Does anyone have experience with PyS60 mobile development

Question

I am in the position of having to make a technology choice early in a project which is targetted at mobile phones. I saw that there is a python derivative for S60 and wondered whether anyone could share experiences, good and bad, and suggest appropriate IDE's and emulators.

Please don't tell me that I should be developing on Windows Mobile, I have already decided not to do that so will mark those answers down.

Answer 1

I've just started to look into this myself. I've purchased the Mobile Python book above. It looks good so far.

This site has a few tutorials as well: http://croozeus.com/tutorials.htm

I'm using putools to code/sync over bluetooth from linux: http://people.csail.mit.edu/kapu/symbian/python.html

There are advantages/disadvantages to the python dev on S60. Obviously, using Python is a major plus. There are some extra tricks you need in order to get your app built into a distributed form where you don't need to require the end user to first go download the python runtime for their phone.

The other disadvantage is simply in UI. You have three forms of ui available via the appuifw API. Let's say you want to draw images on the screen as well as have a text entry field in the ui, you really can't. You'll have to split the ui into parts that fit what the python api gives you.

As for IDE/Emulator, I'm just using VIM on Ubuntu with the bluetooth sync tools in putools. I've seen that you can get the C++ or Java environments, and then use the emulators in them, but not seen how it works since it seems to be a windows only option at this point.

Answer 2

PyS60 -- its cool :)

I worked quite a lot on PyS60 ver 1.3 FP2. It is a great language to port your apps on Symbian Mobiles and Powerful too. I did my Major project in PyS60, which was a GSM locator(its not the latest version) app for Symbian phones.

There is also a very neat py2sis utility which converts your py apps to portabble sis apps that can be installed on any Sumbian phones. The ease of use of Python scripting laanguage and a good set of warapped APIs for Mobile functions just enables you to do anything very neatly and quickly.

The latest Video and Camera APIs let you do neary everything that can be done with the phone. I'd suggest you few very good resources to start with

1. Forum Nokia
2. Nokia OpenSource Resource center
3. A very good tutorial (for beginners)

Just access these, download the Emulator, and TAKE OFF for a ride with PyS60. M sure you'll love it.

P.S. : as the post is so old, I believe u must already be either loving it or finished off with it. But I just cudn't resist answering. :)

Answer 3

I've written a calculator, that I'd like to have, and made a simple game. I wrote it right on the phone. I was writing in text editor then switched to Python and ran a script. It is not very comfortable, but it's ok. Moreover, I was writing all this when I hadn't PC nearby.

It was a great experience!

Answer 4

I have some J2ME experience and now I decided to write a couple of useful apps for my phone so I decided to use PyS60 to study Python by the way:)

Some things I don't like about the platform are:

1. You can't invoke any graphical functions (module appuifw) from non-main thread.
2. Python script model is not well-suited for ui applications because the script must contain explicit while loop or semaphore to prevent main thread from exit
3. There function sys.exit() is not available.

Again, I'm a newbie to PyS60 so if the issues given above do have nice workarounds don't hesitate to write them as comments. I would be very grateful.

Answer 5

There is a nice little IDE called PED for S60 phones which gives you some extra features and makes it easier to code. It's not really that advanced yet, but it's better than manually switching between text editor and python all the time.

HTH

Kage