S60 device characteristics

Display

The common supported resolutions are:

• 176 x 208 (discontinued by S60 3rd Edition FP 1)

• 240 x 320

• 352 x 416 (discontinued by S60 3rd Edition FP 1)

• 360 x 640 (from S60 5th Edition onwards)

There is some variation in devices, but in a majority of cases, you can rely on the resolution of the target devices to be either 176 x 208 / 352 x 416 if their platform version is earlier than S60 3rd Edition, or 240 x 320 if it is later than that. The supported color depth ranges from the minimum 12-bit (4096) colors of the early devices to the current 24-bit devices.

There are some irregular devices, such as Nokia 5500 which has a 208 x 208 pixel resolution.

S60 UI software is scalable from portrait to landscape display mode, in which the height and width of the display are switched. In landscape mode, some UI elements such as softkeys may change places. MIDlets designed for a certain resolution can be scaled to other resolutions supported by the mobile device.. For more information, see section Scalability.

Input

The following figure points out the required input keys on an example device.

The required input keys for non-touch devices are:

• Two softkeys (SK1 and SK2)

• Five-way navigation (four arrows and a Selection key)

  Note: From S60 5th Edition onwards, some devices may include 9-way navigation.

• Call handling keys (Send and End keys)

• Applications key

• Alpha-numeric keyboard with digits from 0 to 9 and symbols * and #

• Clear key

In devices with no Edit key, a short press of the Star (*) key opens the editing menu and a long press opens the special characters table.

The S60 platform also supports extra keys. These are:

• Camera key

• Power Key

• Volume keys

Depending on the device, there may also be support for QWERTY-keyboards, 9-way navigation mechanisms, and other more advanced keys.

From S60 5th Edition onwards, Touch UI replaces many physical keys on touch-enabled devices. In these cases, the amount of required input keys is diminished and additional commands are handled with custom input methods, such as handwriting recognition (HWR) and virtual keyboard (VKB). The custom input methods are generally optimized for stylus usage.

The required input keys for touch devices are:

• Call handling keys (Send and End keys)

• Applications key

Touch-enabled S60 devices also often feature extra keys. These are:

• Volume keys

• Power Key

• Keyguard switch

• Camera shutter key

For more information on Touch UI devices, see S60 touch in Design and User Experience Library

Memory

The Nokia S60 devices use dynamic memory allocation, which allows the reuse of memory space once reserved and released. The shared heap size starts from 1MB on S60 1st Edition devices whereas for example S60 3rd Edition FP 2 devices include up to 128MB SDRAM and 16GB. When you are developing MIDlets for S60 2nd Edition and later releases, memory limitations are very rarely a problem as there are no limitations for the maximum heap size.

S60 devices also support unlimited JAR size. For detailed information about each device, see the Device Specification section on Forum Nokia.