Hi, I’m Tyson Key, a college student currently residing somewhere in the north of England.

When I’m not studying, I happen to advocate and contribute to open source, and open platforms and enjoy spending time testing and documenting software, and exploring various aspects of low-level operating system and computer networking technology – all whilst trying to be a generally reasonable and agreeable person…

Of course, I also happen to be a heavy user, and advocate of the Symbian platform, and have been involved with the Symbian Foundation to varying extents, since its announcement.

Introduction aside, I’ve been invited to introduce the Symbian Virtual Platform. This is a project that I’ve been involved in beta testing, prior to the release of the Symbian Kernel Taster Kit.

What’s the Symbian Virtual Platform?

The Symbian Virtual Platform consists of a customised version of QEMU (an Open Source CPU instruction set and hardware emulator), containing several additional features, along with a corresponding baseport referred to as Syborg.

This combination potentially represents the future of inexpensive, accurate, user-level application testing, and low-level debugging and experimentation on the Symbian Platform, without the need for additional hardware.

As a bonus, some of the hallmark causes of frustration with the older Windows-based emulator (commonly referred to as WINS or WINSCW dependant upon toolchain used) are removed, such as:

• Low performance
• Simulation inaccuracy (e.g. differing memory models with various limitations, behavioural differences from real hardware, and disabled/restricted software functionality)
• Platform dependence – QEMU is well-supported under Windows, most Linux distributions and Mac OS X, and also runs under many other operating systems

What can it do for you?

The “official”/mainline version of QEMU already emulates an ARMv5 architecture CPU, and a number of hardware features including – but not limited to:

• Serial ports – complete with the ability to redirect traffic to a file, which is essential for Symbian Platform debugging and problem diagnosis
• Ethernet chipsets – a driver for which is included in Syborg, although additional work is necessary, before being suitable for intensive use
• Various forms of Flash memory devices (e.g. MultiMediaCard/SD Card, and SPI NAND Flash)
• An audio chipset – support for this in the baseport was recently contributed by Johnathan White of Accenture

However, the version supplied by Symbian also adds a number of useful features that enhance this functionality to potentially save development time and effort, and let users/enthusiasts test software quickly and easily without access to a physical handset, including:

• The ability to run real Symbian OS binaries “as-is” – meaning that you no longer also need to rebuild software to run within an x86 and Windows-only simulator
• A host file system-backed emulated drive (S:\ on the QEMU guest, which maps to \svphostfs on the host) that acts as an extension of firmware when custom executables are added, and allows for quickly moving files between the host and guest whilst the Platform is running
• A Python-based dynamic hardware modelling system that allows for varying degrees of control over the behaviour of the emulated system at runtime, without needing to modify QEMU source code and rebuild

The source code for these enhancements, and the baseport are available in the Symbian Foundation repositories.

Intrigued? Here’s what it looks like…

An EShell session, showing the output of various utilities, on a Windows XP host

What have I done with QEMU?

• Built several ROM images containing various Platform components, and documented the results on the Symbian forums so that others can assist in resolving problems, and enhancing the results
• Spent time debugging the execution of various binaries using serial port file redirection, and resolving dependency issues, as they arose

Which leads nicely on to a practical example, based upon a problem that I faced…

Getting the EUserHL Walkthrough test suite running

A forum thread that I started, with additional suggestions from the community, prior to writing this post is available here for reference. I’ll now attempt to explain how I answered a not-too-uncommon question using several features of the Symbian Virtual Platform, and a process of elimination -

How can I test a Platform component (in this case – EUserHL), when I don’t have access to the source code?

