Mobile Programming Pit Stop

I bought a new phone – Nokia E71

I know I’ve been slacking lately on my post.. but hey, I got myself a new phone – The Nokia E71!

Phones model and features are getting diverse now and I’ve noticed that its getting harder and harder to choose a phone that really suits my needs. For example, one feature found on Phone A isnt necessarily can be found on Phone B.

So it took me a while to replace my good old 6630 that has been stolen few months before. But hey, I’m back on my feet now.

Among the key feature that attract me to buy this phone are :

• Location API support (JSR-179) with built in GPS receiver
• QWERTY keyboard
• Ease of handling, my hands a bit slippy on its sister’s phone E66
• Battery last longer
• Hot swappable micro-sd card
• More than adequate internal memory

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• Supports WiFi

The only drawback that I could think of this phone is its camera that is not as good as the N95,N96 series phone. But I can still live with that since I rarely use the camera anyway.

Other additional feature
The phone comes with Advance Call Manager and Multi Scanner free of charge, making it easier to filter out unwanted call and to manage phone blacklist.

Multi Scanner allows you to take a photo of name card and automatically store important information (Name, Phone Number, Address, Company’s Name, Fax Number) right into the phone.

I hope I can be more productive at updating this blog and producing new mobile applications with this phone.

How to get Nokia Battery Level in JavaME

Nokia Symbian 3rd Edition phone introduces “com.nokia.mid.batterylevel” properties which you can get the current battery charge level by calling System.getProperty(“com.nokia.mid.batterylevel”) from within your midlet application. Its up to your imagination for you to do the rest.

Sample source code (displaying battery charge level on gauge):

/**********
/*
/* Nokia Battery Level midlet
/* Copyright 2008 Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail ([email protected])
/* http://mobilepit.com
/*
/* May be use freely
**********/
import javax.microedition.midlet.*;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.*;

public class NokiaBattery extends MIDlet implements CommandListener {

int value;
Display display;
Form form;
Gauge gauge;
Command cmdExit;

public NokiaBattery() {
 display = Display.getDisplay(this);
 form = new Form("Nokia Battery");
 cmdExit = new Command("Exit",Command.EXIT,1);
 form.addCommand(cmdExit);
 value=Integer.parseInt(System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.batterylevel"));
 gauge = new Gauge("Level",false,100,value);
 form.append(gauge);
form.append("Value :"+value);

 StringItem item = new StringItem("Network Signal",System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.networksignal"));
 form.append(item);
 form.setCommandListener(this);
}

public void startApp(){
      display.setCurrent(form);
}

public void pauseApp() {}

public void destroyApp(boolean flags) {

	notifyDestroyed();
} 

public void commandAction (Command cmd, Displayable disp)
{
	if (cmd == cmdExit) {
	 	destroyApp(false);
	}
}

}

Download source code and sample midlet : NokiaBattery_midlet.zip

SymbianTutorial.org – Symbian application development basic

SymbianTutorial.org is a good website to learn about fundamental application development in Symbian (especially series60).

Though some information about the IDE is slightly outdated (as stated on the website), the tutorial website covers basic Symbian data type, class naming convention, exception handling, input/output, gui handling basics and how to create resource file for Symbian development platform.

The website itself is structred in a way to introduce reader to Symbian application development environment, which is the main platform used in Nokia and Sony-Ericsson smartphones.