We’re claiming several ‘firsts’ with the Samsung i8910HD which is now available in Orange’s UK stores. In terms of technology it’s the first mobile phone capable of capturing HD video, and then displaying it on the world’s biggest AMOLED phone screen (3.7 inches, 360 by 640px).
It seems appropriate to say something on the Symbian Blog because the i8910HD comes at a time when, thanks to the Foundation, the way we work together has in many ways changed.
‘First Among Equals’ (also the title Jeffrey Archer’s book, but that shouldn’t count against us) seems an apt title for this post: this is the first Symbian touch device to be released since the formation of the Symbian Foundation, but it certainly won’t be the last. In the neutral and constructive context enabled by the Symbian Foundation, Forum Nokia and Sony Ericsson Developer World are our collaborators. However in the market-place they are our competitors, also producing Symbian devices and seeking innovation for them.
So how does this work?
The i8910HD is a great case-study in manufacturer differentiation from a common platform. As David Wood mentioned a post or two ago, our device is very different from the latest Nokia or Sony Ericsson 5th Edition devices. Conversely, if you look at the i8910HD with the other phones in Samsung’s lineup (Tocco, Pixon, Omnia, etc.), they are all instantly recognisable as members of the same family.
The differences between the i8910HD and its competitors are not just cosmetic. The i8910HD differentiates itself with the underlying OMAP3 hardware platform, which includes support for OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware acceleration, and with APIs such as NaviSensor, which provides backward compatibility with previous Symbian phones from Samsung like the i8510 Innov8. Then there are Home Screen WRT widgets, which provide a migration path for standard S60 widgets to a range of Samsung devices. Watch this space!
Of course device differentiation is not without its challenges, but this is the frontier where the mobile industry drives innovation, while constantly trying to avoid the most offensive f-word of all: fragmentation. There, we said it! Ok, that’s too big a topic to address here, so let’s look at some practical solutions.
The i8910HD is packed with a host of powerful options: Qt, Python, Ruby and the previously mentioned standard S60 widgets. All these run out-of-the box without change on the i8910HD, but if you want to go deeper, you can.
So, while at Samsung Mobile Innovator we recognise that you have choice, and that we are only one of many channels for developers to deploy apps and services, we believe our proposition to develop on the i8910HD to be compelling. Why not visit innovator.samsungmobile.com to find out more? If you’re not already a member of our program, it’s free to join, and membership gives you access to the i8910HD DevPack.
The DevPack includes:
- An SDK plug-in with access to Samsung’s custom APIs
- A fully-featured emulator
- Example programs.
Currently this DevPack is in Alpha release, but stay tuned as further features continue to be made available.
15 Comments
AFAIK current Symbian (and Android, for what it matters) platform uses OpenGL ES 1.0: Considering Open GL ES 2.0 is not backwards compatible with version 1.x, how is 2.0 supported?
Can you create applications taking advantage of 2.0 version?
Thanks a lot!
Almost totally off topic: Will OpenC++ be ever installable in innv8?
First off, congrats on producing such a drool-worthy device! ^_^
Secondly, did I understand this correctly: You can run WRT widgets on the homescreen? Does this mean, existing S60 WRT widgets can be dropped onto the TouchWiz homescreen? If so, what determines the size at which they display (I’m assuming it’s not full-screen) or do you have some kind of mini-view like on Nokia’s N97 homescreen?
@James Nash: Being a S60 5th edition device I think it’ll support the WRT widgets’ mini-view as for Nokia N97. But I would be happy to be wrong here
Pit
It’s a very good device, maybe Nokia shall start looking at it with respect.
@ SydneyBlue120d
The i8910 HD can run OpenGL ES 2.0 because Samsung and Imagination Technologies provide the additional header files, bindings, and SDK support to enable third party developers to access the full ES 2.0 capabilities of the underlying hardware platform.
for full details on this are at http://bit.ly/OpenGLES
You need to be member of Samsung Mobile Innovator to download the full technical paper. (nb: membership is free and it only takes a couple of minutes to register).
