GRAVITY – THE S60 TWITTER

CLIENT
Jan Ole Suhr
mobileways.de
Founder and owner
About Gravity and how it started

• Gravity is the S60 Twitter Client

• Why a Twitter client?
– No other native Twitter client around
– Friends, family, it’s popular
• Side-project for a couple of weeks …
– Freebie to drive visitor numbers!
• This is what you can do with Symbian
• Gives S60 users something to show off
mobileways.de and Jan Ole Suhr

• I’m just a programmer

– So, handle all my advice with care ...
• Started mobileways.de in 1999
– WAP, Online ringtone composer…
– Since 2002 solely focused on Symbian
– One-man company
• Living from“apps” since 2003
Tools you need

• Phones. Real phones. Many of them!

– Emulators just won’t make it
• Different phones, different bugs
• Keypad? Keyboard? Touch? Hybrid?
– The UI is the most important thing
• Use your app all the time
• Try to identify the most popular phones
– 2 or 3 phone models are 80 per cent of your users
Tools you need: debugging

• Create yourself a comfortable framework

• Debug on your users’ phones
• Example: Gravity with over 100 updates
– Symbian is hard to develop for?
– Most versions stable (w/ only one developer)
• Logging the call-stack in (near) realtime
– Shared memory
– Additional application for saving to disk
Tools you need: eye candy

• Eye candy – make it look good

– A nice UI makes up for bugs and limitations!
• It’s a feature but harder to implement
– You might need a good designer
• Give users something to PLAY with
– Kinetic Scrolling, transitions, animations
– Let users spend (waste?) time with your app
• Gravity: Scrolling just for the fun of it
Tools you need: what else?

• Auto-Update
– First thing to implement in your new project
– Version 1.0 will be around forever
– Who cares about a bug fix that’s undelivered?
• Stay in touch with the other platforms!
– Test and explore on real phones
– Copy from successful applications
Distribution: where to sell?

Everywhere Selected Channels

• Maximise your reach • Missing opportunities
• Increasing overhead • Little overhead
• Spreading risks • Risky dependency

• Overhead can be important for small devs

– Fees, Currency Conversion, “Credibility”
– Administration: logging, billing, support, …
• Gravity: two-tier (mobileways.de & Ovi Store)
Distribution

• Only grow as much as you can handle

– Support and operating costs
– More users, more bugs
• Engage with your users
– Public and private beta tests
– Your users are willing and eager to help you
• Try to reach “multipliers”
– Bloggers, heavy users
Thank you!