Chris Double: nokia9210

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:56:28 GMT

I've decided to move from using Radio Userland to a Blogger weblog hosted on my own domain. I've been using Linux for the past couple of years and it's proven too painful to keep using the Radio Userland software under Wine. No more posts will be added to this weblog, or any of its categories.

The new weblog is here and the atom feed is here.

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:59:35 GMT

Joseph Strout sent me a link to an idea he had for improving text input methods in devices with no keyboards. It sounds look a good area for experimentation, especially the pen/stylus input method. From the sounds of it you end up remembering 'gestures' for words, or parts of words, to enable faster input. The gestures are mapped to a hexagonal grid of letters optimized for the input language.

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:32:51 GMT

From Helen's Techblog: Snippets, a site for storing small code snippets which can be tagged, searched for, etc. Pretty neat. There's a distinct lack of Lisp snippets there though...need to work on that.
They have a 'series 60' tag for mobile phone programming snippets on the Symbian OS which looks quite useful.

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:13:08 GMT

All About Symbian have got a very positive review of the Nokia 9300.

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:45:37 GMT

I came across QConsole today which looks like a useful developer utility for Symbian phones. It connects to the phone via bluetooth, giving you a console that enables you to navigate the filesystem, query running tasks, etc. Linux only.

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:33:31 GMT

My Symbian has a review of the Nokia 7710. Although not yet available for general sale in New Zealand, some people are selling units on the auction site TradeMe.

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:16:37 GMT

Recently I've been writing a few programs for my Series 60 Symbian cellphone that accesses bluetooth devices. I've been using Borland's Mobile Studio V1.5 which has some visual components for Series 60 development, including bluetooth components.

There was little documentation for these so I've written a document outlining how to use these components to talk to a Bluetooth GPS to extract the NMEA data as it arrives from the GPS: Developing for a Bluetooth GPS on Symbian Series 60 cellphones with C++.

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:17:15 GMT

Matt Croydon posts about extending the Python implementation on the Symbian Series 60 phones. I played with the implementation briefly last night and it's very nice. Well done Nokia!

Scripts can be run a number of ways:

You can send Python scripts to the phone and run them.
Type them in via the phone keypad in a running interpreter instance (not very practical I admit).
Via bluetooth, GPRS or some other connection, connect to the phone interpreter from your PC and type and test code from there.

Some good documentation is included along with an API reference for the phone functions and quite a few examples.

This gives me some ideas on how to progress my Io language port and to get other language implementations running. What would really be nice is to be able to see the source to the Python port to help with getting other languages running on the system.

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:39:38 GMT

Python for Symbian Series 60 phones has been released. Not quite Common Lisp or Scheme but close enough for now.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:06:33 GMT

A new release of Io for Series 60 Symbian devices is available. The 80Kb download is iosymbian_0_3.zip.

This release updates the version of Io to IoVM-2004-09-11. It also fixes a couple of bugs, has better support for futures and asynchronous calls, and has a proper Uid registered with Symbian.

The patches to the Io base code have been supplied to Steve, the Io author, and will appear in the standard Io source distribution. The Symbian specific code is actively being worked on and is not yet updated in the Io source distribution. I plan to get a release of the code suitable for that soon.

I'm interested in feedback, in particular Io features that don't work correctly, or suggestions on Symbian libraries to provide wrappers for. Currently this is only tested on a Nokia 3650 and Nokia 7610. It definetely does not work on the 3650 but does on the 7610. Getting things working on the 3650 will not be too difficult and I hope to do that over the next week or two.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 00:19:05 GMT

I'm making progress on Io for Symbian. I tracked down the problem that was causing the crash on the Nokia 3650. Now I just need to fix it. I've assigned it a proper Uid, obtained from Symbian and tidied up the way Io coroutines and Symbian Active Objects interact so the system runs much more responsively. I'm also setting up a website page specific for the port and will post a note here when done.

In Io, each object can react to asynchronous messages. These messages get added to a queue and the object processes each message in the queue. A call to 'yield' will allow other objects to process their own ansynchronous message queues. This is how the co-operative multitasking works in the system.

In Symbian I need to process system events in a timely manner otherwise the responsiveness of the phone suffers and the application risks being shut down by the system. My current approach to managing the calls to yield so Io asynchronous objects run is to have an 'EventRuner' Io object that has a method which yields to other Io objects and processes Symbian events using the ActiveScheduler. This runs continuously while a script runs.

Unfortunately this has the side effect of continuously running yield calls and event processing even if there are no objects or events to manage. What I need to change is to have the system only run the object if actual processing is needed to save battery power and other phone resources.

