Some of you might have already know, I have developed my first Mobile App (which is also a Nokia App) thanks to the opportunity Nokia gave me.
Everything begins a month ago...
Recently Nokia has been busy in organizing workshops to attract more Nokia App Developers around the world. Their strategy is to regain their position in mobile market where they have lost their lead since the release of other competitors such as iPhone, Andriod and BlackBerry. And they have a two day workshop in KL last month where I were asked to attend by my boss. And so I went.
When I was in the workshop I wasn't really attracted by their speech in the beginning. Then one of the speech caught my attention: They are giving away Nokia N8 for the first 10 person who able to submit and publish their application before 15th June 2011! This is really a good motivation for me to build my first mobile app! Since I am also using Nokia 5800 XM and it is an opportunity to build a mobile app for myself as well as others, at the same time I stand a chance to win a new phone, why not give it a try? From then on I pay 100% attention to the 2 days workshop..
In order to build an app in Nokia touchscreen, they introduced their C++ Application Development Framework called
Qt 4.7. And they have their own IDE called
Qt Creator. Basically Qt 4.7 engine is built on C++. But you don't need to know C++, all you need to know is Javascript / JSON and they will handle the integration part with C++ for you.
My Experience In Using Qt 4.7 Creator
It was very easy to create a 'Hello World' application and simulation in your desktop. There are also a few demo with source code included in the IDE which is very helpful for beginners. However it wasn't that easy when it comes to building the application and run successfully in your phone. The information was not enough on the web. I kept Googling trying to solve my problem and it took me 1 week to figure out how to run the Qt application successfully in my phone.
My Experience In Developing the Application
Only Javascript + JSON knowledge is required. Very easy. However it would be better if they provide enough API for developers such as default two / three buttons, scrollbar, yes-no dialogs etc. You know I have to build everything from scratch. For example in order to create one simple button I need to draw a rectangle, put a text in the middle, create event in response when the button is pressed, and test if the button I develop works. These are very time consuming especially for beginners.
Once the button is created I can reuse it for the whole application. Thus I can focus more on my programming logic and calculations. This process took me 2 weeks, including testing.
My Experience In Publishing App To Ovi Store
This is the part I am very satisfied with the Nokia QA Team. I had a great time collaborating with them. I'm not sure where are they located, but they are responsive to my questions and comments. Because I am living in KL (GMT +8), most of their response I receive are during my night time, from 9pm until 7am. Thus my guess they would be probably be in Finland and US.
What I wanted to say is if you are a developer in Asia (or somewhere nearby GMT +8), please don't expect you will get response immediately. They will reply to you within 1-3 days.
It took me 8 working days since my first submission until the application published successfully to the store, with 1 failed QA test in the middle. This means that the duration can be shortened if my first submission is success (could have save me another 3 working days if I didn't fail). However 8 working days is considered very short and efficient.
In short, this is my progress from the day I attended the workshop:
1st week - Very fresh to Nokia App. Mostly struggling and figuring how to deploy Qt Application into my phone.
2nd week - Learning curve of Qt 4.7. Most of the time spent on building simple things such as buttons, scrollbar, info dialogs, yes/no dialogs etc.
3rd week - Continue on building my application. Make sure the algorithm works. And a lot of white box testing included.
4th week - Submit my application to QA. Praying hard that my application can be published before 15th June.
5th week - My Application published successfully on 15th June 2011. Just on time.
Currently Expense Manager only works on Nokia 5800 xPressMusic. It doesn't work on other Nokia touch screen model because I don't have so many phone to test on! How I wish others could use this application as well :(
I would like to give thanks to everyone who has helped me and make this happen. They are (and not limited to) Andy, Eileen, Hawa, Daniel, Jonathan, Miel and Eda. And thank you Nokia for such a lovely gift!
It's meaningful to me :)
