Labs : Compile your Android app for Symbian S60 ?

Written by FlexyCore | 05 August 2010

One morning during the coffee we set up a labs challenge to FlexyCore guys: compile a Java application in Native for a Symbian S60 device.

And it runs ! Details of what we did:

• adaptation of our iSpectrum compiler to generate C++ S60 code.
• porting of a subset of Android Core APIs on S60
• mapping in Java of S60 video codecs APIs
• mapping in Java of S60 native UI APIs
• Implementation of a Video player in Java using all these APIs
• compilation of the application Java classes in C++ for S60
• compilation of the C++ files using Carbide S60 SDK to get a .sis binary application
• installation of the .sis on a N85 Nokia phone
• execution of the application on N85 Nokia phone
• making of a video of the application running on the phone

The video below shows our Java Video player Java application compiled in Native running on a N85 Nokia S60 device ! As you can see, it runs well. The launching time of the applicatipn is fast and its performance is similar to a native application. If you carefully observe the video in the background when there are some menus in front of it, you can see than the video is running, at the difference than a J2ME N85 application using J2ME Multimedia APIs where the video will halt. About the application itself, we used some basic S60 UI components, of course there could be no restriction to access other S60 or QT UI components. 

Thanks to this lab, we can imagine an (i)Spectrum like product for S60 devices. Thanks to Android APIs support and a porting of Android UI Apis on S60 or QT, it could enable to port an Android app to Symbian S60 Devices ! This could bring new generation applications to Symbian S60 end users and could create a new market for Android application developers !

Of course, this is just a lab and we have no roadmap for such product, but we are proud to demonstrate that we could contribute to Android developers and Symbian S60 devices ! 

Let us know what you think about this !