N-GAGE is gone.. :(

This is a classic case of the saying "First impression is the last impression". N-GAGE, which according to me was the first N-Series device, is officially now dead. Nokia after putting in lots of time and money has put to rest it's most ridiculed creation.
First, the device which was launched in 2003 was ridiculed by people in tonnes. For all those people it just did not matter that it was one of the most multimedia feature-laden device of its time. One mistake of placing the ear piece and microphone on the sides was met with scathing criticism. Nokia's attempt at re-inventing the device had taken off its sheen a lot.
Then came the platform offering, which vowed to get all mobile gamers connected and hooked on. The UI for its device client was amazing on paper, but slow in it's ultimate execution.
According to me, if only Nokia had released another gaming device like the N-GAGE Classic bundled with camera around 2005/2006, that would have been a killer innovation and would have proved to be far more successful than any of the half-hearted attempts made later by Nokia.
Anyway's lets hope Nokia does not screw up any more of its present ventures.

Mobile application development sucks even more now..

Just when dust of the world of mobile application development seemed to have settled a bit,one more whirlwind platform announcement rakes up more dust, blinding the developers even more. Samsung announced the BADA (means ocean in Korean, but this word in Hindi, the Indian National Language, when pronounced with the 'D' intact, means BIG!!!) OS. This addition to the already crowded mobile platforms scene only adds more chaos and makes it more impossible to earn money thru' mobile application development.
An analogous chaos in the laptop world would be like DELL, HP, LENOVO and other laptop manufacturers announcing different application development sdk's for their laptops.
So consider this,if I want to make a mobile application which could be installed on handset of top mobile phone manufacturers, then I would need to make applications for the following platforms using their respective languages and sdk's(development languages may be incorrect for some platforms mentioned):

• SYMBIAN - C++
• WINDOWS MOBILE - C++
• ANDROID - JAVA
• iPHONE - JAVA / OBJECTIVE C
• MAEMO - C++
• BADA - C
• BREW - C
• BLACKBERRY - JAVA
• J2ME - JAVA

*WRT and Flash are not included as they do not expose much capabilities for the app developer.
And even after coding for so many platforms and in so many languages I will have to pass the various application signing criteria. So even before I sell the first copy of my killer application, I would have spent a good amount on just developing my application, with no guarantee whatsoever that my app will sell. Compare this to the PC application scene and you would notice either you make the application for Windows or Linux or Mac laptops and you are done. No worries of passing certification from various laptop manufacturers and other installation and portability issues.
I hope few years down the line all the CHOTA(that's small in Hindi) and nonsense platforms vanish and only the best ones survive.
Till then happy Symbian coding ;).

Symbian Developer site is back with a bang.

Yes that's my post ;).

I returned to the Symbian Foundation Developer Forum (http://developer.symbian.org now!) after a long time. And the changes to the site is shocking. The graphics though weird, add a carnival like atmosphere to the site. For the first time I felt that the stiff upper lips have loosened a bit at Symbian and there is certainly a change.
There's lot of catching up that needs to be done, so am going back to the SF developer site. Catch you there. :)

Forum Nokia - Remote Device Access(RDA) shortcut added.

Forum Nokia Remote Device Access(RDA) is a very useful service. But finding the exact link can be a real task. So am adding a shortcut here on the blog, so that it can be easily accessed. For people reading this is the link to Forum Nokia - Remote Device Access.

Nice little paper on Symbian panics.

Just wanted to share an informative white paper on the Symbian panics by the MacroBug guys. Not surprisingly, it mentions that KERN-EXEC 3 was the most common error that they faced while developing a phone.But they also mention that it was the most easiest to fix!! You can read the whole paper out here.

RConnection::Attach needs TConnectionInfo!!!

I had been fighting it out for some time to get the disconnection up and working. I had tried all the steps mentioned at various forum posts and wiki, but the first step of attaching to a connection would never succeed and would always return KErrCouldNotConnect(-34), which was always a mystery to me. Checking all the documentation and capabilities alike I just could not figure out what the problem was. Then I saw an old post on NewLC.com which mentioned that the RConnction::Attach needed TConnectionInfo instead of the TConnectionInfoV2 as is shown in the SDK documentation in the following location.

» Symbian OS v9.2 » Symbian OS guide » Comms infrastructure » Using Sockets Server (ESOCK) » Using Sockets Client » Connection Management » Connection Management overview

So remember this tip and save loads of time :).

Why ...

..isn't there a function like RFs::FileExists() / RFs::FolderExists() ? ..does the S60 emulator take so long to load?? ..is setting item interface so minimal?? ..is the desired setting item type always missing?? ..does RInteger have static functions NewL instead of having simple Create or Open functions,the way other 'R' classes have?? .. to be continued.

"(command-line defines):: identifier expected" error fix.

As you can see postings here at Symbiangeek have been scarce. The work load is taking a toll and the only thing now I can blog is the errors that I get during Symbian C++ programming :( . Well the error in question was this pathetic, completely misleading error:

(command-line defines):12: identifier expected

This is the error code reported in Carbide.c++ while building a background exe. Anyways the culprit turned out to be, the macro declaration in the project mmp.

MACRO MYMACRO 1

To remove this error just corect this macro declaration to:

MACRO MYMACRO=1

Well, thats it from my side. Ciao.