Also on the list is wrapping more Symbian libraries and improving the user interface.

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 21:49:24 GMT

The Nokia 9300 looks like a very nice replacement for the Nokia 9210 communicator. The linked to article talks about 'no word on Python being ported from the Series 60 alpha'. I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Having a keyboard makes scripting languages even more useful on the phone.

The Nokia 9500 is an even more amazing looking phone. Built in WiFi is an interesting feature in a cellphone. Having apps that could seamlessly switch from the expensive (in New Zealand) GPRS to a cheaper WiFi alternative in the office would be great.

Io and the other scripting languages I'm working on getting working on Series 60 would be fantastic on these phones. I know this from having used Io and Forth on the Nokia 9210. The keyboard makes a big difference.

Once the Series 60 port is a little more complete I'll download the 9300/9500 SDK and try a port, testing it on the emulators. Anyone with a 'real' device that would like to do some testing is welcome to contact me (use the 'envelope' icon on my weblog main page). Anyone who wants to provide me with a real device is of course welcome to contact me too ;-)

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 21:01:47 GMT

[ Updated information available here, and here. A new download is available here. ]

A new release of Io for Series 60 Symbian devices is now available. This version fixes the problem with exceptions. They now work. I've also added an interface to the phone 'Log Engine' allowing you to get details on recent calls. The example, phonelog.io shows how it can be used.

Future changes will include a proper Uid for the application now that I've received one from Symbian, more libraries, getting it working on the Nokia 3650, and GUI routines.

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 22:37:17 GMT

[ note 2004-09-08: an update is available here ]

Over the weekend I managed to update my Symbian Series 60 port of the Io programming language to the latest Io codebase. There are still a number of issues and things that don't work right but I'm slowly working through them. The current major issues are:

Io Exceptions aren't working. They usually crash the interpreter.
No Symbian library wrappers. So you can only do standard Io language things.
No user interface routines.
Main interface of interpreter is not very effective. It only has two edit boxes. The top one for entering code. The second for showing the result of evaluations.
I haven't got a proper registered Uid for the application yet.
While it runs on a Nokia 3650, I get a panic when attempting to start the interpreter.

What does work:

Most of the Io language appears to work fine including coroutines.
You can load code stored in the 'Memo' or 'Notes' application. I transfer files to my phone via bluetooth. These get stored in 'Notes'. I run Io and load them there.
Basic asynchronous tcp/ip sockets work.
Only tested on the Nokia 7610.

Where to from here:

Tidy up the user interface.
Get exceptions working.
Wrap a few Symbian libraries.
Get it working on the Nokia 3650.
Write a telnet-like server so I can develop code on the phone via a read-eval-print loop accessed from my desktop PC.

The download file iosymbian_0_1.zip contains an installable .SIS file and some simple example Io programs. This is not really a uesful release apart from being able to play with Io on the phone. Remember, only tested on the 7610, I welcome feedback. To use:

Install the .SIS file.
Send the .io files to the phone and save in the 'Notes' application.
Start Io.
Use the 'Start Interpreter' menu item to fire up the interpreter.
Typing code in the top edit box and using 'Evaluate' will evaluate that code. Try '"hello" print' for example.
Using the 'Clear' menu item clears out both edit boxes.
Using 'Load from Notepad' to bring up a list of notepad items. Select one and it will be loaded in the top edit box and evaluated with the results appearing in the bottom.

Source will be included in future updates and will be folded into the main Io distribution as I pass updates to the Io author, Steve Dekorte. Hopefully the next release will be a whole lot more usable.

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 02:16:43 GMT

Previously I'd ported the Io programming language to run on the Nokia 9210, a Symbian based cellphone. The 9210 is getting a bit old now so I've updated the port to run on series 60 devices. This includes phones like the Nokia 3650 and Nokia 7610. The first cut at a port seems to work fine. Basic scripts run and asynchronous sockets work.

The main problem is entering code on the phone. It's slow with only a standard phone keypad. The Nokia 9210 had a full keyboard which made things much easier. My current plan is to write an telnet-like server in Io to run on the phone and connect to this from my PC, allowing entering scripts and interactive programming on the device but using the PC keyboard and screen. Once this is done I'll release a test version.

If you want the current test version feel free to email me in the meantime. Don't expect much in terms of usability though.

Other languages I intend to get going is re-doing my Forth port, and getting Factor to run on the phone.

Sat, 03 Jul 2004 03:54:47 GMT

Gordon Weakliem writes about Python on Series 60 phones. I've had Forth, Io and Scheme running on the Symbian OS on a Nokia 9210 and they're all easier to program that Java or the C++ SDK. I'm interested in porting these to the Series 60 but the lack of a keyboard is a bit of a pain as I like to do on-phone development.

