Everyone wants to go mobile today. There are several reasons for this, such as more than 70% of the world’s population having an active mobile device, and these being really the first personal devices (really personal), reading the user’s context all the time, always and everywhere.
So what’s the problem? Well, as I always say, “Mobile is a minefield.” That is, everyone trying to enter into the mobile world feels as if they’re in a minefield. Every step might be the right one, or might just be a waste of time.
Should we create native apps? Should we go with jQuery Mobile? Should we create a special version for tablets? Should we target feature phones?
We have lot of questions, and sometimes it’s difficult to find answers. No step feels right enough. That’s the “minefield sensation.”
The mobile web appears to be a solution to some of the problems that the mobile space has. This book is about trying to get an idea of what we can do and how, and what the main problems we face are.
If you are coming from the desktop web world, you are probably not aware of the complete mobile ecosystem. Maybe you have read a lot about mobile development, but I can assure you that it will be more complex than you think. Let’s review the current state of affairs, so we can be sure we have all the knowledge we need to create the best solutions.
It’s really difficult to categorize every mobile device. Is it a smartphone? Is it a handheld? Is it a netbook? Is it a music player?
First, when is a device considered a mobile one?
For the purposes of this book, a mobile device has the following features:
It’s portable.
It’s personal.
It’s with you almost all the time.
It’s easy and fast to use.
It has some kind of network connection.
Let’s take a closer look at these features.
A mobile device has to be portable, meaning that we can carry it without any special considerations. We can take it to the gym, to the university, to work; we can carry it with us everywhere, all the time.
We’ve all heard it: “Don’t touch my phone!” A mobile device is absolutely personal. My mobile is mine; it’s not property of the family, nor is it property of my company. I choose the ringtone, the visual theme, the games and applications installed, and which calls I should accept. My wife has her own mobile device, and so do my kids. This personal feature will be very important in our projects. You can browse a desktop website from any computer—your familiar home PC, your computer at work, or even a desktop at a hotel or Internet café—and numerous people may have access to those machines. However, you will almost always browse a mobile website from the same device, and you are likely to be the only person who uses that device.
Note
Do a test: go now and ask some friends or colleagues to allow you to view your email or your Facebook account using their mobile devices. Pay attention to their faces. They don’t want to! You will log them out from their accounts, you will use their phone lines, and you will touch their personal devices. It’s like a privacy violation.
Your mobile device can be with you anytime, anywhere. Even in the bathroom, you probably have your mobile phone with you. You may forget to take lots of things with you from your home in the morning, but you won’t forget your wallet, your keys, and your mobile. The opportunity to be with the user all the time, everywhere, is really amazing.
A notebook (or even a netbook) is portable; it can be with you at any time and it has a network connection, but if you want to use it, you need to sit down and perhaps find a table. Therefore, it’s not a mobile device for the purposes of this book.
A mobile device needs to be easy and quick to use. I don’t want to wait for the operating system to start; I don’t want to sit down. If I’m walking downtown, I want to be able to find out when the next train will be departing without having to stop.
A mobile device should be able to connect to the Internet when you need it to. This can be a little difficult sometimes, so we will differentiate between fully connected devices that can connect any time in a couple of seconds and limited connected devices that usually can connect to the network but sometimes cannot.
A classic iPod (non-touch) doesn’t have a network connection, so it’s out of our list, too, like the notebooks.
Note
Where do tablets, like the iPad, fit in? They are not so personal (will you have one tablet per member of the family?), and they may not be so portable. But they generally use mobile instead of desktop operating systems, as well as mobile browsers, so they are more mobile than notebooks or netbooks. I don’t have the final answer, but they are considered mobile devices in this book.
When thinking about mobile devices, we need to take the “phone” concept out of our minds. We are not talking about simply a phone for making calls—that’s just one possible feature of a mobile device.
With this in mind, we can try to categorize the mobile devices on the market today.
OK, we still have basic mobile phones in some markets. These are phones with call and SMS support. They don’t have web browsers or Internet connectivity, and they don’t have any installation possibilities. These phones don’t really interest us—we can’t do anything for them—and in a couple of years, because of device recycling, such phones will probably not be on the market anymore.
The Nokia 1100 (see Figure 1-1) is currently the most widely distributed device in the world, with over 250 million sold since its launch in 2003. In terms of features, it offers nothing but a built-in flashlight. The problem for us, as developers, is that we can’t create web content for it. Some companies may continue to make very low-end entry-level devices like this in the future, but hopefully Nokia and most other vendors will stop creating this kind of device soon. Even newer, cheaper mobile devices now have built-in browser support. This is because the mobile ecosystem (vendors, carriers, integrators, and developers) wants to offer services to users, and a browser is the entry point.
Figure 1-1. 250 million devices worldwide sounds very attractive, but this device (Nokia 1100) is out of our scope because it doesn’t have a web browser.
For example, Nokia offers Nokia Mail, an email service for non-Internet users in emerging markets. Thanks to this service, many, many people who have never before had access to email have been able to gain that access, with a mobile device costing less than $40. This widespread solution meets a real need for many people in emerging markets, like some countries in Africa and Latin America.
Feature phones, also known as low-end mobile devices, have a great advantage: they have web support. They typically have only a very basic browser, but this is the gross market. People who buy these kinds of devices don’t tend to be heavy Internet users, although this may change quickly with the advent of social networks and Web 2.0 services. If your friends can post pictures from their mobile devices, you’ll probably want to do the same, so you may upgrade your phone when you can.
Nokia, Motorola, Kyocera, LG, Samsung, and Sony Mobile have devices for this market. They do not have touch support, have limited memory, and include only a very basic camera and a basic music player. We can find phones in this category on sale from $40 all over the world.
Just to give you an idea of how big this market is, during 2011 70% of total phone sales worldwide were in the feature phone category (source: ZDNet). However, these users are usually phone and messaging users only, so they rarely consume web content.
Social phones are also known as mid-range and/or high-end mobile devices. The difference is that they are prepared for social users: apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp are always preinstalled and a minimum data plan is also usually included with the contract.
This is the mass-market option for a good mobile web experience. Mid-range devices maintain the balance between a good user experience and moderate cost. From $150, we can find a lot of devices in this market sector. In this category, devices typically offer a medium-sized screen, basic HTML browser support, sometimes 3G connection support, a decent camera, a music player, games, and application support.