The initial steps involved boil down to:

• Install and configure the Symbian Kernel Taster Kit and RVCT 4.0 according to the instructions on the Symbian Wiki
• Create a directory on the host file system at \svphostfs and a set of subdirectories to hold executables and DLLs inside: sys\bin
• Copy \epoc32\release\armv5\urel\euserhl_walkthrough.exe and \epoc32\release\armv5\urel\euserhl.dll to \svphostfs\sys\bin
• Start a cmd.exe prompt session, and switch to \symbian-qemu-0.9.1\bin\

• Run QEMU using the prebuilt Syborg ROM image using: arm-none-symbianelf-qemu-system -M \sf\adaptation\qemu\baseport\syborg\syborg.dtb -kernel \epoc32\rom\syborg.img within the active cmd.exe session
• Once the ROM has booted to EShell, attempt to invoke euserhl_walkthrough.exe
• Notice that execution simply bails, before printing a rather vague, generic “Not found” error message

Obviously, this a rather sorry state of affairs – but there’s hope.  So, let’s move on:

• Halt the previous QEMU session
• This time, run QEMU again using arm-none-symbianelf-qemu-system -M \sf\adaptation\qemu\baseport\syborg\syborg.dtb -kernel \epoc32\rom\syborg.img -serial file:”EUserHLDebug.txt” to redirect serial port output to a file
• Within the EShell session, invoke trace /L 4 to enable debugging of executable loading and DLL iteration
• Attempt to invoke euserhl_walkthrough.exe once again within EShell, to receive the familiar “Not found” error
• Open \symbian-qemu-0.9.1\bin\EUserHLDebug.txt on the host, using your favourite text editor
• Following the chain of execution, from euserhl_walkthrough.exe onwards, to euserhl.dll, we can see that various dependency DLLs are located successfully (demarcated by “New image found“)
• However, if we closely follow euserhl.dll, the fact that a critical dependency is missing at a late stage is alluded to by “No suitable image found” – although reattempts are constantly being made to locate the missing DLL
• Unfortunately, this debug output does not tell us exactly which DLL we require – so we turn to another useful tool (elftran)
• At this stage, it would be a good idea to halt the QEMU session, to avoid some rather confusing behaviour that arises from the handling of the S:\ drive, and executable caching when copying additional DLLs and executables to \sys\bin within it

Now, we should be on the home stretch:

• Within another cmd.exe session, run: elftran \svphostfs\sys\bin\euserhl.dll > EUserHLDeps.txt to create a file containing information related to the dependencies of the euserhl.dll binary, amongst other attributes
• Searching for “imports from” within the EUserHLDeps.txt file will reveal that euserhl.dll depends upon estor.dll – which doesn’t exist in the prebuilt ROM image, or in \svphostfs\sys\bin
• Copy \epoc32\release\armv5\urel\estor.dll to \svphostfs\sys\bin
• Run arm-none-symbianelf-qemu-system -M \sf\adaptation\qemu\baseport\syborg\syborg.dtb -kernel \epoc32\rom\syborg.img once again
• With a little luck, attempting to invoke euserhl_walkthrough.exe should result in:


Partial output from running the EUserHL Walkthrough test suite

• Have fun exploring the serial debugging and tracing tracing functionality, and the host-bound file system

If that’s not enough, you can even try to build these components into a ROM image:

• Copy \sf\os\kernelhwsrv\kernel\eka\rombuild\tshell.oby to \sf\os\kernelhwsrv\kernel\eka\rombuild\tshellwitheuserhl.oby
• Add the following lines to the bottom of \sf\os\kernelhwsrv\kernel\eka\rombuild\tshellwitheuserhl.oby:
  file=\epoc32\release\armv5\udeb\estor.dll \sys\bin\estor.dll
  file=\epoc32\release\armv5\udeb\euserhl_walkthrough.exe\sys\bin\euserhl_walkthrough.exe
  file=\epoc32\release\armv5\udeb\euserhl.dll \sys\bin\euserhl.dll

• Delete euserhl_walkthrough.exe, euserhl.dll and estor.dll from \svphostfs\sys\bin\ to ensure that the contents of the ROM are not being supplemented/overridden with the contents of S:\sys\bin on the guest at boot time
• Within a cmd.exe session, switch to \sf\os\kernelhwsrv\kernel\eka\rombuild
• Run rom –variant=syborg –inst=armv5 –build=udeb –type=tshellwitheuserhl –name=\epoc32\rom\tshellwitheuserhl.img to attempt to build a new ROM image containing the EUserHL DLL, walkthrough/demo application, and the EStor DLL
• If everything worked according to plan, you should be able to run your new ROM image using: arm-none-symbianelf-qemu-system -M \sf\adaptation\qemu\baseport\syborg\syborg.dtb -kernel \epoc32\rom\tshellwitheuserhl.img within the \symbian-qemu-0.9.1\bin\ directory
• Invoking euserhl_walkthrough.exe for the final time should produce the same result as the previous exercise!