One thought I had was to have a mini-http server running on the phone that provided a REPL or other means of sending programming constructs to it. Or maybe a small telnet server providing access over an IRDA or bluetooth socket. This would allow development on the main machine while immediately running it on the phone.

Slava's CFactor could be an option. This allows development on the main machine in Java and producing an image which is loaded and used by the 12Kb C executable.

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 00:48:21 GMT

Simon Woodside recently got the Symbian SDK for Series 60 phone working under Linux. He followed the same install process I did, the Symbian 6.1 SDK on Linux instructions. I didn't know about Chris Davies' utility for unpacking the Windows SDK under Linux though. I had to install it under Windows, tar it up, and cp it to the Linux machine which was a bit painful. It would be nice if Nokia had an 'exploded' version of the SDK rather than the Windows Installer only version.

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 00:36:52 GMT

Performing a variation of the 'Symbian SDK on Linux' I've been able to get the Series 60 SDK mostly working natively on the Zaurus handheld. Compiling GCC on the Zaurus took a bit of time though!

This allows me to compile and build Symbian applications for the phone and transfer them to it via infrared all via the PDA.

Unfortunately there is one step not quite working. Some of the utilities from the SDK require Wine to run. I've been able to get all but one to compile and work correctly under Linux instead using the source supplied by Symbian. The one that doesn't quite work is 'rcomp'. It runs fine but doesn't generate unicode resource files which are required by Series 60. If I compile the resource files on my desktop using Wine and copy it to the Zaurus then everything works fine from then on. Hopefully I'll be able to work around this.

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 02:44:56 GMT

The successor to the Nokia 9210 communicator is on its way. Nokia has details on the 9500 communictor. I was a heavy user of the 9210 until it fell apart. Now I use a PDA and a phone instead of a combined device like the communicator. In my view a combined device is a big win. I used the PDA features of the phone more than I use a seperate PDA because it is always there.

The new 9500 looks almost exactly like the 9210. It has some new features however. It is a tri-band phone, has GPRS capability, bluetooth and USB support. Interestingly it also has 'WLAN' support which suggest wireless capability. The 9210 had approximately 3.5MB of memory available to applications. The 9500 has 90MB! With 20MB available for midlets.

With all these great features the chances of me affording this phone are slim...

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 10:53:38 GMT

A site dedicated to the development of open source programs for the Symbian OS. Another one is available here. GnuPoc have recently ported a few previously Windows only parts of the Symbian SDK to Linux making development of Symbian programs under Linux easier. Previously these programs had to be run using Wine.

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 14:19:33 GMT

Patrick Logan talks about wanting scripting languages on mobile devices. I completely agree. This is one of the reasons why I ported Ficl Forth and the Io programming language to the Symbian platform (specifically the Nokia 9210 cellphone).

Being able to write quick scripts on the phone itself to send SMS, respond to SMS, etc was great. When my 9210 died I got a Nokia 3650 which is also a Symbian device but doesn't have a keyboard. I've not yet worked out the best way of writing scripts for it. I'm leaning towards running a small HTTP server on the phone and using a computer or PDA to write the scripts and send it to the phone via the HTTP server.

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:45:14 GMT

From All About Symbian: OPL, the programming language produced by Symbian for use on their devices has been released as open source under the LGPL license. It's available at the OPL Sourceforge project page. Even if OPL's basic like syntax doesn't appeal to you, looking at the code for the implementation could be useful for helping to port other open source language implementations to the Symbian OS.

Mon, 28 Apr 2003 10:04:32 GMT

Krzysztof Kowalczyk comments on a report on sales numbers for PDA/Smartphone devices. The report shows Symbian devices as 53% of the total sales. The next is Windows CE on 24%.

According to a Yahoo comment on the report 50% of data-centric devices, such as PDA's and wireless handhelds, came with Symbian installed and 90% of voice centric devices (ie. phones). That's a pretty impressive market share. Although I'm not a great fan of the Symbian C++ API (See my previous weblog entry about this) I do like the Nokia 9210 device. And I know that Symbian are interested in having other languages (Like Lisp) available for development on the device.

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 12:52:07 GMT

BrowseX is a nifty web browser written in C and TCL. It runs under Linux and Windows and is pretty snappy. Has some nice features too. It's open source too.

Tue, 03 Sep 2002 22:05:22 GMT

I've managed to get the IO programming language working on the Nokia 9210 cellphone. IO is a prototype object based language similar to NewtonScript. The base installation uses about 300KB of memory which is pretty reasonable on the 9210.