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Does anyone have experience with PyS60 mobile development

I am in the position of having to make a technology choice early in a project which is targetted at mobile phones. I saw that there is a python derivative for S60 and wondered whether anyone could share experiences, good and bad, and suggest appropriate IDE's and emulators.

Please don't tell me that I should be developing on Windows Mobile, I have already decided not to do that so will mark those answers down.

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Simon Avatar asked Oct 06 '08 07:10

Simon


3 Answers

PyS60 -- its cool :)

I worked quite a lot on PyS60 ver 1.3 FP2. It is a great language to port your apps on Symbian Mobiles and Powerful too. I did my Major project in PyS60, which was a GSM locator(its not the latest version) app for Symbian phones.

There is also a very neat py2sis utility which converts your py apps to portabble sis apps that can be installed on any Sumbian phones. The ease of use of Python scripting laanguage and a good set of warapped APIs for Mobile functions just enables you to do anything very neatly and quickly.

The latest Video and Camera APIs let you do neary everything that can be done with the phone. I'd suggest you few very good resources to start with

  1. Forum Nokia
  2. Nokia OpenSource Resource center
  3. A very good tutorial (for beginners)

Just access these, download the Emulator, and TAKE OFF for a ride with PyS60. M sure you'll love it.

P.S. : as the post is so old, I believe u must already be either loving it or finished off with it. But I just cudn't resist answering. :)

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M.N Avatar answered Oct 13 '22 19:10

M.N


I've just started to look into this myself. I've purchased the Mobile Python book above. It looks good so far.

This site has a few tutorials as well: http://croozeus.com/tutorials.htm

I'm using putools to code/sync over bluetooth from linux: http://people.csail.mit.edu/kapu/symbian/python.html

There are advantages/disadvantages to the python dev on S60. Obviously, using Python is a major plus. There are some extra tricks you need in order to get your app built into a distributed form where you don't need to require the end user to first go download the python runtime for their phone.

The other disadvantage is simply in UI. You have three forms of ui available via the appuifw API. Let's say you want to draw images on the screen as well as have a text entry field in the ui, you really can't. You'll have to split the ui into parts that fit what the python api gives you.

As for IDE/Emulator, I'm just using VIM on Ubuntu with the bluetooth sync tools in putools. I've seen that you can get the C++ or Java environments, and then use the emulators in them, but not seen how it works since it seems to be a windows only option at this point.

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Rick Avatar answered Oct 13 '22 20:10

Rick


Have you checked out the Mobile Python Book?

This practical hands-on book effectively teaches how to program your own powerful and fun applications easily on Nokia smartphones based on Symbian OS and the S60 platform.

Mobile Python Book cover
(source: mobilenin.com)

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Swaroop C H Avatar answered Oct 13 '22 20:10

Swaroop C H