developing symbian app for personal use only

Question

I recently bought a second-hand Nokia E52, and I'd like to write some apps for personal use only, i.e. without needing to distribute them.

Now, learning about Symbian S60 today is a bit like learning an ancient language noone speaks anymore, and I'm very confused. In particular could someone explain to me whether I'll be able to access all capabilities somehow without having a developer certificate (which I don't have)? Or is it that I'll be able to access only those capabilities which are covered by "self-signed" certificate?

Answer 1

I don't have E52 but I can give some advice. I use Nokia Qt suite to write a music player and camera capture software for my Nokia phones (Symbian ^1 and above). I can access the network, read / write data to the sdcard and internal phone memory. Generally my Qt .pro file declare the capabilities: # Self-signing capabilities TARGET.CAPABILITY += NetworkServices \ ReadUserData \ WriteUserData \ LocalServices \ UserEnvironment

If you need to play music and use the Camera, you need to install Qt mobility (a .sis file) on your devices running Symbian ^1 or older devices. hope this helps!

Answer 2

As you assumed, you can only use capabilities covered by self-signed certificate. However, there is very little you can not do without those. Also, you can only use libraries/functions that use (or require) cababilities covered by self-signed certificate. The capabilities are very well explained in some of the Symbian books, for example this has the capability part freely readable.

Answer 3

You can't request (free) developer certificates anymore, only create own self-signed certs which are restricted:

http://www.s2.org/~pekangas/creating_symbian_certificates.html

The only way to access more advanced capabilties is via hacking your phone.