Nokia Developer News

Upgrades to Nokia Belle software (also known as Symbian Belle) will start to roll out worldwide soon. Now you can optimize your current S^3 and Symbian Anna apps to make the most of the UI changes that Belle brings to a wide range of Nokia’s Symbian smartphones.

While many existing apps will be largely compatible with Belle from the start, we recommend that you first test your older apps with Nokia Belle and then address any compatibility issues you may find. Don’t have a Nokia Belle phone? No problem, you can use Nokia’s free Remote Device Access service to test your apps. Depending on the results, you may decide to make certain changes; then you can republish or update your app in Nokia Store to make the most of the new Belle software.

Also, if you develop new apps that use Belle-specific APIs, these apps will not work with phones that run S^3 or Symbian Anna. So you may also decide to limit the distribution of these applications to Belle-only phones.

Documentation about Nokia Belle compatibility is now available in the Nokia Developer Wiki. [Note: This Wiki article is a work in progress, and more details will be added soon.]

To learn more, watch this video showing a hands-on demo of the Symbian Belle UI:

Learn more about the features found in Nokia Belle.
 

Join us in Florence, Italy, on 27-28 January for Qt Day 2012, two days packed with exciting technical and business sessions. Highlights will include:

- A keynote by Manuel Reverte-Castro, Nokia’s head of Ecosystem Developer Experience for South Europe; he will discuss Qt as a strategic short- and long-term development platform that enables developers to monetise applications.

- Case studies on the use of Qt in commercial projects.

- Technical sessions, including what’s new in Qt, Qt 5, and Qt Project.

- Digia presentations on the capabilities of the Qt Commercial team and the Qt Commercial roadmap.

Attendance to Qt Day 2012 in Florence is free. But please note, most sessions will be conducted in Italian.

Learn more about Qt Day 2012 in Florence.

The free QtInfo app is perfect if you are a developer who needs to know what version of the Qt framework is running in a Nokia phone, or if you’re a geek who likes to know that level of detail. Launch the app to reveal the Qt version and build currently installed, with details tailored for developers. For example, the report below shows that Qt 4.7.4 is installed along with the list of installed modules. If you scroll down the screen you’ll see more details of the installation, including the versions of Qt Quick, OpenGL, and WebKit. The report includes information about audio, video, and image formats supported by the current installation. You’ll even see optional Qt Components installed from packages com.nokia.symbian, qt.labs.components, and qt.labs.components.native.

QtInfo also reveals information about the execution environment as seen by the Qt framework. You will see information about the country and language currently selected, available network interfaces and addresses, and information about local hardware including sensors, WiFi, Bluetooth, screen parameters, etc.

QtInfo adapts to the available environment, allowing it to work across a wide range of devices and installation configurations. For example, the screen shot above was coded in QML to take advantage of Qt Quick available in the Qt 4.7.4 installation. The following screen shot was built with QtWidgets for execution in older versions (Qt 4.6.4). If you run QtInfo on a Symbian device with no Qt framework installed, it will use Avkon components to report the lack of a Qt installation.

Once QtInfo acquires all the information, you can capture the report to Clipboard, Pastebin,  Email, or write it to a file on local mass-storage.

QtInfo is an open source application developed by Attila Csipa, Lauri Jaaskela and Lucian Tomuta.

• Download the Symbian version from Nokia Store.
• For MeeGo version, source code and project contribution please visit the Project site at http://projects.developer.nokia.com/qtinfo

In three new videos, executives at Univision, Netflix, and Evernote discuss their latest mobile app development success stories, in partnership with Nokia and Windows Phone. These success-story videos are available now for your viewing pleasure:

Univision Interactive Media: Jose Hernandez, VP of Mobile Content, and Alfredo Rojas, Mobile Product Manager, explains how their app makes use of the Metro UI panoramas, to offer consumers a unique experience.  

Netflix: Anthony Park, Director of Engineering, talk about how Netflix now enables consumers to easily move from watching a video on their TV or computer to continue where they left off on a Nokia Lumia smartphone.

Evernote: Andrew Sinkov, VP of Marketing, and Damian Mehers, Senior Software Engineer, recount how Nokia and Microsoft helped from the very beginning in creating Evernote for Windows Phone, including providing feedback on the app before it was released.