One of the key features of mid-range devices is the operating system (OS). They don’t have a well-known OS; they have a proprietary one without any portability across vendors. Native applications generally aren’t available publicly, and some runtime, like Java ME, is the preferred way to develop installed applications.
The same vendors develop these devices as the low-end devices.
Originally the same category as smartphones, high-end devices are generally non-multitouch but have advanced features (like an accelerometer, a good camera, and Bluetooth) and good web support (but not the best in the market). They are better than mid-range devices but not on a par with smartphones. The enhanced user experience on smartphones is one of the key differences. The other difference is that high-end devices generally are not sold with flat Internet rates. The user can get a flat-rate plan, but he’ll have to go out and find it himself.
Note
You will find different mobile categories defined in different sources. There isn’t only one de facto categorization. The one used here is based on mobile web compatibility today.
This is the most difficult category to define. Why aren’t some social devices considered “smart” enough to be in this category? The definition of smart evolves every year. Even the simplest mobile device on the market today would have been considered very smart 10 years ago.
A device in this category can cost upwards of $400. You can probably get one at half that price from a carrier; the devices are often subsidized because when you buy them you sign up for a one- or two-year contract with a flat-rate data plan (hopefully). This is great for us as users, because we don’t have to care too much about the cost of bytes transferred via the Web.
A smartphone, as defined today, has a multitasking operating system, a full desktop browser, Wireless LAN (WLAN, also known as WiFi) and 3G/4G connection support, a music player, and several of the following features:
GPS (Global Positioning System) or A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System)
Digital compass
Video-capable camera
Bluetooth
Touch support
3D video acceleration
Accelerometer
Gyroscope
Magnetometer
Currently, this category includes the Apple iPhone, every Android device (including the Samsung Galaxy series and the Sony Xperia series), the Nokia Lumia 920, and later BlackBerrys.
Note
The discussion about smartphones is always floating in the market. For example, BlackBerry believes that every device it has manufactured is a smartphone, even though they don’t all have touch or WiFi connection support. On the other hand, Nokia’s Asha series (in the social phone category) do have touch and WiFi support, so they may claim to be smartphones.
If you are still confused about the models, brands, and operating systems, don’t worry, it will become clearer. Some confusion is normal, and I will help you to understand the mobile web ecosystem in the following pages.
A tablet is a flat device that usually doesn’t fit in a pocket and that has a touch screen with a size ranging from 7 to 11 inches. Sometimes it uses a mobile operating system (such as iOS instead of Mac OS), and sometimes it uses a touch-optimized version of a desktop operating system (such as Windows for tablets instead of Windows Phone).
Tablets have the same functionalities as smartphones, including multitasking operating systems, installed applications, and full modern web browsers. Every tablet has WiFi support, and there are some with 3G or 4G connections.
Some devices are difficult to categorize—for example, the Samsung Galaxy Note is a 4G phone with a 5.3” pointer- and finger-based touchscreen that can also be included in the tablet category.
Note
There is an informal concept known as the phablet—a portmanteau of the words “phone” and “tablet”—describing phones with very large screens (5 to 7 inches), such as the Samsung Galaxy Note phone series.
This may sound a bit strange. Nonphone mobile pocket devices? Indeed, there are some mobile devices that have all the features we’ve mentioned and have a size similar to a phone, but without voice support using the normal carrier services.
For example, Apple’s iPod touch is a device in this category. They aren’t phones, but they can be personal, are portable and easy to use, can be kept with you most of the time, and have WiFi connections, so they fall into the category of limited connected devices. They can have great mobile browsers, so they will be in our list of devices to be considered for development.
We can also consider some of the new ebook readers. For example, I have an Amazon Kindle ebook reader, like the one shown in Figure 1-2, with data connection support (both WiFi and 3G). The Kindle has a great web browser, if you can get used to e-ink refresh delays. Ebook readers aren’t phones, but they conform to all our other guidelines for mobile devices.
Figure 1-2. The Amazon Kindle can be considered a mobile web device because of its network connection and web browser.
At the time of this writing Google is working on a project called Google Glass, which is a connected pair of augmented reality glasses. We may be delivering services and widgets to our eyes in the near future with these new devices. We can develop solutions for them using a web service–based API.
Netbooks have at minimum a nine-inch display, and they are more like desktops than mobile devices. Some have desktop operating systems and desktop browsers, while others have a reduced web-based operating system (such as the Chromebooks, which include Chrome OS).
If a device has a full operating system, you will need to install antivirus protection and a firewall on it, so it won’t meet the easy usage criterion for a mobile device. Also remember that you can’t use a netbook while walking, and that’s one of the key features of mobile devices. Because of these limitations, netbooks are not considered mobile devices for the purposes of this book.
Now that we have established a set of categories in the mobile world, let’s talk about the difficult part: the brands and models on the market. We are not going to talk about every model available, and we don’t need to know about all of them. We only need to be aware of some information that will be useful for making decisions in the future.
Writing a book about brands and models is very difficult. The market changes a lot every year. In fact, during the months while I was writing this book, I had to update this information several times. So, I’ll be general here and aim to give you not only an idea of what’s out there now, but also of how to understand new devices that may appear on the market.
We are going to start with Apple, not because its devices are the best or because it has the greatest market share, but because Apple has caused a revolution in the market. It changed the way users see mobile devices and mobile web browsing, and it is the reason why many developers (web or not) have turned their attention to the mobile world.
Apple, a well-known desktop computer company, entered the mobile world with a revolutionary device: the iPhone. The iPod touch continued the iPhone revolution with a similar device without phone capabilities. Luckily for us, all of Apple’s small mobile devices are quite similar. They have a multitouch screen, a 3.5” screen with medium or ultra-high resolution or a 4” screen with ultra-high resolution, WiFi connections, and Safari on iOS (formerly Mobile Safari) as the browser. The iPad series added a 9.7” screen size (medium and high resolution), with almost the same other features as the iPod touch and iPhone.
Note
As of June 2012, Apple had sold over 400 million iOS devices, including iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.
Figure 1-3 shows a few examples of current Apple devices.
Figure 1-3. We can find iPod touch and iPhone devices with a 3.5” or 4” screen; here you can see the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.
