How to start develop for chinese mobile phones based on nucleus RTOS? (MTK)

Question

I've noticed that chinese mobile phones became very popular, perhaps because of their very reasonable price and many modern features (touch screens, advanced multimedia, double sim cards etc).

I'm wondering if there's any way to develop custom solutions for this handsets as independent developer? How to obtain a toolkit and documentation?

I've found some resources, but mainly inconsistent tech notes, often in chinese only. For now I know, that majority of chinese handsets are based on chips from MediaTek (MTK), with operating system based on Nucleus RTOS and MMI (plutoMMI?) framework. Unfortunately, there is no Java RE avaiable (ok, there are some handsets with Java, however, Java isn't something I'm looking for)

Is there any SDK, documentation, emulators/simulators, how-tos, etc avaiable? How to develop, deploy and test custom application for MTK mobile?

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure of what you mean by a 'Chinese' phone. However, you may be talking about ODM phones. Most of the time, these phones are system clones of regular phones with some customisation. It may be a good idea to just buy one and take it apart to see what platform it runs on. Maybe it uses OMAP or something else? In which case, you probably have more knowledge on how to proceed. Maybe it is even compatible with Linux.

Answer 2

I just bought a SciPhone G2 Dream and have done some initial investigation. This particular phone runs J2ME applications but I am also wondering what can be done (if anything) with native applications. Ideally I would like to get my Bluetooth GPS to work with this phone.

This page discusses getting GCC to work with Nucleus but I'm not sure whether this is useful.

Mentor (the makers of Nucleus) have a trial version of their developer suite available. I have just requested a free trial. It is a bit concerning that the website makes no mention of the cost. They also have an emulator.

What sort of phone did you get and what sort of applications are you planning to develop?

Answer 3

Hello Jukobee and Steve,

I work with a lot of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers because we export mobile phones from China. I'm really interested in building a new applications, especially an email program, for these MTK based devices. Now it's a bit late to be looking at the 6225 platform because the 6235 platform seems to be where we'll see the most growth moving forward. The major differences that I'm aware of between the 6235 and 6225 are that 6235 supports Wi-Fi, works with EDGE, and is faster.

Steve, you mentioned the G2. I think that Android will be the breakout OS for Chinese phone manufacturing. Once their local engineers and designers get a handle on it a plethora of both ridiculous and useful applications and models will flourish and there won't be major export (customs) problems as we see now with the Windows Mobile devices (because the Chinese typically don't offer licensed software).

If either of you are interested in discussing further I am very happy to do so and hope we get a chance to connect.

Regards, Ben

Answer 4

The MTK service is charged. You need to contact them and pay for the chip, software SDK, document, and technical support.

I don't know where you get the "some resource", but it must be leaked by some customer of their, thus using these resource will be considered as illegal.

Answer 5

I am enginner at design company. I have MTK development platform for MT series mobiles with English explanation. The original release and manuals are written in English(About 300mb pdf files). The SDK have simulator written in Visual C++. MMI interface working under nucleus rtos os. The codes are V++.

Answer 6

Hi there, I'm interested too in getting some SDK for my MediaTek MT6235 phone.
I tried Steve's page, the one about compiling gcc for Nucleus, and it didn't work out for me. I couldn't compile it at all. I tried to compile gcc 4.x, so I'm gonna try the gcc 3.x

Does anyone know about a downloadable SDK or a compatible C compiler for this OS?

thanks in advance.

Answer 7

I still haven't found any information about developing custom apps (natively) in the chinese phone, package it, and distribute it. One way that comes in my mind is that by developing a java app, although java support in these phones is also questionable (some may say it support java, while other people can't install java application in their phones). But correct me if I'm wrong, the resource regarding this platform (in English) is quite scarce. Thank you.

Answer 8

I have received lots of questions about Chinese mobile development since post message here. And it cost me much time to answer all questions one by one . And some friends have bought the thing they want in my help . To help you guys quickly and fast, I have found some firms which can provide the whole thing you need for MTK platform development. actually,you should get cable\device\source code , then you can do you China mobile development. Of course some of the firm will give you tech support that depends you paid. So, if you want to get details , just skype me by fanzhen.meng or email me by [email protected].

Answer 9

MTK 6235 is a processor model, if I get it right. Phones based on this processor will work normally in any country.