MeeGo Handset Code Opened For Developers

As Nokia prepares to drop Symbian from its flagship handsets, it has teamed up with Intel to make a preview of the MeeGo mobile phone software available to developers.

In a 30 June blog post, Valtteri Halla of the MeeGo technical steering group announced “‘Day 1’ of the MeeGo Handset user experience project.”

Opens Source Code

Indeed, as of 30 June, “Handset-specific [MeeGo] source code … will be opened to the developer community to access, contribute to and participate in,” a Nokia spokesperson said, according to InfoWorld. This release will allow developers to work toward the first official release of MeeGo v1.1 for Handsets, which is expected in October. “This move illustrates continued MeeGo momentum and marks the first MeeGo code supporting a touch environment,” the spokesperson said.

The MeeGo Handset Day 1 code is based on a new MeeGo Touch user interface framework and includes a set of MeeGo-compliant APIs.

MeeGo is a Linux-based open-source mobile operating system project that debuted in February as a joint project of Intel and Nokia. The project aims to “merge the efforts of Intel on Moblin and of Nokia on Maemo into one project. It is hosted by the Linux Foundation,” says Wikipedia.

October Release

In the blog post, Halla and co-author Imad Sousou (who also is in the MeeGo technical steering group), said:

“Today, the handset baseline source code is available to the development community. This code is being actively developed as MeeGo 1.1, which is scheduled for release in October. The team has been preparing MeeGo Gitorious with all the sources and infrastructure to perform the weekly builds for MeeGo 1.1 development. The MeeGo UI team has also been busy creating the handset reference user experience and preparing the MeeGo UI design principles and interaction guidelines. This milestone marks the completion of the merger of Moblin and Maemo as major architecture decisions and technical selections have been determined. Today, we are also opening the MeeGo Build Infrastructure.

The MeeGo Project Handset Day 1 includes:

• MeeGo APIs, incorporating Qt and MeeGo Touch UI Framework (MTF)
• Subset of the handset reference UI and applications

◦Status Bar: clock, network, Bluetooth, 3G connection, notifications, and battery charge
◦Home Screen
◦Lock Screen
◦Application Launcher
◦Virtual Keyboard
◦Applications: Dialer, SMS, Browser, Contacts, and Photo Viewer

• MeeGo Core OS (including the middleware components)
• Hardware adaptation support for Intel Atom-based handset (Moorestown) and ARM-based Nokia N900″

The MeeGo Handset Day 1 code is available for immediate download at meego.com. Interested developers can preview the code and try it out using Aava Mobile or the Nokia N900. A video on MeeGo 1.1 is available here.