Apple’s devices have a great feature: an operating system called iOS (formerly iPhone OS) that is based on Mac OS X (a Unix-based desktop OS). Usually, the last hardware versions of the iPhone can be upgraded to the latest operating system version. By default, the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are charged using a USB adapter; when you charge your device, iTunes (the Apple software for managing your device’s content and music) will detect automatically if an OS update is available for your device, and you can install the update in minutes without any technical skill needed. Starting with iOS 5.0, the device can upgrade itself over the air (OTA), just using your wireless connection.
That is why today, for a mobile web developer, it’s more important to know what OS version an Apple device has installed than which device it is. For those of us whose aim is to create great web experiences for the iPhone, it doesn’t matter if the device is an iPhone (the original phone), an iPhone 4S (the S stands for speed, indicating a device with more power and speed), an iPhone 5, or an iPod touch (like the iPhone without the phone). Even within each device type, we have many generations. The same idea applies to the iPad.
Note
The Apple iPad is a 9.7” tablet running iOS. It includes the same functionality and browser as the iPhone, with minor differences because of the larger screen, which has a 768 × 1024 resolution in the first two generations and 1536 × 2048 in the third generation. Apple sold more than 84 million iPads in just the first two and a half years after this device’s release.
So, the important thing is to know which OS version a device that accesses your website is running. It may be iOS 1.0, 2.2, 3.0, 3.2, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, or newer (although versions 1.0 to 3.2 are rarely seen on devices in use today, so we can safely work with versions 4.0 and beyond). Up to version 4.0, iOS was called iPhone OS. Every version has upgrades in the browser—for example, the Gmail version for the iPhone is different if you have an iPhone running OS 2.2 or 6.0—and is backward compatible. Table 1-1 lists the iOS versions and the devices that support them.
Table 1-1. List of iOS versions and devices supported per version
iOS version | Devices added | Highest version for | Released in |
|---|---|---|---|
1.0 to 1.1.5 |
iPod touch 1st gen. | 2Q 2007 – 3Q 2008 | |
2.0 to 2.2.1 | iPhone 3G iPod touch 2nd gen. | 3Q 2008 – 1Q 2009 | |
3.0 to 3.1.3 | iPhone 3GS iPod touch 3rd gen. | iPhone 1st gen. iPod touch 1st gen. | 2Q 2009 |
3.2 to 3.2.2 | iPad 1st gen. (only) | 2Q 2010 | |
4.0 to 4.2.1 | iPhone 4 iPod touch 4th gen. | iPhone 3G iPod touch 2nd gen. | 2Q 2010 – 4Q 2010 |
4.3 to 4.3.5 | iPad 2 | 1Q 2011 – 3Q 2011 | |
5.0 to 5.1.1 | iPhone 4S iPad 3rd gen. | iPod touch 3rd gen. iPad 1st gen. | 4Q 2011 – 2Q 2012 |
6.0 | iPhone 5 iPod touch 5th gen. iPad mini 1st gen. iPad 4th gen. | 3Q 2012 – 4Q 2012 |
You can see some sample screens in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4. This is the same Gmail account accessed from an iPhone running OS 2.0 and one running 6.0—the latter provides a more rich and contextual experience for the user.
Today, we can develop applications for iOS devices on only two platforms: using mobile web techniques, and using the native Cocoa Touch framework built on Objective-C. There are other nonofficial platforms that can also compile iOS native applications, such as Adobe AIR, Corona, or Appcelerator Titanium.
Note
It’s not widely known today that Apple, creator of the iPod and iPhone, was really one of the pioneers in the mobile device market. The Apple Newton was on the market from 1990 to 1998, and the ROKR E1, which Apple released in conjunction with Motorola in 2005, was the first phone connected with Apple’s services (including iTunes). The phone was not a great success from Apple’s perspective, and that was one of the reasons why the company decided to start the iPhone project.
Every iOS device has built-in access to the App Store, Apple’s famous store for selling and distributing free native apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Note
Later in this book, we are going to talk about how to detect the OS and use all the features available only in Safari on iOS. We will also talk about the App Store and how to distribute our mobile web applications via this store.
Android is a platform, not a manufacturer. Therefore, it may not seem to fit in this list. It does, though—if we are developing a website for an Android device, we don’t need to bother too much about who the manufacturer is. This is because the Android platform is powerful enough to leave the brand and model in second place when we are talking about developer features.
Android is an open source, Linux-based operating system created and maintained by a group of software and hardware companies and operators called the Open Handset Alliance. Google mainly maintains it, so it is sometimes known as the “Google Mobile Operating System.” As with any open source software, any manufacturer could theoretically remove all the Google-specific stuff from the operating system before installing it on its devices. However, as of this writing no vendor has done this, which is why every Android device is very “Google friendly.”
Note
According to official Google data, as of July 2012 there were 400 million Android devices in use and 1 million new devices activating every day.
Android is a software stack including a Linux-core, multitasking operating system based on the concept of a virtual machine that executes bytecode, similar to .NET or JVM (Java Virtual Machine). Google chose Java as the main language to compile (not compatible with Java ME) with web users in mind. Android includes a bunch of Google services, such as Google Maps, Google Calendar, Gmail, and an email client, and provides connections to many free Google web services. It’s not an obligation, but as of today every Android device is touch-based, and many of them have a QWERTY physical keyboard, GPS, a digital compass, and an accelerometer.
Note
Android is the mobile platform with the most choices when talking about mobile browsers. From the default Android browser available before Android 4.1, to Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, UCWeb, and many others, there are multiple options available to download and install for free.
Today, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, Acer, Asus, and Sony Mobile make Android devices. There are also some nonphone devices, such as tablets, that use Android. There are even some personal video-playing glasses that use Android, and Google TV, an interactive television platform, is based on this mobile operating system.
An Android device usually comes with the Google Play Store (previously known as Android Market), the official platform store for Android apps, music, books, and other multimedia content, preinstalled. Some Android-based vendors replace this or add their own stores, such as the Amazon Appstore or Samsung Apps.
Note
Android 3.0 was the first version supporting large screens and tablets. However, you can find lots of 7” tablets—such as the first generation of Samsung Galaxy Tabs—and some 10” tablets from low-budget manufacturers using Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 sold before 2012.
As of the writing of this book, the Android OS comes in multiple versions. A device usually can update its OS only once or twice, because every manufacturer (and sometimes carriers) needs to create its own version of Android from Google’s source code. That means that at any given time we can find on the market devices running at least three main versions of the OS that are stuck on that version and will not receive an update.
