S60: An experience beyond desktop with handset

BANGALORE, INDIA: “With about 260 million mobile users in the country, India is one of the largest markets for Nokia. So why not enable users to go beyond desktop-based Internet experience with a mobile devise”, opined Mahmood Kalantar, director; Business Development, MSM mobile software sales and marketing at a recent press meet.

Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone maker, recently featured three new applications on its S60 software platform. S60 running on the Symbian OS, is the world’s leading smartphone software aimed especially at people on the move, like the corporate community and developers. It is licensed by some of the industries' top mobile device manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung and LG.

Mobile phone developers are never short of add-on features or new software. With each day, newer software are being developed.

Today, with the latest technology at hand, regular office work can be done on the move and any data can be stored and accessed at fingertips at any point of time and place. However, just imagine in case you forget your mobile phone at home! If only you could access a little bit of data, your work at office could have been simplified.

Or, one fine day, your handset is stolen and all you want is to create a back-up for the data stored and wipe-out the data simultaneously, so that it does not end up in wrong hands. And how would it be to be able to edit MS Office on a mobile, instead of a PC?

The three add-on features that were showcased address these questions. The features are:

Wavesecure: The “ultimate security application for mobile” developed by Tencube. If the handset get stolen or lost, you can not only track the phone but can also create back-up for your phone data via Internet. Once the back-up is created, you can also wipe-out the data from the phone ensuring that nobody else use the data for wrong purpose. The data can be then restored onto any S60 phone using a restore option via the Internet.

Mobile Web Server: It is an application that gives you a complete access to your phone via Internet. Comes handy when your mobile is not on hand. With this, one can also access the call logs section of the phone via the Internet, send messages, access photo gallery and click photographs.

QuickOffice: With Quickoffice v4.1, one can edit MS documents from the phone itself. However, Quickoffice currently does not support open source documents.

The S60 software is “partially made in India”. There are about 110,000 software developers in India, averred Kalantar.

He lamented that only 8 percent of Indian developers worked on developing mobile applications. "Indian developers put most of their professional time on developing Web applications."

Over 150mn S60 devices have been shipped so far, with 75 device models addressing the widest range of segments and price points launched till date, he added. Nokia has built a large developer ecosystem around S60, which supports Symbian C++, Open C, Open C++, Java, Python, Web run-time and Flash, among others.