Our discussion thus far has centered largely on developing mobile applications for the Symbian OS. It's important to understand the community interest and architecture associated to this OS.
The Symbian OS is the most widely licensed operating system among manufacturers of next -generation mobile phones. The Symbian OS effort is the brainchild of Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Psion, and has been licensed to Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, and Matsushita (Panasonic). It is a full-fledged 32-bit multitasking operating system that provides the following capabilities for mobile devices.
data management
communications
graphics
multimedia
security
application engines
messaging engine
Bluetooth support
browser engines support
data synchronization and internationalization
Symbian-based phones support GSM, GPRS, and in the future WCMDA, CDMA 2000 (see sidebar on Symbian OS). Borland's C++ support for Symbian OS is geared to facilitate the development of 2.5G/3G mobile device applications and take advantage of these aforementioned capabilities and technologies.
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY ACRONYMSThere are lots of confusing acronyms associated to mobile industry. A handful of some of the more common and emerging acronyms is provided in Table B.2. Table B.2. Mobile Technology Acronyms
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Borland's support includes the capability to develop applications for different form factors and for different uses. Figure B.2 provided an illustration of one of the more recent Symbian OS products developed by Nokia. A list of current products is also provided here.
Nokia 9210/9210i ”Nokia 9290
Sony Ericsson P800
Nokia 3650/7650
An excellent white paper titled "Getting Started with C++ on the Nokia 9200 Series Communicator," which is available online, will get you started in developing C++ mobile apps even if you don't have the C++ Mobile Edition. You can find this white paper at http://www.symbian.com/developer/techlib/papers/cpp_9200/C++_Nokia_9200.html. To develop the Hello World example that's described in this online paper, you should obtain the Nokia 9200 Series Software Development Kit (SDK) for Symbian OS (see http://www.forum.nokia.com/).
NOTE
The Nokia 9200 Series SDK provides documentation, tools, sample code, and a Microsoft Windows “hosted emulator to facilitate development of mobile apps. In the absence of C++ Mobile Edition, the SDK is essential for developing, testing, and debugging C++ applications.
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