[lug] Which Mobile Phone should I buy?

[Siegfried Heintze]

Being a professional contract programmer, I have this fantasy that if I buy
a new mobile phone, I will learn how to program it. Who knows, I might need
to know how for my next gig.

So what development platforms are available besides J2ME and Windows Visual
Studio/CE? Are there any open source ones?

Is Java considered open source since there is a gnu java compiler and sun
releases its source code for their compiler and jvm?

So how does mobile application development take place? I think you just
download J2ME, write the application, test it on the simulator which is
available for free with J2ME (or in the case of windows, available with
Visual Studio) and then upload it to your phone. I thought that is how they
described it for Windows CE and visual studio.

How does it work for C++?

But then someone else said you have to buy a $4000 prototyping system before
you can upload your own custom app to your mobile phone.

So what model of mobile phone supports the greatest number of development
platforms?

Thanks,
Siegfried