Mobile Device Programming Tools

Question

What SDKs/Tools/Toolkits/IDEs should I download to start programming mobile applications for iPhone, Symbian and BlackBerry from within Windows platform?

And from where can I download them?

Answer 1

iPhone sdk

Symbian

Blackberry

Answer 2

For Symbian, I would recommand Qt. Moreover, you can use it for Windows CE based mobile.

Answer 3

• For the iPhone platform, your current option is to become an iPhone developer, use the iPhone SDK and develop on a Mac. The IDE you will most likely use is XCode and the language of development will be Objective-C.

  The Mono project seems to be developing an alternative to this in the form of the MonoTouch framework. Using this framework you can develop your iPhone applications in C# using MonoDevelop and they will be compiled to native iPhone applications; however, you still need the iPhone SDK and you still need to develop on a Mac. This framework is in closed preview at the moment, though.

• For Symbian, it used to be the case that you needed to develop using the C/C++ libraries provided by the Symbian SDK but now you have the choice to develop in C++ using the Qt for S60 toolkit (I should note that it is still a technical preview).

  Depending on what you are trying to build, you might want to develop J2ME applications which will work on all Java-enabled phones (thus you won't be limited to just the S60 platform). You can develop such J2ME applications using the EclipseME plugin for Eclipse.

• For Blackberry, the default development environment is the Blackberry JDE. However, I hate the user interface on that tool and (for me at least) the usability leaves a lot to be desired. However, you have an alternative: There is an official Blackberry JDE plugin for the Eclipse IDE that makes developing Blackberry applications a joy (well not so much :) but still makes it really easy)

• In case you are interested, you can develop Windows Mobile applications in C# targeting the .NET Compact Framework using Visual Studio (I think you can use the Express Edition, which is free).

• Then, there is the Android platform. The default development environment for that platform is using the Android Eclipse plugin and developing in Java.

Hope, it helps.