Micro mobile application framework

A little while back I had the opportunity to produce a 'lite' version of an application framework I was creating with the help of a few friends (cmw, dre), and have it ported to the peek platform. Peek went on to use their own in-house system instead which is more targeted toward their market whereas this implementation was aimed at bringing smart phone applications to low-end devices without looking too budget and while working fantastically. To be honest, the implementation never ended up working as well as it should have. cmw built a full qemu emulator of the peek so be sure to check out his stuff if the platform interests you. cmw and dre also ported a full web browser to the platform, seriously ninja skills right?

The application platform allows you to offload a lot of implementation and processing to the server side and gives you XML and scripting languages for the device side. This makes the development cycle ridiculously fast compared with traditional compiling of native code for target devices. Some smart technology takes care of the communication so that even though a lot is offloaded to the server side, you never really notice, the applications just behave as if they were native.

Some of the nicer features this framework provides are:

• Instant application resume. Apps start where you left off, even if you reboot your device.
• Roaming applications. If you get a new device, register it with your account and all your apps will be there, in the exact place you left off. Works over multiple devices too
• Built in OTA application updates. Updating a large application with a small patch will only use a tiny amount of data.
• Push support. People talk about 'push' like its a big deal, but if you communication was designed so that push is just part of normal operation then some of the things you implement with push become exciting instead of it just being 'push'

Some example applications built for the peek platform using the framework include a calculator (1,310 bytes big!), and a multi-protocol messaging application.

Calculator application

Messenger application splash screen

Messenger application account setup

Messenger application chat window. This is actually an older screen grab than the others, there should be protocol icons next to each contact name in that buddy list. When you receive messages from your buddies, their entry in the buddy list grabs your attention and you will see their messages in blue rather than the red 'me'

 You probably noticed the mouse cursor in one of those screen grabs, and that would be because the screen grabs were taken from the simulator.

Peek simulator running a simple example application

A nice feature for low-end platforms is to include some basic image filters so that application developers can take advantage of them and reduce the number of graphics in the binary. For example, I have an envelope image which is just a few shades of grey, yet with image filters I can apply color, make parts transparent, etc, while only adding minor computational complexity to the image painting.

One image with different filters applied

The Peek only had one application on it, email, so there was nothing other than the screens for email, no application list, menu, or such. A home screen or two was implemented firstly to make testing multiple application easier, then we went out and implemented something a little more interesting. The full home screen we implemented was more prototype than finished product but did have some things going for it. In the background there is a photo a NYC-Time Square with the current temperature, time, and network signal displayed on the buildings. In the foreground is a circular style application menu. The background is dimmed when you bring up the application menu so that the busyness of NYC doesn't get in your way.

Plain application menu

Circular application menu with time, temperature, and network signal on building in background

The maps application shown in the boot environment above also functioned. It showed your approximate location using cell tower locations and map data provided via google maps API. The actual device side for this application was tiny, it made the calculator look massive.

The source code for this project along with the other parts (web browser, etc) are available over on the peeklinux svn repository. Happy hacking!