I just got a new book, “S60 Smartphone Quality Assurance - A Guide for Mobile Engineers and Developers“. I am not a test engineer, so most of the content of this book actually does not apply to my job. However, I found this book still quite interesting.

The author of this book is a Nokia employee, Saila Laitinen. This book is divided into two sections. The author didn’t divide it explicitly, but we can see it clearly. The first section, which is the first five chapters, describes the process of building software for S60 phones. The second section discusses about testing and quality assurance on S60 phones.

The first chapter gives an overview about the S60 architecture and explains about the competitive advantages of the S60 platform.

The second chapter discusses about baseline, which is used by S60 licensee to create S60 phones.

The third chapter goes further by describing the release management process of S60. How is each component of the S60 platform integrated into the phone?

The fourth chapter would be very interesting for developers too. It discusses binary compatibility. How does S60 team maintain their promise of binary compatibility starting from S60 3rd Edition?

The fifth chapter is more general information about certification and standard. There are standards from government that must be fulfilled, such as FCC. There are also some certifications, such as Java and Bluetooth.

As I said above, the rest of the chapters talk about quality assurance. Since I don’t work as test engineer, I don’t read them in detail. However, if you work as test engineer, they may be interesting for you.

S60 Smartphone Quality Assurance