Knowing the OS version will be very useful to determine what browser features are available. Unfortunately, the documentation about the Android browser’s features is not complete, although (as we will see in the next chapter) Google Chrome has appeared to solve some of these problems for the future.
Every Android version is known by its number and also by a codename that is always a dessert, beginning with successive letters of the alphabet. In Table 1-2 you will see a list of the Android versions that have been published or are scheduled to be published at the time of this writing. Google also maintains a website where you can see every version’s market share over the last 14 days.
Table 1-2. List of Android versions and code names
Android version | Codename | Released on | Optimized for |
|---|---|---|---|
1.0 & 1.1 | 2008, 2009 | Smartphones (deprecated) | |
1.5 | Cupcake | 1Q 2009 | Smartphones (deprecated) |
1.6 | Donut | 3Q 2009 | Smartphones (deprecated) |
2.0 & 2.1 | Eclair | 4Q 2009 | Smartphones |
2.2 | Froyo | 2Q 2010 | Smartphones |
2.3 | Gingerbread | 4Q 2010 | Smartphones |
3.0, 3.1 & 3.2 | Honeycomb | 2011 | Tablets |
4.0 | Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) | 4Q 2011 | Smartphones & tablets |
4.1 & 4.2 | Jelly Bean (JB) | 2Q 2012 | Smartphones & tablets |
Not confirmed | Key Lime Pie (KLP) | Smartphones & tablets |
Figure 1-5 shows a few examples of Android devices.
In 2011, Google acquired Motorola Mobility, the well-known mobile device manufacturer. This means that Google is now itself a manufacturer of mobile devices—including the well-known tablet Motorola Xoom and the Motorola Droid series—and at the time of this writing Motorola is still working as a separate company under its own name. While Google has promised that Android will continue its current open source initiative and Motorola will not have special treatment, other competitors working closely with Android, such as Samsung and HTC, are looking for an alternate operating system in case the current status changes in the future.
Note
Rumor has it that Google plans to deliver a new phone under this new ecosystem at some point after this book is published, under the codename XPhone. To get updates on new devices and platforms after this book’s publication, check out www.mobilexweb.com.
Despite its link with Motorola, Google has some devices that it identifies as key devices—examples of the best hardware for every Android version. Different vendors, such as HTC, Asus, and Samsung, manufacture these devices without any customization (pure Android), and they are usually very high-end devices, mostly acquired by developers. These Google key devices are under the Nexus series name; they include the Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, and the multimedia home player Nexus Q. From 2012, Google offers different sizes for a Nexus experience, such as the smartphone Nexus 4 and the tablets Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.
One of the big problems of Android from a developer’s perspective is its fragmentation. By fragmentation, I mean the diversity of manufacturers and devices on the market, from very low-end cheap hardware to very expensive high-end hardware, and from really small screens and resolutions to high-definition devices with large screens. Compared to iOS, where every device is basically the same with a few hardware improvements, the difference is huge.
The openness of Android makes it the perfect platform for customization. That is why you will find lots of Android devices with different user interfaces (UIs), and even with different mobile browsers. For example, Samsung adds its own UI layer to the basic Android interface on some devices, and there are also some tablets with a complete layer over the Android UI. Amazon has released tablets under the series name Kindle Fire that are Android devices with a different user interface; Barnes & Noble did a similar thing with Android and the Nook series.
Microsoft has been trying to enter the mobile space as a big player for years. Windows Mobile was its main platform, until it decided to start from scratch: Windows Phone was the result, leading to Windows 8 on the desktop and tablets later. A new mobile operating system, developed from the ground up with a unique user interface (originally called Metro), it provides a different experience than the other main platforms. Both Windows Phone and the Windows tablet and desktop versions (from version 8) include an official Windows store for applications and content.
Microsoft launched its new operating system with companies such as HTC, LG, and Samsung, but it didn’t get too much market share. A special agreement with Nokia changed this, providing much wider Windows Phone distribution worldwide starting in 2012. Most independent analysts conclude that in the following years iOS, Android, and Windows Phone are likely to be the main three platforms in the market.
The first version of the Windows Phone OS was 7.0 (following on from Windows Mobile 6.5). This was followed by the first big step: Windows Phone 7.5, also known as Mango, which supported multitasking and HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9. The operating system has the same restrictions as iOS when dealing with the balancing act of providing an easy-to-use platform and hiding some low-level stuff, such as the filesystem, app installation from unknown sources, or real multitasking. Windows Phone devices include Microsoft-related services and applications, such as Office, Internet Explorer, and Bing services. Applications on Windows Phone devices can only be installed through the official Windows store.
The second generation of this platform, known as Windows Phone 8, is not compatible with devices sold with 7.x, although these devices were upgraded to Windows Phone 7.8, which includes some of the new features of the second-generation platform (such as a new Home screen with tiles). Windows Phone 8 includes a new architecture and an optimized UI for better customization, including Kid’s Corner, which provides a worry-free way for your kids to play with your phone. All Windows Phone 8 devices include the Windows Phone Store, formerly known as Windows Marketplace, for native app distribution. Figure 1-6 shows an example of a device running Windows Phone 8.
Windows Phone is not intended for tablets because Windows 8—the big version—is prepared for bigger touch devices. Windows 8 includes the same user interface that appeared first in the phone version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system.
Note
Microsoft originally named the Windows Phone and Windows 8 user interface Metro, but a trademark dispute forced it to drop this name. It is now called the “Windows 8–style UI” or “Windows Store UI.”
Windows 8 is included with many tablets on the market, including Microsoft’s own devices and those from different vendors, and every version supports Windows 8 Store apps—full-screen applications created with HTML5 or .NET. The operating system includes an official Windows Store for the first time, for app distribution.
This operating system is optimized for desktops, notebooks, and tablet devices. For tablets, it is available in two main versions: Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 RT. The first version is the “classic” Intel chipset–based version, and it supports every Windows Vista or legacy Windows XP application in a “Desktop” mode.
Windows 8 RT is optimized for ARM-based devices and is more common on tablets than the more powerful (Pro) version of the operating system. This version has a limited desktop mode that works with Microsoft apps; it can’t run any classic Windows application, just Windows Store certified apps.
Microsoft has also released its own tablets running Windows 8 under the series known as Microsoft Surface. Two main tablet categories are offered, with the first (cheaper) one shipping with Windows 8 RT and the second with Windows 8 Pro. One of the big advantages of the Surface over other tablets on the market today is the ability to use the cover as a keyboard—it’s available as a touch surface or a physical keyboard version.
