S60 5th Binary Compatibility
The introduction of the touchscreen S60 5th has resulted in people asking whether existing S60 3rd applications will work on this newer platform. According to Nokia’s Matti Vasanka, VP, mobile software marketing and sales, applications based on S60 3rd edition will work on the new S60 5th edition without any modifications.
If you dig deeper, it’s not necessarily that simple. The S60 5th SDK states…
"If you have only used AVKON UI components in your applications, then you do not need to change your code to have your application run in S60 5th Edition mobile devices. AVKON UI components handle touch events. Applications that implement controls inherited from AVKON controls and override CCoeControl::HandlePointerEventL() should also call the base class implementations of these functions."
So, if the application only uses standard S60 controls then it will display and interact OK. The implication of this is that applications that have implemented their own custom screens or controls may not display or interact correctly depending on how they have been written.
Digging even deeper, the SDK says there have been changes to the interfaces to CAknQueryDialog, MAnimGeneralFunctionsWindowExtension, CBaseMTm, CAknSettingPage, CEikMfne, CCamera and EscapeUtils which means that applications depending on (particularly extending) these may not work as expected.
Additionally, it’s obvious that a keyboard-less device may not work as anticipated with an application that relies on keyboard and especially soft key input. Also, many applications will probably be more usable if enabled with new features such as new touch events, long tap events and tactile feedback.
Hence, while S60 5th is broadly binary compatible with S60 3rd, there are several areas that might require the building of a separate (S60 5th) touchscreen version.
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