Additional Resources and Information

• A series of forum threads related to PIPS and networking, and the legacy, development-specific TechView GUI, in addition to the aforementioned EUserHL thread that I started, and continue to contribute to
• A list of backlog items and planned features for the Symbian Virtual Platform are available, here
• Johnathan’s presentation about the Symbian Virtual Platform at SEE 2009:
  View this document on Scribd

Finland’s Nokia is still the largest mobile handset manufacturer in the world, but its influence in the high-end (and high-profit) smartphone market is increasingly falling short of competitors like RIM and Apple, in part because Nokia can’t seem to capitalize on features and capabilities consumers want in a smartphone. But Nokia is determined to forge ahead in the smartphone marketplace—and the company is placing its best on the Linux-based Maemo mobile OS, rather than the tried-and-true Symbian OS that has powered most of the company’s devices for years. At a gathering in London, Nokia marketing executives told Maeomo developers that Nokia plans to drop Symbian from its high-end N-series Internet-capable mobile devices by 2012.

Nokia has been building its high-end devices around the Symbian operating system for more than a decade; however, the company’s new N900 is the first device Nokia has shipped based on Maemo. The N900 is largely viewed as a transitional device to help developers (and even a few customers) make the transition from Symbian to Maemo. Although Nokia has not made an official statement, the company apparently will maintain Symbian on its E-series devices (aimed at enterprise customers) and video-centric X-series devices. Nokia is also promising tools to developers so they can create applications for both Symbian and Maemo, which in turn can be sold though Nokia’s Ovi Store.

Nokia says it will replace Symbian with its Maemo Linux by 2012.

All high-end N series multimedia devices will be running the Linux OS by then. Rubbing salt in the wounds of longtime Epoc developers, it disclosed the news to a meetup of Maemo enthusiasts – Ben Smith reports at The Really Mobile Project blog. X series and E series devices will continue to run Symbian OS – at least for the time being.

Nokia says it will replace Symbian with its Maemo Linux by 2012.

It isn’t such a surprise. At NokiaWorld in September, Nokia confirmed in public and in private that Maemo was the bedrock for future high-end devices, with Symbian downgraded to a “workhorse” smartphone OS for the midrange. Only a fortnight earlier, Nokia had strenuously denied the strategy. So much for honest community relations.

So, after billions of dollars of investment over 11 years, how can Nokia now justify changing horses? Especially since Symbian still offers the best kernel and middleware stack for mobiles, with the meanest power management, and years of debugging.

It’s Nokia’s inept record of developing UIs and services (think anything with the word “Ovi” near it) that’s to blame, and also its negligence in failing to give Symbian a modern and attractive development environment (it bought Trolltech’s QT five years too late). Thanks to lousy software development, it had boxed itself into a corner. Only four years ago, Nokia had three in-house user interfaces for Symbian which – if it had sustained the investment – would cover everything from tablets to instant-on netbooks (where iPhone OS and Android OS are today).

It’s a case of neglecting to feed the dog, then saying it can’t afford the vet’s bill.  

Source The Register

kathimerini.gr | Ζημίες 559 εκατ. ευρώ για τη Nokia το τρίτο τρίμηνο

Δραστικές ζημίες για πρώτη φορά την τρέχουσα δεκαετία εμφάνισε ο φινλανδικός κολοσσός της Nokia, οι οποίες ανήλθαν στα 559 εκατ. ευρώ κατά το τρίτο τρίμηνο. Πρόκειται για τις πρώτες τριμηνιαίες ζημίες της εταιρείας από το 1996, οι οποίες αποδίδονται στη μειωμένη ζήτηση για κινητά τηλέφωνα, αλλά και στις ζημίες που προέκυψαν από τη συνεργασία της εταιρείας με τη Siemens. Οι πωλήσεις της Nokia το τρίτο τρίμηνο είχαν παρουσιάσει μείωση κατά 20%.[next]

