations
• * Doing More with Location-Based Services

Note: Lines marked with * are topics that will be covered if time permits.

Follow up session (1.5 hours) Nov 15, 2010

• Publishing
• Monetization
• Marketing channels.
• App Contest
• Q&A

For more details about this and other Android training, check out website at:
http://android-traini...

Blackberry - cheet sheet

To open a cheat sheet, select "Help -> Cheat Sheets -> BlackBerry Developer Labs". Highlight the cheat sheet you wish to open and click 'OK'.