Anton Yemelyanov discovered Symbian OS by chance from a friend's phone, about two years ago. The phone impressed him and he soon had his own Sony Ericsson P800. Being a developer by trade simply owning a Symbian OS phone was not enough for Anton. "I realized that this phone was more powerful than the desktop computer I had 10 years ago," says Anton. "It was so cool and technologically advanced that I felt strongly we had to create something for it. I was also inspired by the opportunity the Symbian OS application market provided to extend and enhance the device experience."

After some thought, Anton decided to use his experience from the development of language parsers. The result was an application that could evaluate simple formula and so F(x) was born. The application received positive feedback, mainly from the scientific community. "We were very pleased with the reception F(x) got," says Anton. "We even learnt of people who translated utilities from Fortran into F(x), so they could perform complex engineering calculations on their UIQ phones."

Feedback and sales resulted in continued development which slowly transformed F(x) from a simple formula evaluator into something with more computational and data processing capabilities, what Anton now calls an applet engine. There is now a library of over 100 applets for F(x). They are delivered as a separate library users can add to the application. From the initial version of F(x) that offered simple input and output, transformed by an equation, the latest version has added extra interface elements, such as buttons and graphs. More powerful data features such as array handling and access to CSV files (spreadsheets) with the ability to access and manipulate the data contained in them, have been added. Now F(x) can handle more complex functionality, such as inventory tracking, car management or medical questionnaires. The latest version has also seen F(x) expanded to support the Series 60 and Series 80 platforms as well as the Nokia 7710 device.

One of the biggest hurdles that Anton faces with F(x) is explain it to a non-technical audience. Anton believes F(x) can serve three broad classes of user; consumers, developers and enterprises.

"There are many small utilities on the market, but they tend to lack flexibility and are expensive for what they do," says Anton. "So a consumer might buy one of these utilities and it will do almost what they want but is just not quite right. This same application could be built in F(x) but now the user will have the option to alter the software and get it to do exactly what they want." While this personal customization will appeal to some consumer the main benefit is the applet library. This currently consists of over 100 routines covering everything from unit conversion through mortgage calculators to inventory systems. The applet library is routinely enhanced. Users also contribute routines which are made available as a part of the applet library.

For developers F(x) offers an environment to quickly develop application ideas. While the current environment is limited in terms of commercial opportunity, as users must have F(x) on their phone, later this year Loginid is planning to introduce a binary application format and playback interpreter, which will allow applications to be shipped stand alone.

The other key audience Anton believes will benefit from F(x)'s capabilities is the enterprise. "Enterprises have a wealth of engineering capability, but they don't necessarily know Symbian OS C++ or Java," says Anton. "With F(x) an enterprise can easily develop applications suited to their business needs. All their engineers need is a fundamental knowledge of programming and some knowledge of C syntax. With this they can develop calculation or data management applets rapidly, for a low cost. So using the kinds of phones their staff will already be equipped with, enterprises can easily deploy new functionality that can also exchange information by SMS or e-mail."

Applications attempting to address such a wide audience often use BASIC style syntax. F(x) is based on the C language syntax. The main reason for this choice is that many high-end engineering and mathematics tools, such as Math Lab, use C syntax. Anton also believes that C typically appeals more to scientists. C like syntax also means that porting of routines from many other scientific tools is less complex.

Despite the challenges in explaining F(x) its capabilities have been recognized. Loginid has even received enquiries from other Symbian OS developers about the possibility of integrating F(x) functionality into other applications, to provide scripting extensions. The application has also received the "Symbian Talent" award at the Orange Code Camp in Sarasota, Florida. This event, which Anton describes as "awesome", also helped him understand the challenges of taking F(x) to a wider audience. "The code camp was a great opportunity to exchange information with fellow developers," says Anton. "It also provided an invaluable opportunity to discuss both technical and business issues with executives from Orange and Symbian, particularly on issues of how to take software into the market."

While the latest version of F(x) is still in a beta testing phase Anton is already looking to the future. "This type of project is somewhat open ended, as there are always new features you can add," says Anton. "I consider myself a Symbian OS enthusiast and I am very interested in bringing new technologies to Symbian OS smartphones thus adding to the user experience. Ultimately I want F(x) to be the unique application every professional would want to have."

For more information on F(x) see the product Web site: www.symbianfx.com