symbian apps on a nokia 770?
 

Hello,

Is there a way to run symbian apps on the nokia 770?
an emulator perhaps?

I would like to run a GPS program, like tomtom or route 66...
which are quite good, and work on other Nokia devices.
I know about gpsdrive, but it just doesn't have what it takes...

No.

Well... theoretically it might not be impossible: Symbian does have a Windows-based emulator (it's part of their developers kit, but can be found on the Net.), so if someone can figure out a way to get Wine running on the 770, it would theoretically be possible to run the emulator on top of that to run your Symbian app, provided the emulator is a reasonably well-behaving Windows app.

I guess you see where this is going?

Also: why would you want to do that? If you have Symbian apps, you're bound to have a Symbian device (because otherwise you would be -- er, like -- stupid?), which really rokk at running Symbian apps. They're famous for being good at running Symbian apps.

Now that the 770 has a BT hook for GPS devices, it won't be long before someone ports a decent Linux GPS app to it, so you'd be able to run it natively, instead of glacially.

Haha, I can't imagine that. The 770 is already slow and memory drained as it is. Adding an emulator to it which runs windows which will then run a GPS program is overkill. You'll need AT LEAST 256mb of memory to run it smoothly, not 64 haha

I did write "theoretically" for a purpose, not because those keys are easier to hit on my keyboard.

Besides, we now have the possibility to enable a flash swapfile on the 770, so memory issues alone are not what would stop Wine from running (assuming one does not care much about the lifespan of their memory card).

Processor power might be a much bigger hurdle to leap. Then again, there was a prophet on this forum who spoke of the awesome powers of the 770 as a wireless X-terminal. Wherefore are now these amazing abilities of the 770 to run remote applications?

But, all in all, I'd much prefer a native GPS program to an emulated one. As a second choice, of course; if I really /needed/ a GPS program, I'd get one for my P910. After all, that one is with me all of the time (showers excepted).

Wine would be useless without also an x86 emulator such as bochs or qemu (unless you wanted to code to the Win32 API using winelib, but that's pretty unlikely). On a 250MHz ARM, these are not going to be anywhere near useful.

Also, the Symbian Windows SDKs are similar to the Maemo ones: they're not an emulator, they're a Symbian/Maemo environment running on x86. Therefore you won't be able to run a "normal" Symbian device program without having an x86 version of it (or its written purely in OPL).

A better option would be an EPOC/Symbian device hardware emulator. I'd've thought that a suitably skilled programmer could probably get Series 5-level performance out of such a thing. Imagine: a keyboard-less, colour Series 5 with a screen with a higher resolution than a netBook in a form factor only slightly larger than a Revo. Running EPOC Agenda.

Yum.

Tastes differ, so I'd like to state that I'm perfectly happy with my colour, small-screen, very portable and all-in-one Symbian P910i.

I'm also (but slightly less so) happy with my handy, high-resolution, web-friendly, Linux-driven Nokia 770, but as long as the 770 doesn't have at least the timing and alarm capabilities of my P910i, I couldn't care less about running any form of agenda on it. But EPOC Agenda would be nice, the aforementioned notwithstanding.

P.S.: Why can't I play Elder Scrolls:Oblivion on my 770? :)

answering you, with your own words:
why would you want to do that? If you have Symbian apps, you're bound to have a Symbian device (because otherwise you would be -- er, like -- stupid?

You might want to look up what "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" actually is. And I _do_ have a Symbian version of it, sort of. It's called "Nethack" and it plays beautifully on a P910i.

But I'm still so going to buy Oblivion...