Εκπτώσεις Nokia, Θέλω και εγώ | Techblog
Το ηλεκτρονικό κατάστημα της Nokia USA έχει διήμερο εκπτώσεων σήμερα και αύριο. Μοντέλα όπως τα Nokia N97 και Nokia N86 είναι φθηνότερα 150 και 100 δολάρια αντίστοιχα και σύμφωνα με την εταιρεία υπάρχει ικανοποιητικό απόθεμα. Θα ήταν πολύ ενδιαφέρον να βλέπαμε παρόμοιες κινήσεις και στη χώρα μας με εκπτώσεις direct από τον αντιπρόσωπο και να μην ψάχνουμε για 1-2 ευρώ διαφορά στα καταστήματα των εταιρειών κινητής τηλεφωνίας[next]

The first batch of phones with Microsoft’s newest mobile OS is just about to hit the streets, with an expected 30+ handsets available for the year end.

Some of the new features in the updated OS include the ability to find your phone, a $5/use charge instead of an annual fee. You can use this feature to locate your phone, make it ring (even if the ringer is turned off) or remotely wipe the phone in the event you can’t get your hands back on it.

The addition of flash support in an updated Internet Explorer is a skill set that the smartphone competitors haven’t managed to overcome yet, and the addition of the App Store Windows Marketplace enables existing and new MS customer’s access to the thousands of apps already available for the different iterations of the mobile OS.

With over 50 million phones running Microsoft’s mobile operating system sold in the past few years, you would expect that more than 10% of windows users would know that there was a mobile version of their desktop. Kevin Keith, Microsoft’s GM of Windows Mobile Marketing shared that “People don’t know that Windows has a phone,” and that the marketing budget to resolve this will run in the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Currently at 15% market share, will Microsoft be able to stave off the likes of the iPhone, Android, Symbian, or Pre competitors? Is this a “go big or go home” situation that will see MS limping back to Redmond?

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

There is a new Italian update for the Samsung HD that includes the long waiting ‘Kinetic scrolling’ for the webbrowser same like we already saw on the iPhone and the google phones.

In May posted an entry about my new Nokia E71 smart phone. This is a quick update post and I can confirm that the novelty factor has still yet to wane. I’ve found more uses for my E71 than I originally expected. In addition to the applications listed in my original post I have since downloaded these apps:

• Twibble: If you do that ‘Twitter’ thing then this application is an excellent mobile client that makes it easy to keep up to date on the move, and it works great on the E71.
• * UPDATE:  I’ve since dumped Twibble for Snaptu. The Twitter client is excellent on Snaptu and you gain from the extra plugins such as RSS readers, FaceBook etc. * 
• Snakes: A new 3D take on the old Nokia ‘Snake’ game. The link I used for this is no longer valid, but it might still be available on the Nokia site.
• Top Hits Solitaires: A nice selection of basic card games.
• Global Race – Raging Thunder: A very smart driving game.
• Ovi Store: Despite Nokia’s efforts this is no Apple iPhone ‘App Store’ but it’s worth having a look through the list of available applications for your Nokia phone periodically as there are a lot of apps available and many are free.

I listen to lots of podcasts and I’m finding that the E71 makes this so easy through its in-built Podcasting application. It enables you to add podcasts to your regular download list by searching by podcast name or you can just  add the feed URL if you know it. You can then check for updates and download them for playing on the phone manually or automatically. The phones in-built speaker is solid too. It’s loud and clear enough to listen to in the car whilst travelling without the need for an additional FM Transmitter.

I find the Opera Mini browser makes mobile browsing really easy and slick on the E71. It’s very fast and easy to use, adjusting the view of the page to fit neatly on your screen minimising the amount of scrolling required per page.

All in all I’m still enjoying my E71 and am starting to wonder how I managed without it. My first months data transfer amount was a eye watering 1 GB of data which shows the extent to which I’ve been maximising the phones 3G connectivity features.

Cosmo.gr – Ένα κινητό…μια περιουσία!