Thanks
Andrew Brennan
Samsung Mobile Innovator
@ ab1977
Thanks a lot for clarifying this
“The i8910HD is packed with a host of powerful options: Qt, Python, Ruby and the previously mentioned standard S60 widgets”
But Nokia owns QT and ported it to s60. AFAIK QT for s60 is in “Pre Release” .Or am I wrong?
A couple of quick answers and clarifications -
Re OGLE 2.0 see Andrew’s reply above, but yes – that really does mean 2.0.
Re WRT, keep an eye on the Innovator site over the coming days and weeks, i8910 HD supports standard S60 widgets as well as homescreen based Samsung Mobile Widgets. So you can create or upload widgets, dock to the homescreen docking bar, drag off onto the homescreen and run and optionally launch into full screen mode. So this is not quite ythe same as the miniview.
As I say – watch for more info, but if you want to get started, you can do the gruntwork following the S60 standard approach (or just in your browser). On size specifically – any size you like up to 480×640, multi-page supported, with a 65×65 (ish) docking bar icon. One word of warning – the S60 1.1 WRT extensions are NOT supported for homescreen widgets.
Re Qt, Ruby, Python – we have mispoken – what we mean to say is that all are supported, so any of these runtime versions that are working on S60 from other vendors (cough) should run fine on i8910 HD. But you will need to install. Sorry for the confusion.
Glad to see there’s some excitement out there!
Ben – for Samsung Mobile Innovator.
Yes, there’s still some excitement out there despite Samsung constantly ignoring the people that matter the most – end users.
Your customers are literally pleading, *begging* you to fix the audio on the i8910 and yet you do nothing. What on Earth is wrong with Samsung? How can such a large company be SO incompetent?
Maybe it’s understandable that the i8910 has poor audio when recording 720p, but D1? VGA? Why?
I have to remember who I’m talking to here. Samsung are notorious for not communicating with their customers so I doubt I’ll get a proper response.
Instead of making stupid viral videos and trying to make yourselves feel better on the Symbian blog,why not spend the money on giving your customers what they _actually_ want?
Hi Moses, I hear you – you don’t like the audio quality on Camcorder on i8910 HD.
So I don’t know whether that’s a bad use case or a TTM tradeoff or a performance trade-off, or simply a missed requirement.
I do know that software is complex and phones are hard, and one way or another most posts on this blog are about those two things, and what we can do as developers, writers, evangelists and whatever else, to shrink the gap between what platforms promise and what they deliver – to manufacturers, operators, developers, and as you rightly point out, end users.
I also know that there are no magic bullets – only dragons. And users
Re: Ruby
Sorry for this plug and thanks Ben for clarifying this, but if people are interested in continuing the Ruby 1.9 effort in terms of developing the VM and libraries for the Samsung OMNIA HD or other handsets as an open source project, then please drop us a line.
Unfortunately things have been very hectic around here, so the latest code for the Ruby 1.9 VM and libs has not been released from Pragmaticomm yet, but we’ll do it in the next couple of weeks here
In the mean time the SDN article is still here
and the links are:
http://www.pragmaticomm.com/MobileRuby
developer.symbian.com/main/downloads/papers/Gredia_Ruby.pdf
Re: python.
Didn’t dare to ask, but I was hopeful for a moment. PyS60 pre-installed. Still a dream…
Well, thanx for supporting some other vendor’s runtime project
i got 1, samsung i8910 HD sucks! Samsung should stick to making what they are good at, that camera phones and leave mp3 players come phone to people who can like Apple or Sonyerricson, The music player on their samsung steel has better sound quality than i8910HD, dats some BullS*”&! if u ask me
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[...] There’s a fascinating (and welcome) post by Phil Northam over on the Symbian Foundation site talking about the new i8910HD. Particularly interesting is the quote “the i8910HD is packed with a host of powerful [...]
[...] Philip Northam reports that this has now changed – his initial post on the Symbian Foundations blog states that the device will include a Python runtime out of the box: … The i8910HD is packed [...]
[...] on July 22, 2009. Filed under: News | Tags: samsung, Samsung IQ Quest | As the first device to launch since the inception of the Symbian Foundation, the Samsung i8910 HD was always going to be special for us. It’s for this reason that we are [...]