Why configure?

To be able to create a product portfolio with a set of highly diversified mobile phones all based on one single codeline
Reducing licensing and integration costs by only having to work with one developer community and the same third party applications for all UIQ based phones
Manufacturers can create new innovative products with one or by combining two different phone style configurations, e.g. as in Sony Ericsson P990.

Phone styles

The UIQ platform is form factor independent with support for phone style configuration, which means that UIQ's flexible architecture can be configured to meet the requirements of different form factors.

Mobile phones can be very different in terms of hardware, e.g. screen size, and how the user interacts with the mobile phone, e.g. using softkeys. This is defined as mobile phones having different phone styles. The UIQ platform supports pen and softkey interaction and any combination of these. Examples of UIQ phone styles are softkey style and pen style.

Phone style configuration allows manufacturers to innovate and create highly diversified product portfolios based on the same codeline. This does not require changes in the code of the UIQ software platform, only modification of settings, therefore reducing the cost and time-to-market. By using one single codeline, investments can be reused and the entire range of phones can be served by just one developer community.

Phone style configuration is enabled by a number of UI configuration parameters provided in the UIQ development platform. Each unique combination of the parameters defines a specific UI configuration.

UI configuration parameters:

Screen size
Interaction style - menu bar/softkeys
Touchscreen on /off
Screen mode - portrait/landscape
Hardware keys