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Well yeah you might be right Symbian *

If your "whole idea for the application" is to have it cross platform then I suggest you revisit the idea-making stage.

managers oh managers you know them right? xD

I'm actually doing opengl ES things in C++ for iOS, android and Symbian, for my job. I have IPhone and Android working (the same). I'm just starting Symbian porting. Should be OK, symbian's OpenGL ES looks better, (according to the docs).
Yes, it's in C++, but completely recompilable if you note this:

- the android openGL ES matrix system ( gltranslate, ...) use fixed-shifted 32bit integers. If you need big numbers, it's better to use your own float matrix class and then only do a glLoadMatrix before the projection. Then full float precision for 3 platforms.

- use the "crystax" patched NDK for your JNI if you use stl in yout c++ code.

- Also on android: watch out: you draw your opengl in a special thread, no other choice.

- Iphone's Objective C is not a big deal since you can mix C and C++ with objective C as far as you can ( pass C++ class as objC class param and vice versa).

gloom: That may be. But is it a wrong impression, then? It's not just Apple/Android press, it's echoed by all the Symbian users I've come across, and fits with my own experiences of owning a Symbian smartphone. They're all like "meh, I guess I could get an app to do this thing, but meh." There's this enthusiasm in the iPhone and Android markets that's just not there with the Symbian folk, probably because Symbian is such a piece of crap you don't want to spend a second longer than you have to looking at your phone.

I don't know exactly what you mean here, but if you think that my statement is something managers usually say, then you're right. Both because it makes sense to decide what to make before you make it, and that I'm a manager myself. :)

I don't disagree that Symbian phones mostly suck, or that iPhone/Android is a sexier platform to develop for. What I'm saying is that Symbian still has about the same marketshare alone (41%, Q2 2010) as all of the others combined (RIM 18%, Android 17%, Apple 14%, Windows Phone 5%, others 4%), which is what the actual market looks like. The impression you get if reading trendy mobile magazines or general mobile press is that Android is the biggest, closely followed by Apple -- which is rubbish. :)

gloom, do you work for Nokia?

whereever he works, they know their gartner stats

gloom: I just don't think the market share of the OS necessarily relates to the number of people interested in third-party software. I know Symbian dominates the sales charts (though it's split between Nokia and Sony Ericsson's two somewhat incompatible versions of Symbian), but the question is how often you see a Symbian phone with anything but the factory default software installed. Doesn't matter to developers if 99% of all smartphones were Symbian if no Symbian user gives a shit about third-party software. By contrast, iPhone users seem very eager for all sorts of third-party apps.

<quote>- Also on android: watch out: you draw your opengl in a special thread, no other choice.</quote>

Umm. GLSurfaceView is just a convenience class. You can manage EGL all by yourself if you wish.

petemobil: Not even close. Does it come off as I'm a fan of Symbian? If so, you should probably read all my "I-hate-Symbian"-posts elsewhere. :) I'm just saying that press-wise, it seems like there is "only Android and iPhone", when in reality, that's extremely far from the truth. Also: kudos for the stock-question. Not predictable at all :)

doom: Very true, but there are other factors as well, such as: end-user installs or requests isn't the only way of making money doing software for mobile phones, and that even though iPhone users have an app adoption rate that's unparallelled, this does not necessarily relate to actual sales for all of the small fish competing in that market. I guess what I'm saying is: mobile app development (and it's market) is complex, and there are many reasons for doing things cross-platform.. and that the reasons for developing for all of these different platforms better be iron clad before development begins.

Totally. It was really only to suggest that cross-platform development for the sake of it is silly.

