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Python for Nokia’s Series 60 platform has been around for four years now and to be honest, not much has happened on that front during the past year. However, suddenly on 24th of December Nokia releases a version 1.9.0 of the Python for Series 60 that is a major rewrite of the whole thing and comes now with Python 2.5 version of the core language. As usual, the odd-number version branch means that the release is for testing purposes only and the even-numbered 2.0 version branch should be released once it becomes more stable. Blog at Croozeus.com has done pretty nice wrap up of the new release and here are my thoughts.

First of all I should mention that as I write this blog entry I’ve not yet had time to test the new Python for Series 60 release. So I apologize beforehand for all false comments I’m about to make.

It seems that they are giving a lot more focus on the ease of development in this new release. Which is a really good thing I must say. What pleases me the most is that they are planning on improving the Python runtime deployment so that the end-user or the guy that is installing Python applications should not have to worry too much about having or not having the Python runtime installed on his phone. Definitely a good thing. The new release includes a packaging tool that is not part of the S60 SDK and is basically ensymble with added GUI. Ensymble is an excellent tool and it is very nice to see it included in the official PyS60 release.

Like mentioned already, the new release includes the version 2.5 of the Python interpreter and most of it’s standard libraries. Ok, the word “most” does not sound good here. I’ll focus first on the good things. First, the new release has Expat XML parser in it. Definitely a good thing since XML is something that pretty much every application out there uses and so far people have had to make ugly regexp XML parsers or use 3rd party package of expat to be able to parse XML in their PyS60 applications. However, I would say that including JSON parser as the official Python 2.6 release did lately, would probably be a good idea too.

Also, inclusion of asyncore and more compliant socket module sounds nice. I can’t wait to try Twisted on PyS60 and see how it works. One could do some crazy things with that on a mobile phone.

Then to the things that are not included from the standard Python 2.5 libraries. Now, I don’t have too much information on this since, like said before, I haven’t tried the new release yet. However, to my disappointment I noticed that sqlite3 is not included. SQLite should probably be a platform component in S60 because it is kind of becoming a de facto standard in mobile platforms since both iPhone and Android platforms use it. I don’t know what is the equivalent in S60 or does such exist but having some kind of storage other than just plain text file for PyS60 applications would be extremely nice thing to have.

Ok, I have to try out the new PyS60 release soon. I’m hoping that I will be pleasantly surprised. I’ll definitely write more about it later.

Finally it happened. It was announced today in the Forum Nokia Python section that a 1.4.0 final version of Python for Series 60 has been released. This is something that I’ve been waiting this for a long time since I’ve been kind of pissed of with the Symbian signing policy. And guess what… this final version of PyS60 has been officially signed by Nokia with all developer certificate capabilities so no more signing is required for Python application in order to access e.g., the GSM location or GPS APIs. How cool is this? Finally, it is humanly possible to develop applications for S60 mobiles. You can expect to see more PyS60 related stuff in this blog once the summer holidays are over. Until then, have a good summer…. I know I will.

I’m announcing a new software for Series 60 mobile phones called Fupper. It’s a Flickr upload tool written in Pyhon. Look here for more information.

Earlier, I wrote about the Raccoon web server that you can run on your mobile phone. I just found out that it has been released as open source. Also the gateway implementation has been released, so now you are no more attached only to the project’s own gateway. A brief look at the gateway install instructions seemed to be quite complicated, but I’m definitely planning to set up one to my home server.

This is the first, but rather small step towards having your mobile phone part of the Internet. Now all we need are flat fee data connections and I think lots of cool new stuff will appear. If you have a Series 60 phone, give Raccoon a try. You’ll be amazed by what you can do with it.

Nokia has released a web server software that you can run on your mobile phone. The software is called Raccoon and it is basically a apache web server for Series 60 phones.

To make you phone truly a member of the Internet, you still need to register it to a server that gives it a URL and makes it possible to make TCP connections from outside to your phone. Sounds complicated and it is, but just blame the mobile operators. Test accounts are limited, but you can apply one and download the software from here.

Here is a default startup page of my mobsite, running on my Nokia 6630.

You can also do lots of cool stuff with the included concept demos. It is also possible to make your mobsite interactive using Python. How cool is that?

Lately my blog has drastically biased towards the Nokia 770 internet tablet, but this is far too interesting news to be left out. Skype is coming on the Nokia’s Series 60 platform. Allaboutsymbian.com reports experiences of using Skype over 3G network using Nokia 6680 phone. The report states quite clearly that 3G network might not be suitable for Skype calls and that we might have to wait for some WLAN capable Series 60 phones coming to the markets. Anyhow, very interesting piece of news.

Nokia has made the source code for Python for Series 60 available via Sourceforge.net. Let’s hope that many developers join the project to develop it further. Python for Series 60 is now in version 1.3.1 and it is quite usefull for fast mobile application development.

Today Nokia opened site called opensource.nokia.com. There isn’t much new on the site, since most of the stuff that is actually open source on that site has been that for some time already. Like for example Nokia’s Sofia SIP stack has been available already from sourceforge.net.

On the projects page, you can see the list of “open source” projects by Nokia. I wrote the open source in quotes since not all projects on the site are yet open source. Anyhow it’s really nice to see stuff like Python for Series 60 there so probably it will be soon open source as well.

Another interesting project is Series 60 OSS Browser. It’s still under development, but let’s hope we’ll get a decent browser for series 60 some day. Ok, ok…. Opera is quite good as well, but getting an open source browser for my phone would be too good to be true.

Last week Nokia released a music edition of their 6630 model and there they mentioned that it will also include new music player software. Since then I’ve been wondering where I could get that player for my already existing 6630. Now I can stop wondering, since it is downloadable from here. I don’t know if it was Nokias intention to give out this player, but anyway it has and it seems to be quite good. Let’s see how this goes. I think I might need a bigger memory card.

This morning I ended up to a site that offers free themes for Symbian phones . I you’re interested in adding some looks to your mobile check out the site. Here’s a pic of my favourite theme (yes of course Firefox ).