You can have a Symbian/S60 simulator rather than emulator on these tablets. In other words, instead of emulating a separate CPU and platform, like emulators do, the simulator would just provide a bunch of Symbian libraries and a loader for Symbian executables. More or less like DOS compatibility layer in Windows or Linux compatibility layer in BSD and Solaris.
That's cool, fms. :-) How likely do you think it is that something like this would be done? If enough people asked for it, I wonder if Nokia would make it happen.
You can have a Symbian/S60 simulator rather than emulator on these tablets. In other words, instead of emulating a separate CPU and platform, like emulators do, the simulator would just provide a bunch of Symbian libraries and a loader for Symbian executables. More or less like DOS compatibility layer in Windows or Linux compatibility layer in BSD and Solaris.
Heh heh, yeah. So what do you think? A weekend's work?
Heh heh, yeah. So what do you think? A weekend's work?
Probably not. A Nokia Engineer once told me that a typical 3rd Edition S60 phone contains a little shy of 100M lines of C/C++ code. Reverse-engineering and re-implementing that is going to take at least a couple of weekends...
(Disclaimer: I have no idea how accurate the 100M figure really is.)
Is it possible even in theory for someone to build an S60 emulator that would run on the NIT? If it could be done, can you imagine e.g all those sweet N-Gage coming up on the N810?
You've got to distinguish "can it be done" and "will it be done". The probability of us seeing an S60 emulator can be quantified by looking at the factors:
Is there an existing open source S60 emulator which could be ported?
Is the specification of S60 hardware open enough so that it could, in its entirety be emulated in qemu?
Is there a mechanism to get hold of S60 images to run in such an emulator?
Is the specification of the S60 API open enough so that it could be re-implemented from scratch, a la Wine?
Is there a strong driver for it, either through the market or talented developers with both the inclination (i.e. the "itch") and the skills?
I don't know the answers to (m)any of these questions, but my gut says the answers are more "no" than "yes".