At the 2012 International CES, in Las Vegas, Nokia announced new mobile applications from CNN, Univision, ESPN, and Sesame Workshop that will be available first and exclusively on Nokia Lumia smartphones. The partnerships with these companies will bring new apps from some of the world’s biggest brands exclusively to Nokia consumers before the apps are made available to other Microsoft Windows Phone consumers through Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace.  

Here are just a few details about the apps from the four content partners:

• ESPN Sports Hub will be preloaded on Nokia Lumia smartphones and will serve as a one-stop app for sports news, videos, and scores.  
• The CNN app will provide the latest news and video from CNN’s reporting around the globe plus direct access to iReport, CNN’s participatory news community. The app, which will launch globally for free in the next month, will be exclusive to Nokia users for 90 days.
• The Univision App will be exclusive to Nokia Lumia users in the U.S. and Puerto Rico for 18 months, delivering unique and exclusive Spanish-language content experiences, including Univision entertainment; soccer and other sports coverage; and news, cooking, and local content for various U.S. markets. 
• The exclusive Sesame Workshop app, 100th Day of School, builds on a three-year collaboration between Nokia, Sesame Workshop, and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. There are also three additional titles: Big Block Party, Color Carnival and Abby in Wonderland. Each title has familiar Sesame Street characters including Elmo and Grover, and these titles will be exclusive to Nokia consumers globally for a minimum of six months.

Additionally, a partnership with Electronic Arts (EA) to bring more than 25 of the world’s most popular mobile games to Windows Phone Marketplace will come first to Nokia Lumia phones.

‘With exclusive apps from some of the world’s leading global and most locally relevant brands, we are focused on making Nokia Lumia an outstanding smartphone experience for consumers’, says Marco Argenti, senior vice president of Developer Experience and Marketplace at Nokia. ‘We are collaborating with our partners to build and deliver first and exclusively on Nokia app experiences across key categories including news, sports, games, multicultural, and kids and family, all of which are unique, fresh and fun.’

Univision’s latest mobile-app-development success story, in partnership with Nokia and Microsoft Windows Phone

As the Nokia Lumia market-share footprint increases globally, Nokia is proud to deliver unique and exclusive app experiences via applications developed by Nokia and as a result of agreements with some of the world’s biggest names in consumer content. In addition to the Nokia Lumia phones’ iconic hardware design, this exclusive content and other Nokia-only content — such as Nokia Drive — provide users with an enhanced smartphone experience.

The Nokia-exclusivity periods will vary by content provider.

Windows Phone ecosystem growing rapidly

In addition to the forthcoming exclusive content for Nokia Lumia smartphones, the momentum behind the Windows Phone ecosystem continues to grow rapidly. Windows Phone Marketplace now has 50,000 apps and more than 80,000 developers have now registered with the Microsoft App Hub. More than 3 million developer tools have now been downloaded.

The number of apps submitted each day to Marketplace (currently 300 new titles a day) is about three times greater than it was before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership announcement last year.

In other Nokia Lumia news, Nokia confirmed today that the Nokia Lumia 710 smartphone, announced for T-Mobile’s network in December 2011, will become available tomorrow for order on the T-Mobile website; at the U.S. T-Mobile retail stores and authorised retail stores; and at U.S. Costco, Target, and Walmart locations.

As for the Nokia Lumia 800 phone, it will be made available online, including Microsoft Stores, in three striking colours (cyan, magenta, and matte black) as a bundle with the Nokia Play 360° speaker and a Nokia Purity by Monster headset. This unique bundle will become available online in early February.

Learn more about developing for Nokia Lumia smartphones.

(Update: 10 January 2012): If you are attending CES this week, make time to drop by the Nokia booth (#31409, South Hall) and have a look at app demos from the following partners:

• CNN
• ESPN
• Groupon
• Weather Channel
• Univision 
• LYNC
• Evernote
• Spotify
• Facebook
• Slacker
• Netflix
• Plants vs. Zombies (PopCap)

Nokia's newest smartphone, running Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5, is the biggest and fastest yet and it will be available exclusively through AT&T in the coming months.

With support of AT&T's 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network, the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone will offer high-performance web browsing with Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile, as well as video and audio streaming. The phone has a long-lasting (1830 mAh) battery for enjoying content all day long. At the same time, with Nokia’s App Highlights to recommend key applications to Nokia Lumia 900 users, content discovery on this smartphone will be easier than ever before.

The Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone features a large, 4.3-inch AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) ClearBlack Display that provides a superior viewing and touch experience on a phone that still fits easily in your hand. It also includes the exclusive Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive applications with free, voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation and a dedicated in-car user interface.

The phone’s main camera includes exclusive Carl Zeiss optics, with a large aperture (f/2.2) and a 28mm wide-angle focal length for high-quality, uncropped images even in low-light conditions. The Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone also includes a front-facing camera with a large aperture and a wide-angle focal length that ensure sharp, bright images for high-quality video calling, right out of the box.

With thousands of additional apps arriving every week, Microsoft Windows Marketplace has grown to more than 50,000 apps in less than 15 months. Windows Phone apps are safe, reliable, and — thanks to unique platform features and Metro UI design — behave smarter than similar apps on other platforms … all on great Nokia smartphones.  

Like the other Nokia Lumia phones, the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone includes a head-turning design in bright cyan and stealthy matte black. This phone also includes Live Tiles, delivering real-time updates straight to the Home screen, and the People hub, making it easy to keep in touch with the people that matter most.

In other Nokia Lumia news, the launches of the Nokia Lumia 710 phone with Rogers Communications and the Nokia Lumia 800 phone with TELUS Communications Company will bring the Nokia Lumia experience to Canada.

Check out the complete specifications for the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone.

Update (10 Jan. 2012): Watch Nokia's press conference held at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, where Nokia CEO Stephen Elop introduced the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone:

Curiosity drives Nokia Developer Champion of the Month Luis Valente's research into mobile entertainment, specifically innovative mobile games that use gestures and mobile games for visually-impaired people. His Audio Flashlight series includes an option for game play with no visual information at all, providing great fun for sighted and visually impaired gamers alike. It was awarded as "best work" at the Brazilian symposium on human computer interaction in 2008 (IHC '08).

Luis has numerous published articles in international conferences and journals and is a member of the editorial board in the International Journal of Computer Games Technology. Luis recently completed his Doctorate in Informatics from PUC-Rio, a top university in Brazil.

Meet Champion of the Month Luis Valente.

Explore the many benefits of the Nokia Developer Champion program.

We're ending 2011 on a very positive note.

The current interest in Qt is stronger than at any time in our past, Qt with Qt Quick is better than ever before, and the preparations for Qt 5 have been progressing well. The Qt project has enjoyed a real boost with over 1,000 developers now signed up - and now the third party independent contributions that are coming in for the core modules such as Qt base and Qt creator from non-Nokia employees – represent over 20% of the total input.

The Nokia Store, with 10 million downloads per day, now offers developers 155 million Nokia devices to target with Qt apps – and there is ongoing momentum here, as the plans are to make Qt a core part of the Nokia strategy in bringing apps to the next billion. All data points with regard to Qt on the Nokia store are up – and a lot more Qt apps are being downloaded by Nokia users (10x), so this means more revenue to Qt developers (20x). You only need to look at the Nokia N9 for a good proof point of the “power of Qt”.

Following on the recent successes of the Qt Developer Days in both Munich and San Francisco, the Qt Developer events in Tokyo and Beijing that took place earlier this month both achieved record attendance. The event in China had the highest number of attendees ever – for any Qt developer event – with nearly 1,100 participants.

At both events, all of the sessions (except the keynotes) were delivered by native speakers. In many cases this meant presentations from Nokia employees based at different Nokia offices around the world, or by local Qt partners. Thanks!

Highlights from Beijing

When it comes to Qt developers, China is already one of the largest, if not the largest market, worldwide. The growth of Qt usage in China has been steady and rapid since 2008 across multiple industries. In particular, the set top box market is growing very fast and it will be interesting to see how the strong interest in the Nokia N9 – which was sold out in the stores when we were visiting - will result in even more apps.

In Beijing, during the keynote from Chinese micro-blogging company Sina, the new version of its Qt-based Weibo social networking and media application was presented. When it came to the development, it took four developers about two months to create the Qt app for use on the Nokia N9. More about Sina Weibo is in this YouTube video. 

All sessions provided valuable insights into local Chinese success stories with Qt, and the feedback and interest around the product showcase from multiple industries was generally very positive indeed!

In the video below, Hubert Ng, Director Ecosystem and Developer Experience (EDX) at Nokia, China along with a number of attendees provide an overview of the Qt Developer Conference that was held in Beijing in December 2011: 

Highlights from Tokyo

The Qt Conference in Japan gave us a wonderful opportunity to engage with the skilled and very engaged Japanese Qt community. It also gave us the chance to share knowledge with them over the course of our two day event as well as to inform about them about the Nokia mobile app opportunities outside of Japan.

