What kind of cost does Symbian require?

Question

Quoted from this answer:

Cost of tools: JavaME would be cheapest, followed by Symbian, Android then iPhone.

I want to get started with mobile phone programing,but I don't see where Symbian does cost, as its SDK is available for free.

Anyone knows?

BTW,many people say Symbian only supports Symbian C++, but after reading its document, it seems it also support Java, is this feature newly added?

Answer 1

The cost to develop for Symbian has to do with distribution, as your program needs to be signed to run on third party devices.

Symbian has supported Java for many, many years. It also has good support for Python, Flash and Silverlight, and experimental support for Ruby.

Most importantly, Symbian now has a complete Qt stack, and the suggested route for new developers is to use Qt.

Answer 2

Well, the SDK is free, and if all you want to do is some 'hobby' programming, then you'll be fine. However if you intend serious commercial development, you will need:

• Several different unlocked Symbian devices (to check for cross-device compatibility). Unlocked devices tend to come in around $400-$500.
• Application signing (as noted above) - most potential customers won't install unsigned apps as they produce dire warnings about malware on the UI.
• You may want to invest in one or more premium Carbide extensions. These are invaluable timesavers to the professional, but again, are not cheap.

One other aspect to consider, depending on your application space, is that you can develop for Symbian using gcc as a cross-compiler or ARM RVDS.

The ARM compiler produces significantly better code, but it it far from cheap. This probably only matters for performance-intensive applications though. The code produced by gcc for ARM is not bad these days.

I'd concur with the suggestion to use Qt for any new development.