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Product category: Design and Development Software
News Release from: Digital Airways | Subject: Kaleido Phone Library
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 8 February 2005

Software speeds mobile interface development

Kaleido Phone Library is a generic man machine interface foundation layer for communication devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, smartphones and other mobile devices

During the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes next week, Digital Airways is launching Kaleido Phone Library (KPL), a generic man machine interface (MMI) foundation layer for communication devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, smartphones and other mobile devices. As phones are becoming ever more sophisticated, the MMI's design and implemention has become a key challenge for handset manufacturers.

Although pressure to reduce time to market has not diminished, manufacturers are also faced with the need to increase their flexibility to better respond to rapid changes, especially in the consumer market which is driven by the operators' objective of ensuring a better user experience.

In short, manufacturers need to more rapidly design and produce phones that are more and more complex.

The Kaleido solution, introduced last year, is a suite of applications allowing mobile phone manufacturers to design, customise and implement sophisticated MMI quickly and easily.

Kaleido addresses the needs of a modern MMI, which are: flexibility, short lifespan of a particular interface, dynamic partnership in the design and implementation of the MMI.

Kaleido Phone Library is an extension of Kaleido.

It provides manufacturers with a unified MMI base on which all further applications may be integrated coherently to create feature-rich mobile devices.

KPL comprises a set of basic MMI libraries needed to design a new phone and is organised around three major components: the main phone MMI framework including elements such as the home (or idle) screen, layout management, indicators management, phone settings, camera, storage and directory handling, events management, and language management; the MMI for a series of basic integrated applications, such as call and SMS management, dialer, phone book, sounds and picture albums, RSS reader etc; and a package of generic plug-ins, offering ready-to-use advanced native functions such as dynamic menu management, list processing, graphic effects, scroll bars, input methods, and dynamic bitmap creators.

According to Philippe Silberzahn, CEO and cofounder of Digital Airways: 'The combination of Kaleido and Kaleido Phone Library allows manufacturers to accelerate the development of mobile phone MMI while reducing engineering and integration costs, paving the way for manufacturers to faster and better respond to clients' and mobile operators' MMI requirements'.

Unlike other MMI solutions based on automated code generation or the provision of MMI-specific code libraries, Kaleido separates the MMI specification from its implementation: the MMI is fully specified with parameter files, which are read and duly rendered by the Kaleido MMI engine implemented on the handset.

This makes it easy for manufacturers to adapt existing models to new MMI requirements without engaging in a complete design cycle.

When designing a new MMI, instead of starting from scratch, manufacturers and operators may use the foundation layer provided by Kaleido Phone Library, accelerating development time for new MMIs.

In addition, KPL is delivered as customisable modules, which makes it easy to encapsulate and integrate third party specific libraries and products, such as a browser, a MMS client, a 3D renderer etc, to create a common user interface.

This approach enables manufacturers to select the best applications and technologies, and assemble them into a coherent software platform while maintaining complete control over branding and user interface design.

Kaleido Phone Library is available immediately in C and Java for a large number of hardware and operating systems, including legacy platforms.

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