One of the older mobile operating systems on the market is Windows Mobile (formerly Windows CE for PocketPC and Smartphones). For many years its market included the well-known PocketPCs, personal digital assistants (PDAs) without phone features. The “mobile revolution” pushed Microsoft to create a smartphone version of its mobile operating system, called Windows Mobile, which was available in two flavors: the Professional (formerly Pocket PC) and Smartphone editions.
Today Windows Mobile doesn’t have too much market share, and it has been totally replaced by Windows Phone on the consumer side. However, it is still well received in some industries for specific-purposes devices.
Almost every mobile device with Windows Mobile that has launched since 2003 has .NET Compact Framework support. This means we can develop native applications for these devices using C# or Visual Basic with a reduced .NET Framework.
For industrial and corporate users, Windows Mobile continued as a separate mobile operating system with the Windows CE codebase, called Windows Embedded Compact. A 7.0 version of this operating system was released in March 2011, at almost the same time as Windows Phone 7. However, it’s not intended for the mass market and is only for embedded systems. In early 2013, Microsoft released Windows Embedded 8 in several versions for vertical markets: Standard, Pro, Industry, Handheld, and Automotive. Table 1-3 lists the recent and current Windows versions.
Table 1-3. List of Windows versions and code names for mobile web development
Name | Version and codename | Released on | Optimized for |
|---|---|---|---|
Windows Phone 7 | 7.0 (Metro) | Smartphones (deprecated) | |
Windows Embedded Compact | 7.0 | 1Q 2011 | Devices for the enterprise, industrial, and consumer electronics markets |
Windows Phone 7.5 | 7.1 (Mango) | 3Q 2011 | Smartphones |
Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh | 7.1.x (Tango) | 2Q 2012 | Smartphones |
Windows Phone 7.8 | 7.x (Apollo) | 4Q 2012 | Smartphones |
Windows Phone 8 | 8.0 (Apollo) | 4Q 2012 | Smartphones |
Windows 8 | 8.0 | 4Q 2012 | Tablets and desktop |
Windows Embedded 8 | 8.0 | 1Q 2013 – 2Q 2013 | Devices for the enterprise, industrial, consumer electronics, and automotive markets |
Nokia had the largest market share in mobile devices and smartphones worldwide for years (but not necessarily in specific markets, like the US). Nokia has devices in all the mobile categories, from very low-end devices to very high-end smartphones.
I’ve been one of the Nokia Developer Champions (a worldwide recognition program for top mobile developers) since 2006, and I know that Nokia really cares about the developer community. You can find the Nokia Developer website.
The bad news for developers is that hundreds of different Nokia devices are available today. The good news is that they are very well organized by platform into different series, making it easier for us to develop, test, and port our web applications to most of them.
All Nokia devices, except the Windows-based ones, support the Nokia Store, formerly Ovi Store, for application distribution for all the supported platforms.
In late 2011, Nokia began using Windows Phone as the main smartphone platform in devices released under the marketing series name Lumia. These devices are replacing Symbian devices as Nokia’s main high-end line and will coexist with them for a couple of years.
Nokia Lumia phones have Windows Phone 7.x, 8.0, or later and include Microsoft and Nokia software such as Internet Explorer, Bing, Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, and the Windows Phone Store.
For most of our web development work we will follow Microsoft directives, tools, and documentation, as there is no specific work to do on Nokia Windows Phone devices in terms of mobile web development. The only exception may be the Nokia Xpress browser that Nokia offers to its users; we’ll cover that later in this book.
At the time of this writing Nokia has confirmed that it will soon be creating tablets using Windows 8 RT as the operating system.
Nokia’s Series 40 (S40) line consists of low-end and mid-range devices (both feature phones and social phones) using a proprietary Nokia OS focused on the mass market. The devices in this series first appeared in 2003, and today they are separated into different editions and even small update packages (called “feature packs”) that help us to understand the abilities of each mobile device in this series. The “Lite” suffix on some editions and feature packs indicates low-end limited devices.
Between 2003 and 2007 lots of series were developed, from 1st Edition to 3rd Edition Feature Pack 3 (FP3), that today can be considered legacy platforms. There have been no new devices on the market in these subseries since the end of 2007.
In 2012 this series was renamed Nokia Asha for marketing purposes, and it now includes touch devices with 3G and WiFi connection support.
At the time of writing, Series 40 includes all the versions listed in Table 1-4.
Table 1-4. List of Nokia S40 versions, release dates, and device types since 2007
Version name | Release dates | Device type | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
5th Edition and 5th Edition FP1 | 2Q 2007–4Q 2009 | Medium feature phones | Numeric keypad, 240×320 screen |
5th Edition Lite and 5th Edition FP1 Lite | 2Q 2007–4Q 2009 | Feature phones | Numeric keypad, 128×160 screen |
6th Edition and 6th Edition FP1 | 2Q 2009–3Q 2011 | Feature and social phones | Numeric keypad, QWERTY keyboard, and some small touchscreens; some with WiFi support |
6th Edition Lite | 2Q 2010–2Q 2012 | Feature phones | Numeric keypad, 128×160 screen |
Developer Platform 1.x | 2Q 2010–1Q 2012 | Social phones | Numeric keypad or QWERTY keyboard, WiFi |
Developer Platform 2.0 | From 2Q 2012 | Social phones | Full touch devices, WiFi |
Every edition has between 5 and 40 devices on the market today, and we can safely work with the fifth edition and beyond. The best part is that Nokia guarantees us that development for each device in one series (edition plus feature packs) is the same.
All the Series 40 devices have a mobile browser and Java ME (Micro Edition)—formerly known as J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition)—support. From the third edition, they also support different versions of Adobe Flash Lite. Figure 1-7 shows a recent device, the Nokia Asha 306.
Figure 1-7. The latest Series 40 devices in the social phone market, such as this Nokia Asha 306, include a full touchscreen, WiFi access, video streaming, and web browsing support.
The platform now has an application store (Nokia Store) and a modern web browser. We can also create HTML5 native web apps for these devices, as we will see later in this book.
Series 60 (S60) began as the smartphone line from Nokia, using Symbian as the operating system. Today these devices are closer to the high-end category, but the limit is not clear. The Symbian company was formed by a group of manufacturers including Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola. Later, Samsung and Sony Ericsson were added to the member list. For many years Nokia was the leading company using the Symbian platform, although there were also some Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola Symbian-based devices on the market.