Με το διόλου ευκαταφρόνητο ποσό των 4.900 ευρώ μπορεί κανείς να αποκτήσει το κινητό Constellation Ayxta, το οποίο επιτρέπει στον κάτοχό του 24ωρη πρόσβαση σε υπηρεσίες αλλά αυτόματη αλλαγή ζώνης ώρας σε περίπτωση ταξιδιού με το πάτημα ενός κουμπιού.

Το Constellation Ayxta ανήκει στην εταιρία Vertu, θυγατρική της φιλανδικής Nokia, το οποίο είναι κατασκευασμένο με ατσάλι και δέρμα ενώ η γυάλινη οθόνη του έχει αντοχή στα χτυπήματα.[next]

Iphone is one of the best and most used hi-tech devices which highly scramble in the market with their all simple, easy and user-friendly features. Most of endeavor is developed to enlarge the features of iphone beyond the basic features which are available on the iphone. This is the correct time to make an accomplished unique iphone application using any existing third party application on this Iphone.

Today iphone is the most popular mobile phone among all smart-phones available in the marker. Now Iphone application development is highly important for the business execution and user based applications as a result of it makes quickly mobilize most of Internet users. Iphone is the most popular device with latest and advanced technologies, where anyone can surf the internet, e-mail, send massages, watch videos, listen music, keep and maintain daily schedule and surely make calls at the same time.

Today’s generation is such that atonement is temporary in technology and the same is the case with the owners of the iPhone at full load. so, any individual and company is ready to expand beyond what is normally and easily available on the iPhone mobile is the time when we are ready to create and develop an unique iphone application or porting of any third party application on this Iphone.

Since the applications development for the iPhone is rising very fast; the popular customize application offers users with the satisfaction of using an excellent and super device. As iPhone is portable and advanced device with the latest technology builds the web application development nearly using same procedure as creating web application and benefit is that iphone allows a quick connection to the Internet so user can find and get their data any time and any where. Iphone is not as easy and simple to design and create and develop a website, but the advantage of creation an iPhone application is that you can get paid whenever someone downloads it.

To create iphone application for your company or any other purpose, keep in mind some few points following:

• For which type of audience you develop this iphone application?
• Make your iphone application easy, simple and very user-friendly, don’t imagine and create much complex as users need fast and simple application.
• Create iphone application with those types of things which user likes most and more and they will download them again and again.
• Imagine diverting and amusing as users want unique and amazing that is worthwhile to use again and again.

The vital and final thing to bear in mind is to create impressive iphone application that people could visualize and use it more than once and something impressive that they would like to show their family, friends and other people who would also in revolve to purchase it for themselves.

Weblineindia is leading offshore IT outsourcing company in India that offers mobile application development ,  iphone application development, blackberry application development, Android Mobile Application development and Symbian OS Application development solutions.

A ground-breaking patent-pending technology offers safety features on cell phones that can literally save lives.

Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based company JTrek developed this personal security and safety software for Smartphones. It is the world’s first fully functional wireless video security system built into cell phones, using video, photo and audio and GPS monitoring capabilities.

For a nominal monthly fee, JTrek users literally have a full-time personal surveillance protection device. All that is required is a Smartphone, Internet service and a small network of emergency contacts.

If the user is in danger, he or she simply sends a panic alert. This notifies emergency contacts and law enforcement. The automated web-based monitoring center receives the notification, determines where the problem is, and immediately sends alerts to the user’s emergency contacts so that help may be dispatched.

Blackberry Smartphone with JTrek

The technology is perfect for Smartphone-savvy college students.

“Every parent or university should consider it as a way to protect their children and students,” said James D. Richie, chief executive officer of JTrek LLC.

With this cutting-edge technology, text messaging notifications and video/photo imagery is recorded and transmitted by the Smartphone to the JTrek web servers. Even if the phone is taken by an attacker, the images remain stored on JTrek’s servers and emergency alerts are sent automatically.

JTrek’s mobile application is currently available for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia and Symbian OS devices. Many more phones will be supported in the coming months. JTrek works on all major cellular wireless networks.

For more information when JTrek will be available in your area, visit www.jtrek.com.