On a related note, I was googling a bit and discovered that even though Android has 20% more market share than iPhone, the total revenue from Android software sales is only about half that of the iPhone. And apparently iPhone and Android users account for 80% of the web traffic on smartphones. I guess that's not something you do much on Symbian. Complex indeed.

nice discussion folks! and thanks for the roundup smoothstep.

my personal stance on dooms and glooms discussion: the thing i'm looking into is mostly about giving as many people possible access. the sales model is not centered around an app, the app is more of a requirement to make the whole thing work. so in that case, symbian definitely does matter, given its huge market share :-)

that said, i wholeheartedly agree with doom that if you're making an app for its own merits, symbian support is probably the bottom priority, exactly *because* of the impression thing. no magazine or website will ever cheer about this fancy new symbian app, but they will about the next big thing on android/ios. you need the fansites and mags and bloggers for marketing and, well, i believe the last decent symbian fansite just quit a few months ago.

says a happy nokia e71 owner, by the way!

skrebbel: You're happy with that phone? Rare.. :) Anyway: making a successful S60-app with mass market appeal might actually get you more press than an iPhone app, especially because there are so few of them. That said, IF you're lucky, the App Store is the place to be for ease of sale and access to a huge (and payment-willing) audience.

skrebbel: u programming for e71 ?

skrebbel: I wouldn't disregard 40% of smartphone users, no. ;) But are there actually any statistics on how much software is sold for the various platforms? I mean, the huge market share usually quoted for Symbian is all about hardware sales, not software. The sizes of the respective software markets might paint a completely different picture.

I have a Nokia E52 myself BTW, which is alright for a phone. Nice shape, great battery life and it doesn't look like a prop from Star Trek. But I so wish it wasn't Symbian based. Oh God, why does Symbian have to suck so much? :(

Symbian doesn't suck, Nokia's version of it does.

decipher: Oh no, Symbian most definitely sucks. There might be hope for the current code rewrite/cleanup going on, but we won't see the benefit from that until at least Symbian^5 or 6. Sensibly, Nokia teamed up with Intel for MeeGo which is the OS of choice in that camp for coming smartphones that won't suck (to program for).

gloom/doom i really don't see the problem. i can email, multitask, browse the web, do spreadsheets (with sucky controls, admittedly), look up maps online and offline for free. most applications load fast and run fast, and the thing is just about as configurable as i need it. wherever there's a number shown i can call it or save it to my address book, just in case it's a phone number. the only thing i really miss is a decent app store and a decent set of apps (the whole ovi thing is a miserable joke), and decent copy/paste support.

but true, it just doesn't do "swoosh" when i scroll, and it has real buttons. i never understood how that's a problem for people, but clearly i'm just not hip and trendy enough :) (aka i probably don't know what i'm missing - but that's never a bad thing)

panic, not too much, and only with qt.

is qt easier ?

Shitloads, son. SHITLOADS.

decipher +1.

skrebbel: I'm a big fan of real buttons, tactile feedback is way underrated these days. But I'm not a big fan of the unresponsive interface. I press the camera button, and it takes a good five seconds for the camera app to load. Opening my contacts list takes about a second. Most of the time you can see the screen redrawing, as if updating the 256x320 pixel display is a monumental task. This unresponsiveness is so pronounced that at times you can actually miss calls while waiting for the phone to finish telling you that you have an incoming call (or, I guess it might be some sort of thread lockup problem to be fair, but still, WTF).

The phone is generally very unstable. Not that it crashes every day, but it happens often enough. Then you remove and replace the battery and wait about 30 seconds for the phone to boot up. I really expect more from 2009-2010 technology. (Yes, I've tried updating the firmware etc.)

The menu system is horrible, too. To find some setting you often have to navigate through six or more screens, and if you're lucky you won't end up going in circles (indeed, the menu system like a tree structure at first, but don't be fooled), and if you're unlucky you'll find the phone doesn't actually have the option you're looking for (try to make some sense of the network priority system, say). Googling becomes routine. Not impressive.

I very often miss the responsiveness and usability of my previous S30 and S40 phones, and that says a lot. I certainly don't feel the E52's allegedly powerful CPU, or its "advanced" OS. I feel more like I'm using a bunch of late-80s shareware apps for Windows 1.0 on a PC that can't quite cope. Except it fits in the palm of my hand! I use the GPS features frequently, and it's not a worthless device by any means. But the firmware is just baaaaad.