This is history, though. In 2008, after the launching of Android as an open source operating system, Nokia made a decision: it bought 100% of Symbian, Ltd., from all the other manufacturers and created the Symbian Foundation to migrate the Symbian operating system to open source. At the end of 2010, Nokia decided to close the Foundation and now Symbian is 100% property of Nokia. A few months later, after a lot of criticism of how Symbian was evolving to compete with Android and iOS, Nokia did a 360-degree turn, making an arrangement with Microsoft to use Windows Phone as the main smartphone platform for Nokia’s future devices.
In 2012, Nokia delivered both Symbian and Windows Phone devices, and in the following years Symbian may cease to exist. However, there are millions of Symbian devices on the market and in use today, so even if its market share is decreasing, we will have Symbian for a couple of years yet. If you are in the United States this may not seem like a big deal because Symbian was never a massive platform in the US, but you can see a very different perspective in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Symbian devices from Nokia were divided into different editions under the name S60, from the 1st to the 5th edition. After that, the S60 platform was renamed the Symbian platform and Nokia did not use the S60 name anymore. In the market today, we can find Symbian devices under the versions listed in Table 1-5.
Table 1-5. List of Symbian smartphone platform versions available since 2008
Version name | Released on | Input type | Update ability |
|---|---|---|---|
S60 3rd Edition FP2 | 1Q 2008 – 2Q 2011 | Numeric keypad and QWERTY keyboard, no touch devices | No updates |
S60 5th Edition | 4Q 2008 – 3Q 2011 | Full touch devices, no keyboard | No updates |
Symbian^3 | 2Q 2010 | Full touch devices with optional QWERTY keyboard | No updates |
Symbian Anna | 2Q 2011 | Full touch devices with optional QWERTY keyboard | From Symbian^3 |
Symbian Belle | 3Q 2011 | Full touch devices with optional QWERTY keyboard | From Symbian^3 and Anna |
Symbian Belle FP1 | 1Q 2012 | Full touch devices with optional QWERTY keyboard | Only for some devices |
Symbian Belle Refresh | 3Q 2012 | Full touch devices with optional QWERTY keyboard | Only for some devices |
Note
There isn’t a fourth edition in Nokia’s Series 40 or Series 60. Why is this? Nokia has a lot of market share in Asia, and in China 4 is considered bad luck (like the number 13 in the Western world) because it is pronounced “si,” similar to “death” in Chinese.
All Symbian devices include a camera, a mobile browser, multitasking support, and a numeric or QWERTY keyboard. Fifth edition and later devices have touch support and the ability to upgrade to newer versions of the operating system. For example, the Nokia N8 originally came with Symbian^3 in 2010, and it has received free over-the-air upgrades to Symbian Anna in 2011 and to Symbian Belle in 2012.
Every Symbian device has a WebKit-based browser that allows it to browse almost any website on the Internet, including Flash-based sites like YouTube, thanks to Flash Lite.
In 2005, Nokia introduced a new platform to replace Symbian, called Maemo. It’s a Linux-based operating system designed for small netbooks or devices with full web-browsing support. In 2010, Nokia’s Maemo merged with Intel’s Moblin OS, creating the MeeGo OS. While Nokia originally intended MeeGo to be the replacement platform for smartphones, it subsequently moved to Windows Phone, so the MeeGo smartphones project was cancelled inside Nokia.
Before that, one MeeGo device was released to the market: the Nokia N9, sold in Europe and Latin America at the end of 2011, was the first and last device of its kind. To be honest, I have a Nokia N9, and the Linux-based operating system looks really great. Nokia has received some criticism about discarding this promising platform.
After Nokia discarded MeeGo, Intel began looking for a new partner to continue the project. Samsung was interested, and together they created a new project called Tizen as the evolution of some parts of MeeGo in conjunction with other projects from Samsung.
At the same time, a new company appeared in Finland, formed by ex-Nokia employees with the goal of continuing production of MeeGo devices. The company is called Jolla, and its version of the MeeGo operating system is called SailFish OS.
Research in Motion (RIM) was the Canadian manufacturer of the BlackBerry devices, mobile devices focused on being “always connected” with push technologies. The company was renamed “BlackBerry” in early 2013, dropping the RIM name for the future. Early adopters were primarily corporate users who needed to remain connected to intranets and corporate networks; then the devices appeared in new markets, becoming popular with teenagers and instant messaging fans. RIM used to call all its devices “smartphones,” but others did not always consider them as falling into that category.
Note
In later chapters we will cover all the tools, SDKs, and emulators available from each manufacturer to make our lives as web developers easier.
For years RIM had few devices aimed at the mass market; most of them had QWERTY keyboards and were not designed for gaming. Many of these devices had proprietary input devices, like a scroll wheel or a touchpad, although some touch-enabled devices were launched in the last few years, giving users more multimedia and gaming support. Until 2012 all BlackBerry smartphones shipped with the BlackBerry OS, a proprietary operating system compatible with Java ME with extensions, and, of course, a mobile browser. We can categorize the devices by operating system version. The versions available on the market in 2012 were 4.7, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, and the new BB10 platform. Versions 4.7 and 5.0 should be considered legacy platforms; however, there are still some old devices in some markets working with these (more than three-year-old) versions.
All the BlackBerry devices support App World, the BlackBerry application store.
In 2011, the company released its first tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook (Figure 1-8), a 7” device with a new operating system, Tablet OS, derived from QNX, a Unix-based real-time operating system. This new operating system was prepared from the ground up to compete with iOS and Android and included many new and modern features, such as multitouch support, a modern web browser, multitasking support, and even Flash Player and AIR support.
Figure 1-8. The BlackBerry PlayBook, including the Tablet OS, was the origin of the new BB10 platform, which has now also come to smartphones.
In 2012, Tablet OS 2.0 appeared on the market, and every device is upgradable to the latest BB10 operating system. A 4G tablet version was also released in 2012. The distribution has never reached iPad or Android tablet levels, though, and the future of the platform is still uncertain.
