Samsung Bada

Samsung has released a new OS/platform for smartphones, based on C++. My initial excitement for the platform has vanished quickly, though, after looking at their introductory presentation for developers. First thing that caught my eye was “two-phase construction”. That immediately rang my alarm bells. This was followed by their explanation that they cannot use C++ exceptions due to “resource constraints” on embedded devices. Instead, one has to use a home-grown macro-based exception handling mechanism, as well as return value error codes. Now that explains the need for two-phase construction. Note to Samsung: Symbian called – it wants its design mistakes from the 90s back. Other things that I noticed were a lack of smart pointer usage (apparently, smart pointers are too resource hungry) and a few other things that should send shivers down the spine of any C++ developer. And they have Java-like container classes. So, unfortunately, nothing to get excited about. Looks like iPhone, Symbian 9.x and Linux-based platforms like Maemo remain the only choices for C++ developers.