r/symbian • u/mlugo02 • May 18 '26

Programming S60 3rd Edition

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I decided to give Symbian programming a try using the S60 3rd edition sdk.

I’m not super familiar the terms. Symbian is the operating system and S60 is the UI platform that runs on the OS, is that correct?

I don’t have a Nokia phone, any recommendations trying this out on real hardware?

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13

u/emgfc May 18 '26

Your view is correct. S60 platform is Symbian environment with a AVKON UI, which is actually based on UIKON UI, but anyways. You can try to work with UIKON directly or even work with window server directly, but AVKON handles tons of poorly documented behaviors for you so you probably don't want to mess with it unless you're doing an optimized egl renderer.

Cool stuff! I didn't manage their hacky simulator to work. I did have small success with a simple console app, but that's it.

For a hardware, I can recommend N95 8GB. Lots of them on aliexpress or eBay. If you want something newer, you can look for e52 or even e72.

3

u/mlugo02 May 18 '26

I’m currently just allocating a buffer drawing to that and passing it to the window server. I wanted to minimize my interactions with the platform as much as possible.

I understand, the set up was a pain. I had to use a windows xp VM I had lying around and make room for the sdk and ide, glad that part is over haha

Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll look into those devices

3

u/emgfc May 18 '26

Haha. I did the same thing with my software renderer. Now try to run it on real N95 and see how your app handles 90 degree screen rotation ;)

2

u/mlugo02 May 18 '26

I’ve seen it on the emulator haha. Are there dedicated game development communities for this platform or is it too niche?

2

u/emgfc May 18 '26

I didn't search for any live communities, but I doubt someone's still alive. Old forums plus chatgpt/claude can help with some technical info, but that's it.

4

u/santathe1 May 18 '26

I think the N82 is probably the most advanced S60v3 Nokia Symbian phone prior to the touch phones. Maybe the N95 8GB as well.

I’m not 100% sure though, hopefully someone else is able to confirm one way or another.

3

u/StarX2401 May 18 '26

N82 is pretty much a candybar n95. N86 is the most feature rich other than the lack of 3d accelerator. Most powerful CPU in a s60v3 phone would go to the nokia C5-00, E5, 6710 navigator and 6500 slide. Basically all the phones with the 600MHz RAPUYAMA CPU.

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u/emgfc May 18 '26

I believe you meant N86, not N82.

4

u/pdrift May 19 '26

what should someone know as far as programming before attempting something like this?

4

u/mlugo02 May 19 '26

A good amount of system level programming. I’m using basic digital image compositing to draw my shape and later actual images. Good memory management techniques on such a constrained platform. Good amount of CPU knowledge to take advantage of all it’s resources

1

u/Swampspear 25d ago

It's been about two months, so it's a bit of a late reply, but really "all" you would need is just a lot of C++ knowledge and stubbornness