Starting in 2013, BlackBerry is fully changing its smartphone platform in favor of the same PlayBook QNX-based operating system, adapted to the phone layout. This new platform is called BlackBerry 10 (BB10), and both the phones and the tablets from the company include it. BB10 is not compatible with BlackBerry OS versions earlier than version 7.1, and all the native applications must be developed using HTML5 or C++ using the Qt framework and a UI layer called Cascades. Adobe AIR (Flash) and Android Java applications are also compatible. (No, that’s not a mistake—Tablet OS 2.0 on the PlayBook and BB10 on both tablets and phones support Android Java applications through an invisible virtual machine.)
The first BlackBerry 10 devices to hit the market are the full-touch Z10 and Q10, the latter of which is a square-screen device with a QWERTY keyboard. At the time of their launch in early 2013, the new BlackBerry 10 devices are among the most powerful HTML5 devices on the market.
Samsung has many devices on the market, most of which are divided into three different series: feature phones with a proprietary operating system, social devices with Bada, and smartphones with Android. From 2013, Samsung is also delivering devices with the new Linux-based Tizen operating system (partially based on MeeGo with Intel support).
Samsung’s native devices are low-end and mid-range mobile devices with a proprietary OS including a browser and Java ME support, and typically a camera and a music player.
Bada is a mobile operating system managed completely by Android; it was released in 2010 and is optimized for mid-range devices to offer a touch interface without the need of high-end hardware. It includes a modern browser and native application installation support through the Samsung store, Samsung Apps.
In the smartphone category, Samsung is offering Android- and Windows Phone–based devices at the time of this writing, and will be offering Tizen-based devices from 2013.
Note
Samsung Tizen-based devices support first-class-citizen HTML5 apps and Android apps through an application compatibility layer.
Prior to 2010, the smartphones and high-end devices were divided into two categories by operating system—Symbian and Windows Mobile—with each having its own set of features. Subsequently, while delivering some Windows Phone devices (primarily the Omnia series), Samsung committed its smartphone and tablet platform to Android, and it has created different series, including the Galaxy series, with devices such as the Galaxy SIII or Galaxy Tab 10.1. Some of the Android-based devices from Samsung include a UI layer called TouchWiz, providing a different experience from other vendors’ Android-based devices.
Android devices from Samsung support both the Google Play Store and the Samsung Apps store for application distribution.
Ericsson built many mobile phones in the 1990s, and in 2001 it merged with Sony and created the Sony Ericsson company. Sony Ericsson produced a variety of low-end and mid-range devices and a couple of smartphones, including the Xperia series. In 2012, Sony became the sole owner of the company and “Ericsson” was removed from the name, converting the company into Sony Mobile.
Sony Mobile, like Samsung, has decided to offer devices with different operating systems. It offers low-end and mid-range devices using a proprietary operating system, as well as Windows Phone devices and Android devices. Before 2010, Sony Ericsson also delivered some Symbian and Windows Mobile devices to the market.
In the smartphone category, Android, Windows Phone, and Firefox OS devices are supported. The high-end series using Android is called Xperia, and it includes the Xperia Play, a PlayStation-certified phone optimized for gaming. Sony has also entered the tablet market with the Android-based devices Sony Tablet S and Sony Tablet P.
For many years, Motorola has been a leading manufacturer of low-end and mid-range devices. Motorola’s devices were the first mobile devices on the market, and the company pioneered the clamshell design with the classic Motorola StarTac. Motorola’s mobile devices have traditionally used either a proprietary operating system (like the well-known Motorola v3), Symbian, Windows Mobile, or a Linux-based operating system the company created for its devices.
This situation created a very fragmented market for developers. Fortunately, today Motorola has changed its vision and has focused on a single solution for phones and tablets: Android. Motorola has also created some inexpensive mid-range devices with Android that might be considered social devices rather than smartphones, because the screen size, the hardware capabilities, and the performance are not high-end enough for them to be compared with other smartphones.
Google acquired Motorola in 2011, but at the time of this writing it continues operations under the Motorola name and as a separate company.
Motorola is the company behind some successful Android-based series, such as the Droid series (known as Milestone outside the US) and the Xoom tablet.
It may seem strange to see an online seller such as Amazon in this list. However, Amazon became a mobile device manufacturer with its Kindle ebook reader. The latest versions of the e-ink reader include a web browser, and while it is not one of the most-used browsers in the world, most users will use it as a backup browser.
Actually, Amazon appeared in the mobile market not with its ebook reader but with the Kindle Fire, the first tablet from the company. The first edition was a 7” tablet with a full touchscreen (not e-ink) using a customized version of Android and its own mobile browser. The Kindle Fire hit the market in November 2011 with a new price point for tablets: $199, less than half the cost of the iPad—or even other 7” Android-based tablets—at the time.
While it’s difficult to know how many Kindle Fires are out there, Amazon reported millions of sales in the first weeks—more than the sales reported by other non-iPad tablets.
In September 2012, Amazon released the second generation of Kindle Fire tablets, known as the Kindle Fire HD, including WiFi connection support and a 4G-enabled 8.9” screen version.
Note
The bookseller Barnes & Noble has also released its own ereader and tablet, called Nook. The Nook Color and Nook Tablet are Android-based devices with their own UI and browser layer.
LG Mobile has many feature phones, social devices, and smartphones on the market today. Most are based on a proprietary OS with Java ME, Flash, and web support. However, LG also has devices with Android and Windows Phone on the market.
Note
LG Mobile has released one of the first auto-stereoscopic 3D devices on the market, the LG Optimus 3D: it’s an Android device with a 3D screen that does not require the use of glasses. While there is an SDK that works with the Android SDK, there is no special 3D behavior that can be applied on web pages yet.
HTC has become very popular in the mobile market since it created the first and second Android devices in the world and the first Google phone, the Nexus One. But HTC doesn’t create only Android devices; it also produces a lot of Windows Phone devices. We can think of HTC devices as either Android devices or Windows devices; that’s the only distinction that’s needed.
My first mobile device was a Palm III, back in 1998. At that time, it was a great device. It was touch-enabled (used with a stylus), black and white, and very small. It was a revolution for me: I could install applications, read newspapers, and even program directly on the device with a Pascal for Palm interpreter. OK, the programming wasn’t the best experience, but the concept was really powerful.
USRobotics bought Palm Computing, Inc., in 1995. At the time, it was the pioneer launching PDA devices. USRobotics later merged with 3Com, and as 3Com was dedicated to network cards and accessories, Palm Inc. was created as a subsidiary. Palm Inc. was very successful, and other manufacturers (including IBM) created other devices licensing its Palm OS. In 1998, a couple of Palm’s directors left to create another company, HandSpring, which released the Treo devices to the market. Half PDA and half mobile phone, they can be considered the first smartphones on the market.
