Today I interviewed Mr Tong Ren, who developed the application FlipSilent, many of the Symbian enthusiasts say that he stole the idea from Samir Oueldi and his ShutUp application, he clarifies that this is not true. Read below for the full fresh interview from this Forum Nokia winner.

Good afternoon Mr Tong Ren, we are really glad for this interview with us.

I will start with same basic but always interesting questions about you. 

What was your first phone? 

Erricson @ 2001,  I forgot the type

When did you start programming? 

2004

When did you get into Symbian, and which one was your first smartphone?

I got into Symbian in 2004 with Nokia 6600

We know that you were a Forum Nokia champion, please enlighten us about how you accomplished this feat. 

OpenC challenge, 2nd runner up. They invited me.

What is your favourite application at the moment? 

FlipSilent

What phone do you use at the moment? 

N95

What is your current profession (job)? 

Researcher at E-Learning lab of Shanghai Jiaotong University, China

Now I will move onto particular FlipSilent questions. 

Many people say that your idea was stolen from Mr Samir Oueldi on his unfinished application ShutUp, is this true? 

My Idea is From here: http://cn.s60.com/main/experience_touchUI_video.html  at about 1min 23 sec

Why distribute the application freeware when you know you can always make money selling it? 

As a developer, I have a dream, wishing one day, I can have my application installed on every mobile phone!

freeware will be quicker to make my dream come true. I accept donations.

http://symbianblog.com/index.php/flipsilent/  A world map here from google analytics

What do you FlipSilent final version to do? Please list all features. 

it is determined by user requests, If I think it is reasonable , I will add it.

Do you plan on releasing the code for FlipSilent and making it OpenSource? If no please explain the reason. 

I am not sure yet, maybe yes, if I don’t commercialize it.

What are your future applications’ plans? 

Very busy with FlipSilent, less than 4 hour sleep per day. No plan, yet.

What would you like Nokia to do with the accelerometer? 

I hope they can Install accelerometer  to every phone released in the future, like the camera…

What specs does your dream phone have? 

IT is fast, no idea…

We truly appreciate the time you spent with us and wish you the best of luck in your

projects.
Thanks!

The PhoneReport.Info team

Please do post questions that you feel we should ask Mr Tong.

The video demonstrated on Youtube by Google Android Team was clear to me. This is simply a phone with all Google Apps and a pint of Touch UI.

If you can see in the video, you will notice the transitions and the speed that everything such as contacts, maps, etc loads, this is equal to what we saw from Nokia on their Touch UI video, and somewhat the same what the Apple iPhone does.

A lot of web was focused naturally because Google is really a web based company. One thing that was clear from Steve Horowitz, the Engineering director, is that Google is not developing a GPhone, for the simple fact that if they develop the OS, many other companies will use it, making Google much widely used.

A good thing that I said about this in a previous post is that even though Google creates the illusion of handing 10million USD to the best programmers, the cost is really low because it’s an Open Source OS, not many licenses, patents, and it is not necessary to pay any company to use their software, everything is pretty much "Googled".

If you look in Android blog, you can see that the deadline is 3 March so Google just has to sit back and relax until some small time genius comes up with a good app. Of course these 10 million aren’t just to get the apps developed, they are for publicity, I mean Google already has every single app they need.

And to even create more publicity, Google teases us with Quake, which to tell the truth, actually looks yummy…

Of course March also coincides with the decision of FCC on the 700MHz sprectrum bid, it is suppose to end in January, but usual delays will appear. One way or another Google is trying to take over the markets.