9 replies to this topic

[PaulOBrien]

One of things that keeps me coming back to Windows Mobile is the Compact Framework. Since learning VB4 at school, i've loved developing in the Microsoft Visual Studio toolsets, and the ease with which this application development can be leveraged on my mobile is very compelling indeed.

Of course, this does have it's downsides, limiting any applications I develop to Windows Mobile only when I might, for example, want to target a new audience by developing for S60 on Symbian.

Well, there is a solution to this problem, in the form of Net60 from RedFiveLabs.

Announced today...

RedFiveLabs said:

SYMBIAN SMARTPHONE SHOW (London) : Red Five Labs announces Net60 Version 2.0, the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for S60 devices.

October 21st, 2008 - Red Five Labs today announced the release of Net60 Version 2.0, which together with Visual Studio, is a powerful platform to create S60 applications easily.

Net60 will be demonstrated at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London from 21-22 October, at the Earls Court exhibition centre.

"We have been building the .NET compact framework for Symbian devices for many years", said Dusan Babich, Red Five Labs' CEO. "Symbian developers have never before had such an easy to use, easy to deploy, development experience".

Version 2.0 of Net60 offers the S60 community a complete development solution, featuring :
- .NET Compact Framework 2.0 compatibility (including generics)
- Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 support
- SQLite support with an ADO.NET provider
- A managed namespace providing access to native Symbian APIs (telephony, camera, OpenGL, GPS etc.)

Net60 enables managed Windows Mobile applications to run unchanged on S60 devices. "Net60 was the logical choice for leveraging our .NET development effort", said Suzy Paddock, Co-ordinate Limited, who used Net60 to successfully take their GoodHotelGuide to market.

Developers are able to re-use the same code and the familiar .NET programming environment to build applications for Symbian devices. Languages such as C# and Visual Basic are supported.

Pricing and Availability

S60 applications built with Net60 are distributed with an extremely low per device fee. Net60 Pro is available at a cost of EUR 459 for a single user and 250 deployments. The Premium subscription includes support, upgrades and 1000 deployments. The Net60 toolkit is available on Windows XP and Vista. A 30 day trial is available immediately from the company's website.

With this new release, for me, Net60 comes of age. NetCF 2.0 support is a big leap forward, and I am now planning to use Net60 to dual-develop version 4 of my CamerAware application for Windows Mobile and S60 simultaenously. This will both let me reach a larger audience and also let me report back to you guys on my experiences with Net60!

Have any of you developers out there that read MoDaCo used this in anger? Share your experiences!

You can read more about Net60 at http://www.redfivelabs.com/. Note that the new release should be publicly available in around  1 week.

P

PS I'm at the Symbian Smartphone show atm and have been chatting to the RedFiveLabs guys... and it looks mighty impressive. The stand staff here are very knowledgeable, and have got me rather excited to have a play!

[Mr_Gee]

Quote

Pricing and Availability

S60 applications built with Net60 are distributed with an extremely low per device fee. Net60 Pro is available at a cost of EUR 459 for a single user and 250 deployments. The Premium subscription includes support, upgrades and 1000 deployments. The Net60 toolkit is available on Windows XP and Vista. A 30 day trial is available immediately from the company's website.

Great development, but if I understood the above correctly a developer can only sell 250 to 1000 applications and then has to buy a new deployment pack
for a freeware developer (like myself) that is just not feasible... way to expensive...  
also..
Pro version E459  : 250 = 1.83 per deployment
Premium  E3299 : 1000 = 3.29  per deployment, granted it has phone support... but i wouldn't be surprised if that would offset each other
a difference of 1460 euro, thats a lot of call time.

Nah, I'll stick to Windows Mobile, maybe the Symbian users will come to their senses

[soiauk]

Paul,

This is a great development and I really hope you can manage to get CameraAware working on Symbian as a result.

I say this because I used to have a Windows Mobile device until my upgrade and I decided to switch to Nokia for a bit and got myself an N95 and one of the things I really miss is not having the ability to be made aware of camera's without having to fire up a full GPS app (which isn't that good at picking up camera's anyway!!). I used to love the convenience and features CameraAware offered me and it would be great to be able to have this on my N95.

If (hopefully when) you do get CameraAware running on Symbian would you make it so that people who already have a subscription to the Windows Mobile version could also use it on Symbian with the same license or would we need to purchase a new one?

[Swampie]

Mr_Gee, on Oct 21 2008, 13:16, said:

Great development, but if I understood the above correctly a developer can only sell 250 to 1000 applications and then has to buy a new deployment pack
for a freeware developer (like myself) that is just not feasible... way to expensive...  
also..
Pro version E459  : 250 = 1.83 per deployment
Premium  E3299 : 1000 = 3.29  per deployment, granted it has phone support... but i wouldn't be surprised if that would offset each other
a difference of 1460 euro, thats a lot of call time.

Nah, I'll stick to Windows Mobile, maybe the Symbian users will come to their senses

You have a basic single device version for €99.
The Pro includes 250 deployments (single developer) and minor (1.x) version updates.  €1 per device after that.
Premium includes 1000 deployments (site license) and all updates . €1 per device after that.

Based on that pricing, once you have 8 developers, it's cheaper to get the Premium site license.

[Alex (nedge2k)]

I've said it once and i'll say it again...traitor!!!

[PaulOBrien]

Mr_Gee, on Oct 21 2008, 13:16, said:

Great development, but if I understood the above correctly a developer can only sell 250 to 1000 applications and then has to buy a new deployment pack
for a freeware developer (like myself) that is just not feasible... way to expensive...  
also..
Pro version E459  : 250 = 1.83 per deployment
Premium  E3299 : 1000 = 3.29  per deployment, granted it has phone support... but i wouldn't be surprised if that would offset each other
a difference of 1460 euro, thats a lot of call time.

Nah, I'll stick to Windows Mobile, maybe the Symbian users will come to their senses

After you have bought the initial licence, it is 1 euro per additional runtime. I'm obviously not a fan of per-runtime licences, but so long as you are making a COMMERCIAL application, 1 euro is pretty decent...

P

[PaulOBrien]

soiauk, on Oct 21 2008, 16:17, said:

Paul,

This is a great development and I really hope you can manage to get CameraAware working on Symbian as a result.

I say this because I used to have a Windows Mobile device until my upgrade and I decided to switch to Nokia for a bit and got myself an N95 and one of the things I really miss is not having the ability to be made aware of camera's without having to fire up a full GPS app (which isn't that good at picking up camera's anyway!!). I used to love the convenience and features CameraAware offered me and it would be great to be able to have this on my N95.

If (hopefully when) you do get CameraAware running on Symbian would you make it so that people who already have a subscription to the Windows Mobile version could also use it on Symbian with the same license or would we need to purchase a new one?

I envisage 1 licence covering all CA platforms, so when it DOES happen, you should be good to go...

P

[PaulOBrien]

Alex (nedge2k), on Oct 22 2008, 13:08, said:

I've said it once and i'll say it again...traitor!!!

Oy!

P

[kadambari]

Is it support >net compact framework 3.5??

[PaulOBrien]

CF 2.0 only at this time!

P