Japanese consumer electronics runs on a wide range of platforms, so the ability to re-use Qt code and skills, as well as the higher performance at lower price points that Qt 5 promises to deliver, offers great appeal to Japanese developers. Over the years the Japanese Qt community has been active in producing Qt books as well as making contributions to Qt – and we look forward in continuing working with the Japanese Qt community and to find ways to facilitate for them to contribute to the Qt project an even easier route to benefit from the potential the Nokia store offer Qt developers.

Note: Images from the Tokyo event are available in this Flickr slideshow. 

More details about the events in Beijing and Tokyo can be found in the Qt blog.

Thanks to a partnership between T-Mobile USA and Nokia, the Nokia Lumia 710 will become the first Windows Phone from Nokia to ship in the United States. The phone will be targeted at the nearly 150 million Americans who haven’t yet purchased their first smartphones. It will run on T-Mobile's 4G network, delivering high-performance hardware, Nokia's best social and Internet experience, and access to popular smartphone applications and services from Windows Phone Marketplace.

Starting 11 January 2012, the Nokia Lumia 710 will be available in the United States at T-Mobile retail stores, selected dealers and retailers, and online. The phone will sell for $49.99 (USD) after a $50 mail-in rebate and with a two-year plan.

Learn more.

Check out the Nokia Lumia 710 technical specifications.

In early October, we introduced you to the Simple Nokia Asset Creation - Online Marketing Tool. Now we are eager to know more about your experiences with the tool.

To do so, we have created a short survey regarding your use of the tool. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/87BGSSW

Thank you for your time. We appreciate and value your feedback.

Nokia Publish thanks all our publishers for a great year! With the holiday season just around the corner, please note that we will be working with a reduced staff from 23 December 2011 through 3 January 2012.

As a result, our response time during this period may be as long as 72 hours. So we suggest that you submit your applications as early as possible. Also, should you require any assistance publishing (requests for UIDs, certificate installers, etc.), please contact your Nokia Publish support team at developer.support@nokia.com.

Thank you for your continuous support and feedback, which will help us to improve our service in the New Year.

The winners have been announced for Nokia’s App Launcher Icon Competition. To enter, developers had to create a new, original app launcher icon for Series 40, Symbian, or Nokia N9 (MeeGo) platforms using Nokia templates, then submit the icons by 30 November. A total of 196 icons were entered by 103 developers. The winners, who will receive Nokia N9 phones, were chosen by how well they communicated the essence of each app, and by how well they matched the platform’s icon philosophy. The judges also sought icons that displayed simplicity, purity, friendliness, and fun.

And the winners are:

- Melon Mobile for its (soon to be published) Baby Monitor app. The icon uses a clever background colour, links to notifications, and highlights monitoring.

- Pixle/Trismer for its Bord chalkboard-simulator app. The icons uses bold, simple elements that connect with the target audience.

- Stephen Spencer for his Meex electronic music beat-matching app.

Also, special mentions were given to eight additional app icons and their creators:

- WaterBubble from Chintan Dave
- Kontact Touch/Notes from Nuno Pinheiro
- HappyRepublic Day from Sangram.
- Bunyi (soon to be released) from Dhi Aurrahman
- Pitu Hunt from Carlos De León
- LyricsQuick from Jaakko Koskenkorva
- Get a Cab! MY from Michelle Ng
- Toshi from Janez Vreček

Learn more about the Nokia App Launcher Competition.

Download the Nokia Icon Kit (zip file).

Gedda-Headz, the publisher of a popular social multiplayer game created by Nokia Developer Champion Frank Fitzek, is one the first developers to use the new In-App Purchasing system on the new Nokia Asha 303 phone, which is based on the Series 40 platform. Players of the game, also called Gedda-Headz, will be able to use the In-App Purchasing to change and upgrade their avatars.

Nokia had earlier announced the In-App Purchasing would be available for the Series 40 phones, and that the first phone to offer the feature would be the Asha 303. The new monetisation setup is being tested now under a beta program. When fully implemented, it will let consumers pay via either credit cards or billing from more than 134 mobile operators worldwide.

 

Learn more about In-App Purchase from the Nokia Developer Library.

Monetise your Series 40 apps.