When it comes to S60 application development, no one has gone further down the experience curve than Psiloc Sp. z.o.o., based in Warsaw, Poland. Psiloc was founded in 1997 by CEO Marek Filipiak, who developed applications for the Psion PDA operating system that was later to be transformed into the Symbian operating system. His in-depth knowledge about Symbian OS internals is still very valuable in the company’s development of innovative applications.

"We are open to any Symbian-related cooperation, including consultancy, outsourcing, or custom-made development," says Jakub Lipinski, Psiloc CTO. "Psiloc currently focuses on custom-made solutions for customers around the world. A good example of that is the Music Player that we created for Jamba. It is an application that allows you to download music over-the-air directly to play on your S60 device. It has a rich, skinnable user interface, so that it can be branded according to the customer’s needs."

Over 2 million lines of code

Throughout the years, Psiloc has built up a great deal of code that is reusable for other Symbian applications. "Our source code repository contains more than two million lines of code. This is a huge knowledgebase," says Lipinski. "It’s a living database of examples, solutions, and architectural approaches." Some of that experience was with previous S60 and Series 80 platforms, but Lipinski says that currently the company only develops applications for 3rd Edition devices. "We moved smoothly from the 2nd Edition to the 3rd Edition, even before the 3rd Edition devices were available on the market," says Lipinski. "The best thing about the 3rd Edition is the improved compatibility between devices on the new platform."

Call forwarding and archiving

Among its custom made services and applications, Psiloc offers complex call forwarding solutions. The advantage of Psiloc's applications over the existing market competition is in the "behind the scenes" handling of all the complexity of call forwarding sessions. From the user’s point of view, this type of call is often indistinguishable from an ordinary call.

The typical call forwarding scenario is this: When the user decides to initiate a call a service provider prompt is displayed (if applicable), offering a choice of connectivity methods. The application can choose the service provider automatically on the basis of the selected country code. If call forwarding is to be used, a second call to the service provider is initiated in the background, during which the user is authenticated. Authorization is performed without the need for user input, either by the mobile application sending the PIN code by DTMF signals or via a simple server side phone number and account match. These solutions have been extended for business and call centers needs in such a way that all voice calls are archived. Preceding each call is a prerecorded message that warns each side involved of the recording. Strict security measures are put into practice, with all the recorded calls being stored in a strongly encrypted form on the device memory card. These can be then atomically transferred to a preprogrammed FTP account of any online storage space, for archive purposes.

Multimedia development

Psiloc also has multiple ready-made and customizable solutions in the mobile multimedia area that other developers can adapt. Psiloc has a ring tone mechanism that, instead of playing a simple melody during an incoming call, presents a custom video playback in addition to sound. The playback can be in any of the following popular formats, including MP5, RM, and 3GP, and a different video can be associated with each contact in the customer’s address book.

Psiloc's most recent multimedia development is the Music Player. Built totally from scratch, it incorporates some interesting features yet unseen in current mobile music players. The engine of this complex application was designed for the sole purpose of serving a music player. Over The Air (OTA) music downloads using the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) music format, ensure most efficient usage of bandwidth - a scarce and valuable resource in cellular networks.

The Music Player is designed to adapt to the playback device by detecting whether to use hardware or software encoding, and it also adapts to the technical environment conditions. The connection speed, error rate, bit rate and sample rate among the factors that have an influence on the Music Player. It adapts to these conditions using dynamic buffering and other optimization features that allow functionality such as playback of incompletely downloaded music tracks. For the end user, this means the music starts streaming as soon as the play button is pressed. The streaming can be stopped at any time and resumed at that exact point at any moment convenient to the consumer. Worth mentioning is also the fact that the UI (User Interface) was designed independently from the platform and in such a way that not only allows for skin swapping on the fly, but also totally repositioning the control elements on the device screen as well. It is at all times very responsive to user input, and has beautifully animated menu structures and marquees that help to display the sometimes longer-than-usual song tags.

WLAN Solutions

In the WLAN field, Psiloc has developed Hotspot Finder, a background application for both of the Symbian UI platforms (S60 and UIQ). It performs periodic scans for WiFi networks. When it discovers a hotspot, the application notifies the user that the hotspot is within range.

Another Psiloc WLAN application, WiFi Connect, switches seamlessly between different WiFi networks and in the process increases the usability and user friendliness of WLAN connectivity methods. Whenever it comes in range of a friendly WLAN network, the mobile device automatically gains access to the data transfer. Gaining friendly connectivity also allows the application to trigger the startup of chosen applications such as the device’s Web browser, mobile VoIP application, or synchronizing utilities. To identify friendly networks, a double recognition method is used. Each hotspot is considered as friendly on the basis of either its SSID (Service Set IDentifier) or MAC (Media Access Control) address. The application can roam through open and predefined WEP protected hotspots, and also automatically authenticate itself with walled garden types of hotspots.

Language localizations

One of Psiloc’s strong suits is the area of language localizations. “Language localizations were the first main breakthrough in the history of Psiloc,” says Lipinski. “When Series 80 and S60 devices first came out, they were oriented towards Western European language sets. We expanded that to allow users in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions to use the devices in their own language and character sets.” In the Middle East, for example, this included Farsi, Arabic, and Urdu character sets. Read more »

















A second breakthrough in Psiloc’s development was the creation of the irRemote application, says Lipinski. The application allows consumers to control their TV sets, audio systems and other infrared-equipped home systems from their S60 devices. "Symbian technicians had told us that such an application could not be created, but we managed to do it anyway,” says Lipinski. “It is still one of the most popular applications that we have ever created."

Psiloc has even developed its own digital rights management (DRM) solution for the protection of Symbian applications, UI themes, and FlashLite applications. The solution allows a developer to control the licensing and distribution of its products. "We make this DRM solution available to other developers," says Lipinski.

For more information, and to discuss projects with Psiloc, visit www.psiloc.com.

Psiloc’s Font Magnifier application allows users to see enlarged text on the S60 3rd Edition displays.










The Psiloc Extended Recorder extends the length of time for recording audio on S60 3rd Edition devices.