A few years later, Palm decided to divide the company into a hardware manufacturer, palmOne, and an operating system developer, PalmSource. This idea didn’t work out: customers didn’t accept the palmOne brand, so the company again acquired the Palm trademark and the operating system became the Garnet OS. In the meantime, Palm acquired HandSpring, so now we have Palm Treo devices.
In 2005, ACCESS (who also had other mobile technologies) acquired PalmSource and the operating system. Suddenly, the new-old Palm company made a difficult decision: it started to manufacture Treo devices with Windows Mobile, killing all hopes for the future of the Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS).
The Treo series was the only type of Palm device that survived in the mobile world, and BlackBerrys, the Nokia E Series, and other devices soon pushed Palm to the bottom of the market. In response, Palm created another operating system for mobile devices, aimed at being a web-oriented platform for iPhone-killer devices. webOS came to the market in 2009 with the first device, the Palm Pre. Other devices, such as the Palm Pixi, followed.
The company didn’t do so well in the market, and in 2010, HP acquired Palm, promising evolution of webOS. In 2011, it even delivered new smartphones, such as the HP Pre 3, the HP Veer, and a new tablet, the HP TouchPad.
All this is history, to tell you that TouchPad tablet sales in 2011 proved disappointing; after that, HP decided to conclude its phone and tablet production and webOS became an obsolete mobile operating system. In 2012, HP decided to open source webOS; it became Open webOS, and at the time of this writing, there is no indication of who is going to use this operating system in the future. webOS is a powerful mobile operating system, so as an open source solution it seems reasonable to believe that some tablets, smartphones, or ebook readers will use this platform in the near future.
The Mozilla Foundation made a late entry into the mobile world. A Firefox mobile version for Android and MeeGo devices launched in 2011, but as of today it doesn’t have too much market share. However, the Mozilla Foundation didn’t give up, and in mid-2012 it created a new web-based operating system for smartphones, originally called Boot2Gecko but rebranded as Firefox OS.
This new platform is an open source Android-kernel-based platform utilizing the Gecko engine (the same engine that powers the Firefox browser), optimized for mid-range hardware delivering HTML5 and web experiences with lots of rich APIs. The first agreement that led this software project to a real implementation was with Telefónica.
Telefónica is the company behind many carriers in the world, including Movistar in Spain and dozens of countries in Latin America and O2 in the United Kingdom and Germany. Telefónica has committed to create and deliver devices using Firefox OS, called Open Web Devices.
Following Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, and Telenor have announced their adherence to the Firefox OS project.
The idea is to offer inexpensive devices that are comparable with iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices, with a rich user interface and an HTML5-based development platform. Sony, as well as other vendors, has announced Firefox OS devices.
Ubuntu for phones is a mobile operating system presented at the beginning of 2013, with devices planned for release in 2014. It is based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and was created by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu support. The platform will support HTML5 and Qt native apps and includes a heavy gesture-based UI.
China has several of its own mobile platforms, typically based on Android. We can mention here Baidu Yi, an Android-powered operating system for the Chinese market, and OPhone, a Linux-based operating system based on the original Android (even before Google bought it) used by the operator China Mobile.
We’ve already covered almost 98% of the market. There are many other manufacturers, like Sanyo, Alcatel, Kyocera, and ZTE, but they don’t have visible market share, and many of them produce devices based on platforms we’ve already discussed, like Windows Phone or Android. With the information I’ve shared with you in the preceding pages, I think you will be capable of understanding any new platform you can find on the market.
I know what you’re thinking: my TV is not too mobile! Well, you’re right. We are not going to talk too much about TVs in this book, but it’s important to give them a mention. Why? Because interactive TV systems are using web technologies, and most of them are imported from mobile operating systems. While TVs are not mobile, they usually have web browsers and engines similar to those of mobile devices. And mobile web developers usually are the first group of professionals to be called when a company needs a TV-based application.
At the time of this writing, interactive TV platforms are divided into native platforms and set-top box (STB) platforms. The first group includes companies that are delivering the interactive platform with the TV itself, while the latter are just set-top boxes that you can buy and attach to any HDMI-based TV.
As with smartphones and tablets, we can find low-end TVs and high-end TVs on the market, with radical differences in the engines behind them.
Interactive TV platforms typically include a web browser and native web or widget apps that can be attached to the TV home screen or even to a live channel to follow the video streaming. On the market today we can find Android-based, Opera-based, and custom-based TV platforms.
Note
Some console platforms, such as the PlayStation 3 or Wii, include a web browser, and they should be considered if you are creating a website for TV.
If you want more information about smart TV web platforms, you can look at the following websites for developers:
While Apple has the Apple TV platform based on iOS, at the time of this writing there is no web browser and no application installation process on this platform.
After reading the previous section, you may be wondering where you can find information about all the individual devices on the market. What operating system does the Nokia Lumia 900 use? Does the BlackBerry PlayBook use the same browser as BlackBerry’s smartphones? Which HTC devices use Android 4.0?
To get you closer to these answers, Table 1-6 lists the developer sites of all the major device manufacturers and platforms. Everyone has one, and almost all of them list the technical specifications of each of their devices. You can usually filter the devices by any characteristic, such as screen size, platform, operating system, or browser version. Sony Mobile’s developer site is shown in Figure 1-9.
Table 1-6. Mobile manufacturer and platform developer website URLs
Manufacturer/platform | Developer site URL |
|---|---|
Apple iOS | |
Android | |
Nokia (S40, Symbian, MeeGo, Windows Phone) | |
RIM/BlackBerry | |
Sony Mobile | |
Microsoft Windows Phone | |
Motorola Mobility | |
Opera Mobile/Mini | |
LG | |
Samsung | |
Samsung Bada | |
Amazon Kindle | |
HTC | |
HP webOS | |
Open webOS | |
Barnes & Noble Nook | |
Tizen | |
Firefox OS | |
Ubuntu for Phones |
Figure 1-9. The Sony Mobile Phone Gallery—almost every manufacturer website for developers allows you to filter the devices by features, such as the browser used.
Note
If you are new to the mobile development ecosystem, it’s a good idea to register on all the developers’ websites—and even the operators', if they have one. You will receive updates about tools, documentation, and news. You will also have access to download tools and emulators.
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