Mobile Application Prototyping By Means Of Python For S60.
Abstract Mobile application production has become more and more important during the last couple of years since the number of devices increases quickly and the capabilities of phones enable a new variety of services. This trend requires new opportunities for creating innovative software in an efficient and comfortable manner. With Python for S60 (PyS60), Nokia brought the Python programming language to S60 phones, which offers new ways of mobile application development and rapid prototyping. This article gives an introduction to PyS60, deals with the development process of applications and explains differences to common approaches when using the native Symbian C++ or JavaME platform.
The number of smartphones on the market has been increasing continually over the last couple of years, due to the changing way that people connect, interact and work. There is a need in small mobile devices and the ability to provide anytime, anywhere access to information in a simple and effective way. According to iSuppli1 analysts, there have been 2.7 billion cellular subscribers globally in 2009 and forecasts about 3 billion subscribers by end of 2010. Perhaps this market is growing faster than every other technologic sector. This increasing amount of devices associates the need of new services and applications along with platforms on which they are developed and deployed. As you can see at Rapid Prototyping Website, nowadays the mobile phone has become a multimedia all-rounder, which enables the user to make photos and videos, enter the world-wide web or using it as a multimedia player.
Since the beginning of this trend, far-sighted software developers began to write applications for mobile platforms, to benefit from an upcoming industry of rapid prototyping. The drawbacks of the huge amount of possibilities offered by the mobile platforms are recognized. Limited hardware-capabilities, low CPU speed and small displays require clever software concepts and remarkable development skills, to make an application be efficient or suitable. At Rapid Prototyping Website we may show you how different software platforms are established among the variety of phone manufacturers. Some build on their personal proprietary operating system whereas others employ published platforms, which enable third party developers to use native APIs to access phone-specific capabilities for their applications. Among these, Symbian OS, developed by the Symbian Ltd.2, turned out to be one of the key players on the market. But this great mobile platform comes along with the drawbacks of handling high-performance idioms of the C++ programming language, which was used to write the operating system itself.
The solution was Python for S60 (PyS60), an interpreted script language port for Symbian OS mobile phones. As you may see at www.materialise.com, Python is known for its simple concepts and slim language specification of around 100 pages. But not only beginners should take advantage from this opportunity of rapid prototyping. The easy approach could make fast and conceptual development possible for even the experienced ones.
Recent Comments