Programs are advertised as being for the S80 or the S60, but isn't that just the UI? Isn't the underlying OS pretty much the same? I'm getting an N-Gage QD (an S60 device), but there's an S80 program I'd like to run on it... would that be at all possible? The program in question is a TADS text adventure game interpreter.
Are S60/S80/S90 in any way compatible?
A programmer can write the core application "engine" for most parts as "generic" Symbian OS code that'll work on most any Symbian OS based device.
However, a lot of it is at the "UI" layer, which in actuality also includes a lot of other things than just the UI.
This means that the developer has to make separate versions of the app for S60, S80, UIQ, the 7710 (S90). It also means that an S80 app will not install or run on an S60 device.