Antony’s Mobile Blog

I am a little bit frustrated with how S60 SDK emulator handles Preferences dialog. Currently it uses Java application to display Preferences dialog. We all know that one of the basic concepts of Java is “write once run everywhere” (well, it may not 100% true because some developers say write once debug everywhere). For some reasons, Preferences dialog on S60 emulator does not like JRE version 1.6.

The picture below shows a dialog displayed when I select Options | Preferences menu on my S60 FP3 SDK emulator. As you can see, it says that JRE 1.4.1 or later is required.

What version of JRE do I have? Currently, I am using the latest JRE, which is version 1.6.0. In my opinion, it should work. Isn’t it 1.6.0 later than 1.4.1? I am confused now. I would appreciate if someone can explain or may be solve it. I have spent a couple of hours figuring out this problem.

Update (May 8, 2007): Apparently, there is a workaround to this problem, i.e. by editing epoc32\tools\ecmt\config\config.properties and adding Java 1.6 version. For more information, please see http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Emulator_issues_and_solutions.

There was a request a use of my freeware application, Screenshot for Symbian OS, to include backup/restore feature. This will be a useful feature for a user who updates his firmware regularly. As you may know, updating firmware using Nokia Software Updater currently removes user’s applications and data on the phone.

There are two good articles that discuss how to support backup/restore on our applications, i.e.:

• PC Connectivity: How-to Write Backup Aware Software for Symbian OS v9 from Symbian
• S60 Platform: How to Enable Backup and Restore for Installed C++ Applications from Forum Nokia

After reading those two articles, I added backup/restore support to my application. Guess what, it didn’t work. PC Suite has reported that my application has been backed up (see screenshot below). However, when I restore the backup, my application is not restored back to the phone.

What’s wrong? After playing around with the installer file for one full day, I got an answer. Backup/Restore simply doesn’t work with developer certificate from Symbian Signed. The backup/restore works with other certificates, including self-signed certificate.

This problem has been confirmed by Symbian. You can visit Symbian forum discussion to read more detail information. What is the solution? Nothing. What I am going to do now is submit my application to Symbian Signed with backup/restore. Let’s hope the best that everything works.

Stay tune… as usual, we have to wait 2-3 weeks before Symbian sign a freeware application….

As you may notice that I am normally discussing about Symbian OS phones. This time, I am writing something different, i.e. Sony Ericsson Walkman series. Why? To be honest, Sony Ericsson’s marketing team has kindly sent me a brand new Sony Ericsson W810i.

Let’s start…. I am sure that all of you are familiar with Walkman brand. Walkman is a portable audio players manufactured by Sony. It has a very long history, started in 1979 with cassette-based player. A few years later, Sony released several other product lines, such as CD Walkman and MP3 player.

I don’t have the latest figure of Walkman sales. I believe more than 350 million Walkman devices have been sold since 1979. Sony had been very success with their Walkman products until Apple came to the market with iPod. In the past years, they have lost much of the audio player market share to Apple and other companies, such as Creative.

Sony has tried gaining back their market share by expanding Walkman brand to mobile phones with Sony Ericsson Walkman. As you know, mobile phone market is very hot these days (almost 1 billion mobile phones are sold last year). How is Sony doing with their Walkman phones? They claim more than 20 million Walkman phones have been sold so far.

Anyway, let’s go the most interesting part: Sony Ericsson Walkman product lines. For your information, every Walkman phones have “W” prefix at the beginning of model number, such as W810i. There are currently 14 models of Walkman phones. Two of them were announced three days ago, i.e. W880/W888 and W610. Here is the list of Walkman phones.

Low-end phones

• Sony Ericsson W200i, W200a, W200c
• Sony Ericsson W300i, W300c

Middle-class phones

• Sony Ericsson W550i, W550c
• Sony Ericsson W600i, W600c
• Sony Ericsson W610i, W618c
• Sony Ericsson W700i, W700c
• Sony Ericsson W800i, W800c
• Sony Ericsson W810i, W810c

High-end phones

• Sony Ericsson W830i, W830c
• Sony Ericsson W850i
• Sony Ericsson W880i, W888c
• Sony Ericsson W900i, W900c
• Sony Ericsson W950i, W950c